Video cameras, weather sensors, intelligent switches, stronger wires and other upgrades are part of a Hawaiian Electric plan to reduce wildfire ignition risk, though it could take decades to make widespread improvements that only partially reduce risk.

The utility company serving Oahu, Maui County and Hawaii island recently filed a wildfire mitigation plan from January with the state Public Utilities Commission in response to PUC inquiries about such efforts in the wake of the Aug. 8 fire that killed 98 people in Lahaina.

“A primary objective of this plan is to minimize the probability of Hawaiian Electric’s facilities becoming the origin or contributing source of ignition for a wildfire,” the plan states. “Another objective of this plan is to mitigate Hawaiian Electric facilities from contributing to the severity and breadth of a wildfire.”

Mitigating wildfire risk became a bigger focus for Hawaiian Electric in 2019, and the company also is pursuing a major plan to strengthen its infrastructure against all kinds of natural disasters occurring more frequently or with more intensity due to climate change.

“This is very, very big for us,” Colton Ching, senior vice president of planning and technology at Hawaiian Electric, said with regard to the whole effort. “As big as it is, this program alone doesn’t solve the risk.”

Both plans predate the Lahaina fire and another fire on the same day in Upcountry Maui driven by gale-force winds from a distant hurricane that damaged or destroyed 400 Hawaiian Electric power poles in West Maui and fueled a fast-­moving inferno that burned down most of Lahaina town.

No official cause has been determined yet for these fires. Still, the Lahaina fire, which was the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century, has prompted much scrutiny of what Hawaii’s biggest power utility has been doing in the way of addressing wildfire risks.

Assessing risks

The company, in its wildfire mitigation plan produced in January and filed with the PUC Oct. 2, said it took up a proactive approach to such risk based on devastating California wildfires in 2018 and its own wildfire experiences in 2019.

One Hawaii wildfire in 2019 burned about 9,000 acres on Maui and prompted evacuations in Maalaea and North Kihei.

A 2018 wildfire in Lahaina driven in part by 70-mph wind gusts from a distant Hurricane Lane also has been cited as a “close call” that has influenced the utility’s mitigation plan.

That 2018 Lahaina fire burned roughly 2,000 acres, destroyed 30 vehicles and 21 structures, most of them homes.

Part of the utility’s mitigation effort in 2019 and 2020 used Pacific Fire Exchange ignition density maps to target inspections of equipment and surrounding vegetation in wildfire hazard areas. Based on the maps and inspection results, the company identified priority areas on Oahu, Maui County and Hawaii island for future mitigation efforts laid out in the January plan.

Another company initiative convened a working group in 2019 where participants representing state and federal government agencies, commercial customers and nonprofit interest groups helped assess natural disaster risks and mitigation strategies.

Working group members largely ranked wildfire among the lowest of threats — just above landslides and volcanic activity but below hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes and cyberattacks.

The working group’s final report in 2020 noted recent increased frequency and impacts of wildfires, in part due to the demise of sugar cane plantations that historically managed wildfire risks and helped combat fires.

“However, today these areas present vast amounts of vegetation that can burn longer and with less ability and resources to control them,” the report said.

The report, which influenced Hawaiian Electric’s fire mitigation plan, also said Maui had unique wildfire risks because of invasive grass species that are prone to drying out.

Much of the report’s focus, however, was on protecting Hawaiian Electric infrastructure from disaster damage.

One report recommendation was that the utility consider extraordinary wildfire mitigation strategies to minimize risk of damage to its main power plant on Maui at Maalaea.

“Hurricanes were the major thing people were concerned with,” said Henry Curtis, a working group member and executive director of environmental organization Life of the Land. “I think this (recent Lahaina) fire will change everything.”

Clay Trauernicht, a University of Hawaii ecosystem fire expert, said there were several scary wildfires in Hawaii before the group finished its work, including Waianae fires in 2018, the 2018 Lahaina fire and the 2019 Central Maui fire. Yet he said Hawaiian Electric’s prior focus had been historical experiences with disasters damaging utility infrastructure that impacts customers and is costly to repair.

“We have a different calculus now,” Trauernicht said.

Responsibilities

The deadly Lahaina fire caused an estimated $5.6 billion in damage. Roughly 2,300 structures were destroyed or damaged, including many businesses and homes.

It likely will take years for Lahaina to get rebuilt.

Meanwhile, property owners and relatives of deceased victims have filed more than 40 lawsuits against Hawaiian Electric to date, alleging that the company is responsible for causing the fire. Many of the cases also name the state, Maui County and private landowners as defendants.

Hawaiian Electric’s wildfire mitigation plan makes a point to say that the risk of its facilities causing wildfires in Hawaii is significantly less than power companies in California, where disasters tended to involve power lines igniting trees that touched off blazes in forests, spreading to adjacent residential areas.

In Hawaii, relatively few power lines are in forested areas, according to Hawaiian Electric, which also said it routinely cuts back trees that pose fire and power outage risks.

The company also has emphasized that it doesn’t have responsibility or rights to manage vegetation far beneath its lines on property it doesn’t own.

Utility easements allow Hawaiian Electric access to such property, but only for purposes of work on its own equipment or to keep power lines from touching trees, according to company spokesperson Jim Kelly.

“We basically can go in there to fix something that’s broken or do maintenance,” he said. “But it does not give us the authority to go on somebody’s property, private property, unannounced and start doing work that does not involve fixing the equipment or making repairs. We’re not going in to do landscaping or grass cutting. That’s not part of the easement that we have.”

Plan priorities

Hawaiian Electric’s January wildfire mitigation plan identifies 18 priority work areas.

For Maui County, the highest priority is from Lahaina to Kapalua. Other areas, in continuing order of priority, are Olowalu, Maalaea, Kihei-Wailea, Molokai and Lanai.

On Oahu, the ordered priority areas are the Waianae Coast, Makakilo-Kapolei, Central Oahu, East Honolulu, Aikahi and Waialua.

Hawaii island’s priority areas in order are Waikoloa Village, Naalehu, Kohala, Pohakuloa, Kawaihae and Honokaa.

Strategies to reduce risk include upgrading power poles and replacing single-­strand copper wires, which are more prone to breaking under high stress, with stronger aluminum or multi-strand copper wires.

Another strategy is to install “intelligent switches” such as smart reclosers and smart fuses on circuits in high wildfire risk areas. Such switches, which can be adjusted based on weather conditions, can minimize intensity of sparks from lines contacting other things, and block re-energizing of lines that trip off.

Installing video cameras and weather stations are also part of the plan, and would allow Hawaiian Electric to monitor wind speed and relative humidity in high fire risk areas and adjust operations based on conditions.

One thing not in the plan is a public safety power shutoff program. Major California power utility PG&E enacted such a program to turn off circuits in certain areas during high wildfire risk conditions. Hawaiian Electric said in its plan that it doesn’t intend to adopt such a program. It mentioned that PG&E’s program wasn’t well received by affected customers, and that fire risk conditions are different in Hawaii.

“As noted previously, the type of vegetation in the potential wildfire areas in Hawaii would not likely cause the same catastrophic level of wildfires that California has experienced,” the plan states.

The plan also said, “In addition, a lot of the Hawaiian Electric distribution circuits meander through non-­wildfire areas and then through potential wildfire areas. Thus, preemptively turning off circuits would impact customers that may not be in potential wildfire areas.”

Putting power lines underground also is not part of Hawaiian Electric’s wildfire mitigation plan. The company has about 9,400 miles of transmission and distribution lines across five islands, and about 50% is underground.

Implementing plans

Some pieces of the plan have been completed or were underway as of January.

The plan states that wire and pole upgrades on Oahu from Makaha Valley to Kahe Valley, part of Kapolei and the Aikahi-Mokapu area had been completed. The plan also said work from Aina Haina to Hawaii Kai was in progress, and that a weather station at Kahe had been installed while three other station installations were in progress.

On Maui, weather stations had been installed at Mahinahina, Puukolii and Napili substations all in West Maui, while wiring upgrades and smart fuse installations were in progress for Lahaina to Kapalua, Maalaea and Olowalu.

The plan did not indicate any work on Hawaii island had begun.

Hawaiian Electric did not estimate a cost for carrying out its wildfire mitigation plan, and implementation updates since January were not available.

In a broader initiative by Hawaiian Electric to strengthen its operations against all kinds of disasters, including wildfire, the company sought PUC approval in 2022 to spend $190 million over five years on pole and line upgrades, cameras, weather stations and other things.

This project includes installing eight weather stations and 16 cameras each on Oahu, Hawaii island and in Maui County for wildfire risk purposes. Pole upgrades are also part of this project, including 48 steel poles specifically for wildfire protection divided evenly among Hawaiian Electric’s three service regions.

Putting some transmission lines underground on Oahu to guard against storm damage also is part of this program.

The company, in its June 2022 application to the PUC, called the proposed project an important investment that needs to be made as soon as possible, and noted, “The risk of a utility system causing a wildfire ignition is significant.”

Hawaiian Electric sought to reduce the program’s cost to customers by seeking federal funding. On Aug. 29, the federal Department of Energy said it intends to pay for half the project subject to negotiating specific terms. The PUC has yet to make a decision on whether to approve the project.

Part of the commission’s consideration recently has been whether Hawaiian Electric might modify its resiliency program in light of the Lahaina disaster.

The utility has told the PUC that it intends to explore flexibility with the Department of Energy, including possibly increasing wildfire mitigation investment and shifting more work to Maui.

Such changes could reduce resiliency work on other fronts, though overlap exists in both plans. For instance, upgrading poles and lines have benefits against multiple types of disasters.

“It’s all part of a big package,” Kelly said. “It’s designed to be very comprehensive.”

Ching said implementing everything in both plans could take decades.

“It’s 20 years worth of work we’re going to need to do to address these risks, all of these risks in all of the various locations,” he said. “It’s a long haul.”