Hawaiian Electric has rebuilt a backup power line to West Maui that can feed electricity to about 11,000 people.
In a statement, the utility said that this is part of their ongoing restoration efforts on critical infrastructure in West Maui including water pumps and the Lahaina Small Boat Harbor’s fuel pumping station.
The line serves as a redundancy in case one of the other lines or circuits goes out of service.
It follows the same route as a previous transmission line, which had some of its wood poles damaged during the August 2023 windstorm and fires.
HECO used nearly 80 new poles to run the line. Most of them are steel.
In a Senate hearing last month on wildfire mitigation, top HECO executives said HECO has been incrementally switching out old utility poles for newer, stronger ones over the last decade.
The utility has about 150,000 poles and 10,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines across the five islands it serves.
