HECO: Wildfire Risk Already Cut By More Than Half Across Hawaii Grid
The power company plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few years on wildfire prevention. Some lawmakers question why that didn’t happen before Lahaina.
Hawaii鈥檚 largest utility is spending $120 million this year in its new push to reduce wildfire risk across the state after one of its fallen power lines sparked the deadly 2023 Lahaina blaze, company leaders told state lawmakers Friday.
Those dollars are funding preventative equipment such as detection cameras, drones, weather instruments and sparkless fuses, plus other measures such as replacing aging wooden poles and corroded copper power lines, according to Colton Ching, Hawaiian Electric Co.’s senior vice president for planning and technology.
The company鈥檚 efforts in 2024 amount to a third of Hawaiian Electric鈥檚 overall annual budget, and it plans to spend an additional $300 million on wildfire prevention in the next three years, Ching added.
It believes those steps, taken in Lahaina鈥檚 aftermath, have reduced the risk of wildfire by 60% across its coverage area, which includes Oahu, Maui County and Hawaii island.
Still, at least one state senator in Friday鈥檚 joint committee hearing pressed Ching and other HECO officials on why the company didn鈥檛 do more to help prevent wildfires before the devastating West Maui fire on Aug. 8, 2023, which killed 102 people.
Prior to that event, 鈥測ou chose to give your shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars鈥 instead of allocating more funding to wildfire prevention, Sen. Glenn Wakai told Ching after a lengthy presentation on all the steps HECO is taking.聽
鈥淲hy do you guys always have to wait for outside forces to do the right thing?鈥 Wakai added.
Ching said that prior to Lahaina HECO spent $20 million a year to trim vegetation away from its power lines and it replaced about 1,000 old poles a year, but neither of those measures was officially categorized as wildfire prevention.
鈥淲e didn鈥檛 just wait for the wildfires in Maui,鈥 Ching said. 鈥淲e have been working proactively. I get what you鈥檙e saying that we should have done more.鈥
(David Croxford/Civil Beat/2024)
In the next three years, Hawaiian Electric plans to install 250 weather stations on power lines across its grid to help it determine whether it needs to shut down power in high-risk areas when conditions get too dry and windy, Ching said.
The utility aims to install 32 video cameras capable of detecting possible wildfires, more than 9,000 fire-safe fuses and more than 2,000 new wood and steel power poles in that time.
The company also intends to replace nearly 27 miles of old power lines, mostly made of corroded copper, with aluminum ones that pose less of a fire risk.
HECO will also spend $200 million to install more than 100 miles of new overhead power lines covered in special insulation in fire-prone areas through 2027. It will spend more on that effort than any other wildfire prevention measure in the next three years, according to Ching鈥檚 briefing.
Eventually, the company wants to install more than 800 miles of those insulated lines in fire-prone regions across its entire coverage area, he added. Overall, the utility manages some 9,400 miles of power lines.
Many Lahaina residents have expressed strong support for burying HECO鈥檚 future power lines there underground when the town rebuilds. Ching said no firm plans have been made yet to do that, but the company is seeking grants that might help make it happen.
Burying the lines underground would cost about $11 million per mile, he added.
In some areas it would be just as effective to install the covered overhead lines at a fraction of the cost to bury them, Ching said.
