At Hawaiian Electric, we understand how frustrating it was for our customers in the Ala Moana area to lose power during the severe rainstorm in Honolulu and the fire at our Makaloa substation. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for the patience they showed. Although our crews worked nonstop until power was fully restored, the interruption in business — especially during the busy holiday season — was difficult for our customers.

An editorial in Sunday’s Star-Advertiser suggested that upgrades should be considered on Oahu’s electric grid ("More needed to prevent repeated blackouts," Star-Advertiser, Dec. 26). We very much agree and we’re already making it happen.

Like utilities across the nation, we installed a lot of our equipment during the post-war boom years, especially after statehood here in Hawaii, and it has now reached the point where more rapid upgrading is required than in the past. It is not unlike maintaining your home: More repairs and modern replacements are required as your home gets older.

When faced with an aging infrastructure, utilities have two choices: Either replace equipment as it breaks down, or institute diagnostic programs to forecast equipment failures in advance so that replacements can be made. Waiting until equipment wears out can ensure we get every bit of life out of equipment, but it inevitably results in customer service interruptions, and can result in higher costs when equipment has to be replaced under rushed circumstances, with little or no preplanning.

We believe it’s better to replace equipment before problems occur. This results in improved service, and generally results in reduced costs since the work is planned and performed under more controlled circumstances. But because no diagnostic program is perfect, it also results in retiring some equipment early.

To accomplish this, we have begun a program called "asset management" to accelerate replacing and upgrading our older equipment with new and improved technologies. Using evolving predictive and preventive diagnostics, asset management is focused on cost-effectively upgrading equipment on our electric system. Wherever it makes sense, old equipment is retired before it fails and replaced with more technologically advanced equipment. Of course, no utility program is perfect, and we will not always be able to replace equipment in time. But as our program evolves we will increasingly be able to mitigate the frequency of age-related failures.

Asset management will also ramp up the rate at which we make improvements. We are already substantially increasing upgrades for higher priority equipment such as wood poles, transformers, underground power cables, high-voltage breakers and transmission structures, as well as improving vegetation management. For example, we plan to replace more than 70,000 feet of underground power cable each year for the next three years, and even greater amounts in the future. This is more than double the amount replaced in 2007-2008, before we started the program.

In the coming years, asset management will also address other types of critical infrastructure equipment such as protective relays, batteries, overhead lines, insulators and our telecommunications infrastructure.

We are not alone in adopting this approach. Similar programs are being widely adopted by electric utilities on the mainland. Because this upgrading of the electric system to improve service reliability means slightly higher costs, the Public Utilities Commission and the state consumer advocate are reviewing asset management as part of our most recent rate case.

However, we have not waited for the PUC to begin; rather we are absorbing the additional maintenance costs of the program while we await a PUC decision. We believe it is important to move forward with asset management to improve service for our customers and strengthen the grid to support more renewable energy.

We are making progress, but as the events of last week illustrated, there are no overnight solutions, and there is still much work yet to be done.

It is our obligation to provide clean, reliable power for our customers, and we take that responsibility very seriously.

ON VACATION

Richard Borreca, who writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays, is on vacation. His column returns on Jan. 4.