HEI - Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc.
12/10/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 12/10/2025 14:06
Hawaiian Electric boosts resilience across islands
Hawaiian Electric boosts resilience across islands
Major progress made in 2025 in downtown Honolulu/Chinatown, Nanakuli, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Upcountry Maui, other areas
Release Date: 12/10/2025
HONOLULU, Dec. 10, 2025 - To enhance resilience, Hawaiian Electric in 2025 has replaced thousands of utility poles, trimmed vegetation, overhauled underground equipment and installed technology to reduce wildfire and outage risks across the five islands it serves.
Many of the hundreds of projects focused on areas challenged by older equipment, more frequent service interruptions and/or higher wildfire risk. Highlights of ongoing or completed work include the following projects:
- Hawaii Island crews have been rebuilding a section of the transmission line inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Crews have relocated and upgraded 69 utility poles, and installation of new equipment along Hawaii Belt Road is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
- In downtown Honolulu and Chinatown, where customers experienced a major outage in 2024, crews have made progress on a multiyear program to replace and upgrade the underground network to improve reliability.
- Also on Oahu, crews replaced aging underground cable that caused service interruptions in Nanakuli, Mililani and Kaneohe. More than a half-mile of cable was replaced in Nanakuli from late February to mid-June, over two miles replaced in Mililani neighborhoods and over a mile replaced in Kaneohe near Windward Mall. Currently, crews are replacing cable in lower Hahaione in East Honolulu.
- In East Honolulu, crews upgraded multiple utility poles and installed equipment near Kalanianaole Highway and Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, improving wildfire safety in the area. The extensive work involved evacuations, planned outages and use of helicopters.
- In the Olinda area on Maui, Hawaiian Electric has expanded hazard tree removals as part of ongoing vegetation management efforts. The work includes coordination with landowners for removal of invasive tree debris. In addition, installation of insulated power lines in Upcountry Maui will continue through January.
Planned resilience and reliability work that requires widespread scheduled outages or major traffic impacts will pause during the holidays.
HEI - Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. published this content on December 10, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on December 10, 2025 at 20:06 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]