State regulators this week have approved Hawaiian Electric’s purchase of a mobile substation, and to commit nearly $3 million for the project.

The project would replace the older of the two existing mobile substations currently owned by HECO.

The state’s largest utility says that without a mobile substation, an emergency replacement of another one would take at least a month, leaving customers to relay on any backup power that may be available, rather than its electric grid.

HECO currently owns and deploys two mobile substations, one of which is about 60 years old and needs to be replaced due to corrosion and deterioration of the unit.

The Honolulu-based utility has a network of 123 distribution substations across Oahu.

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Hawaiian Electric Co. can't guarantee that another major power outage like the one that happened earlier in March in Windward Oahu will ever happen again.

Duane Shimogawa has more than 15 years of experience in the media industry with stints as a reporter/anchor at several TV and radio stations, as well as newspapers such as Pacific Business News, Hawaii News Now, KNDU/KNDO-TV, and more.

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