UPDATE 1-US approves $95 million for Hawaii's electric grid after wildfires
(Rewrites throughout to add details from company statement, background)
Aug 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy will provide $95 million to Hawaiian Electric through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to strengthen the power grids on Hawaii's wildfire-ravaged islands, the White House said on Wednesday.
The island of Maui was devastated earlier this month after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century swept through the resort town of Lahaina, leaving 115 people dead and 338 missing.
"This investment will help reduce the likelihood of outages, reduce restoration times following outages, reduce risk of wildfire events, and increase grid operational resilience," the White House said in a statement.
The federal funding would pay for half of the Hawaiian Electric's proposed $190 million climate adaptation plan and would help cut its cost to customers in half, the company in a press release.
The plan includes measures to harden two critical power lines on Maui, replace poles with fire-resistant materials, and relocate the Maui control center to a more secure location.
"Investing in a more resilient power system will reduce the severity of damage when major events happen and enable service to be restored more quickly even when there aren't storms," it said.
The power utility said it had applied for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law's grid resilience funding in April 2023 and on Wednesday asked regulators to approve its climate adaptation plan.
Hawaiian Electric's shares have risen around 40% so far after the electric utility denied responsibility for the recent wildfires in Maui and said its power lines had been shut for hours prior to the deadly blaze that devastated the island.
The denial came after Maui County sued the company last week, accusing the utility of negligently failing to shut off power and causing the fires that destroyed Lahaina. (Reporting by Urvi Dugar and Deep Vakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Alison Williams and Lincoln Feast.)
