On Wednesday, the White House said that the Department of Energy will deliver $95 million to Hawaiian Electric through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to support the power grids on Hawaii’s wildfire-destroyed islands.
Maui’s island was destroyed earlier this month after the most harmful US wildfire in more than a century swept through the resort town of Lahaina, causing 115 people dead and 338 are still missing.
The White House said in a statement that the following investment will support a decrease in the possibility of outages, decrease rehabilitation duration following outages, decrease the threat of wildfire occurrences, and improve grid operational resilience.
The state funding would spend for half of Hawaiian Electric’s suggested $190 million climate adaptation program and would aid in cutting its cost to consumers in half, the company said in a press release.
The program contains steps to toughen two essential power lines on Maui, replace poles with fire-resistant materials, and resettle the Maui control center to a more protected area.
It added that investing in a more resilient power system will decrease the harshness of damage when significant circumstances occur and promote service to be restored more rapidly even when there aren’t storms.
The power utility said it had applied for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s grid strength funding in April 2023 and on Wednesday asked regulators to approve its climate adaptation program.
Hawaiian Electric’s shares have increased about 40% so far after the electric utility rejected accountability for the current wildfires in Maui and said its power lines had been closed for hours before the killer fire that destroyed the island.
The rejection came after Maui County sued the firm last week, blaming the utility for carelessly failing to close power and causing the blazes that ruined Lahaina.
