Le Anh Dao/Wikimedia The U.S. Department of Energy has selected Hawaiian Electric Co. to identify the best areas for developing microgrids on Oahu. The project is one of 11 projects selected as part of the DOE's inagural Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project. During the project, which will last 12 to 18 months, HECO will have access to experts from the DOE, Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, and national labs. Microgrids are connected to the main electric grid, but can be isolated during an outage. Suitable areas for microgrids are places vulnerable to prolonged power outages during storms and weather events. They also have clusters of customers and renewable energy sources.