Hawai‘i to receive federal funding for grid resilience, hazard mitigation

The state of Hawai‘i will be receiving $18.5 million in federal funding to reinforce its electrical grid from natural hazards such as wildfires, flooding and hurricanes.

The funding was secured by the Hawaiʻi State Energy Office in partnership with Hawaiian Electric and the Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA), will go toward $25 million in investments aimed at enhancing grid resilience and hazard mitigation.

The funding, which comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under its Hazard Mitigation Grants Program (HMGP) and the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, will support five projects on Maui, Hawaiʻi Island and Oʻahu that are scheduled to be completed between 2027 and 2029, according to a news release from HIEMA.

“This partnership with Hawaiian Electric and FEMA will help the state become more resilient to weather events that increasingly pose a significant threat to energy infrastructure across Hawaiʻi’s six independent grids,” said Hawaiʻi’s Chief Energy Officer Mark Glick. “The investments will improve the resilience of Hawaiʻi’s energy infrastructure and ensure a reliable power supply to critical community facilities when needed.”

The projects include establishing five Critical Customer Hubs that will allow proximate community lifelines to remain operational during prolonged outages in West Maui and the Koʻolaupoko region of Windward Oʻahu, developing a digital twin of the grid to enable early detection of power quality issues, upgrading Energy Management System platforms to allow for real-time monitoring and conducting a hazard risk assessment for Maui.

Upgrades will result in fewer power outages, quicker restoration of service, and the ability to rapidly de-energize parts of the grid to ensure safety. Critical Customer Hubs, as a new approach to local energy resilience, allow critical facilities—such as fire stations, police stations, medical facilities, grocery stores, pharmacies, and fuel stations—to remain operational even when the grid fails. The Windward Oʻahu region is particularly vulnerable to prolonged outages because it relies on transmission lines traversing the Koʻolau range but has no local power generation.

“It’s critical to work together as partners to address the many hazards we face in Hawaiʻi. This collaborative effort will result in stronger, more resilient electric systems that will improve service to the communities we serve,” said Colton Ching, Senior Vice President of Planning & Technology.

See below for the projects and a breakdown of how money will be spent on each one:

• West Maui Electric Grid Hazard Identification and Mapping – $0.95 million
• Distribution Digital Twin (DDT) Grid Modeling – $1 million
• Energy Management System (EMS) Platform Modernization for the Maui and Hawaii Island Grids – $4.8 million
• Critical Customer Hubs at Lahaina Civic Center and Cannery Mall – $6.7 million
• Critical Customer Hubs at Windward Mall (Kaneohe), Olomana (Kailua), and Waimanalo – $11.9 million

“Securing this federal support through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation and BRIC programs demonstrates HIEMAʻs commitment to improving our overall assistance to the state of Hawaiʻi. By identifying risks to our energy infrastructure and strengthening our mitigation projects like the Critical Customer Hubs, we are ensuring that essential lifelines remain operational for our communities during and after extreme weather events,” said HIEMA Administrator David Lopez.