Hawaii's top public utility officials and the president of Hawaiian Electric testified Thursday in a congressional hearing about the role the electrical grid played in last month's deadly Maui wildfire.
Members of a U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee question the utility officials about how the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century began — and whether the electrical grid in Lahaina was safe and properly maintained.
The fire killed at least 97 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, mostly homes. It first erupted at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 8, when strong winds appeared to cause a Hawaiian Electric power line to fall, igniting dry brush and grass near a large subdivision.
There is still much to sort out about the fire, Rep. Morgan Griffith R-Virginia said, including how the fires spread and what efforts to reduce fire risk have been made in recent years.
“It is extremely important that we ... ask the hard questions,” he said.
Those testifying were Hawaiian Electric CEO Shelee Kimura, Hawaii Public Utilities Commission Chair Leodoloff Asuncion Jr. and Hawaii Chief Energy Officer Mark Glick.
Both Kimura and Asuncion addressed the possibility of burying power lines underground — thought to be a way to reduce the risk of wildfires in high-wind conditions. About 50% of the power lines in Hawaii are now underground, Kimura said.
However, Asuncion said burying power lines can be cost-prohibitive, and has a big impact on rate-payers. He said there is no program to have rate-payers on one island subsidize the cost of burying a line on another island.
“I get that,” Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, said. “But sometimes the cost of doing nothing gets to be prohibitive too.”
Griffith, Energy and Commerce Committee chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Energy, Climate and Grid Security Subcommittee chair Rep. Jeff Duncan — all Republicans — questioned Kimura, Asuncion and Glick about the cause of the fire in a letter sent Aug. 30.
The letter included 10 questions about the sequence of events on the day of the fire, efforts to mitigate fire risks posed by the electrical grid, the fire investigation and other issues.
In written testimony provided to the committee before the hearing, Kimura focused on the challenges of providing electricity on an isolated island chain, and her feelings of responsibility and connection with the people of Hawaii. Hawaiian Electric serves about 70,000 customers on Maui and nearly half a million customers statewide, including the Department of Defense, which is its largest customer.
Kimura has acknowledged that Hawaiian Electric's downed lines caused the initial fire, but she wrote that the fire department said it extinguished that blaze and that the lines had been de-energized for more than six hours when the fire flared up in the same area again. She called the 3 p.m. blaze the “Afternoon Fire,” implying it was separate from the morning blaze.
“The cause of this Afternoon Fire that devastated Lahaina has not been determined,” she wrote. “We are working tirelessly to figure out what happened, and we are cooperating fully with federal and state investigators.”
Whether the lines were fully de-energized — meaning they were not transmitting any electrical voltage — might still be in question, however. At least one Lahaina resident told The Associated Press that their power came back on around 2 p.m., and Maui Police Chief John Pelletier has said that his officers were trying to keep people from driving over live power lines later that afternoon as residents fled the burning town.
Asuncion wrote that the PUC is working with Hawaiian Electric to identify and implement any needed operating changes for high-wind days, and is reviewing the company’s approach to whether power lines should be built above or below ground.
Hawaii has only two electric utilities: Hawaiian Electric, which is the sole provider for Maui, and Kauai Island Utility Cooperative.
Residential electricity in Maui costs about 43 cents per kilowatt-hour — that's three times the national average, he said, with the average monthly bill reaching about $216 in 2022. The utility's financial integrity is related to its ability to provide the level of maintenance and upgrades that are critical for a safe electrical grid, he said.
Glick, the chief energy officer for Hawaii's State Energy Office, also submitted written testimony detailing some efforts to identify the risk of wildfires and other natural disasters to the energy grid, and plans to eventually create a microgrid system, where small portions of the electrical grid could be shut off for safety reasons while keeping the rest of the system operational.
