Hawaiian Electric Co. has completed the second and final phase of a project to upgrade transmission equipment in urban and East Honolulu that includes "smart controllers" that will allow the utility to more quickly detect outages and restore power to customers.

The Phase II upgrades will affect 12,400 utility customers in an area stretching from the university area through Kaimuki and into Kahala, HECO officials said. Combined with the first phase of HECO’s East Oahu Transmission project, completed in 2010, the project will improve service reliability for half of the utility’s customers on Oahu, according to HECO.

The $15.4 million second phase was paid for with $10.1 million from ratepayer funds and $5.3 million in federal stimulus money.

The second phase of the project included the installation of equipment that can be remotely monitored and controlled at eight HECO substations and one pole-top switch. The equipment was integrated into the grid using smart controllers that monitor system conditions and automatically reroute electrical transmissions when outages are detected.

The new technology will allow system operators to restore power in seconds as opposed to the hours it previously took crews to travel to the affected area and move the switches manually, according to HECO.

"To the untrained eye it may not look like the equipment has changed much but the capabilities of the system have vastly improved," Dan Giovanni, HECO’s vice president of energy delivery, said in a news release. "This technology makes this part of our system more responsive and better equipped to restore outages," he said.