Dive Brief:
- Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. (HEI) announced its second quarter earnings were up 2% and said its utility subsidiary reported earnings of $34.2 million, up 19.3% over the same period a year ago.
- The results met expectations, according to HEI CEO Connie Lau, who said HEI's utilities were "aggressively managing costs and redirecting savings to accelerate investments" in reliability and renewables to achieve lower-cost electricity for its customers.
- Simultaneously, the company continues to recover from the impacts of Tropical Storm Iselle, which knocked out power to thousands in its subsidiary Hawaiian Electric Light Co.'s (HELCO) service territory
Dive Insight:
While results were good for HEI, the utility company is still working to return power to customers on Hawaii Island. On Sunday, the company said HELCO crews were working to restore power to the approximately 8,100 customers (approximately 10% of total Hawaii Island customers) who remained without power.
The day after, the company issued a statement saying crews from HELCO would be joined by Oahu crews from Hawaiian Electric as work continues on restoring power. Additional field crews are being brought in from the mainland and contract construction crews are supplementing the restoration workforce.
“We understand this is a difficult time for our customers, so we’re essentially tripling our workforce and doing everything we can to restore power as quickly as possible,” said Darren Pai, HELCO spokesman.
While it continues to deal with the aftermath of the storm, HEI is also in the process of overhauling its utilities' traditional cost-of-service regulatory model and better align business models with the needs of its customers.
