Hawaiian Electric Industries

Hawaiian Electric Company incorporated on October 13, 1891. Thus, Hawaiian Electric Company began while the independent country of the Kingdom of Hawaii existed. Within about 16 years, the utility had 2,500 customers on Oahu. By 1914 HECO had started rural service to the windward side of the island and was marketing electric products like refrigerators and flat irons. In 1937 HECO broke ground on its second power plant, and transmission lines soon crisscrossed Oahu.

War and statehood

During World War II, HECO power plants linked to US military bases, generating more than one million kilowatt hours of electricity each day. (= > 42 MW average power).

Hawaii became a US state in 1959, and by then Oahu was entirely electrified. HECO opened a 116 MW plant in downtown Honolulu in 1954. The state's first reheat steam turbine generator went on line at Kahe on the west coast of Oahu. Today, Kahe is the state's largest plant with a total generating capacity of 650 MW.

Island expansion

HECO purchased Maui Electric Company in 1968. In 1970, HECO acquired the Hawaii Island's Hilo Electric Light Company. In 1988 MECO acquired the Lāna‘i City power plant on the island of Lānaʻi, and in 1989, Molokai Electric Company on the island of Molokaʻi. Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc. (HEI) was created as a holding company for these various utilities in 1983. In 2013, HECO began working with Siemens to develop a self-healing grid in eastern Oʻahu and Waikīkī to ensure a reliable electrical supply.

On December 4, 2014, NextEra Energy tendered an offer to purchase HEI for $4.3 billion (equivalent to $5.6 billion in 2024). The sale required approval by the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission. On July 18, 2016, it was announced that the merger was cancelled after the Public Utilities Commission disapproved the deal. The merger included plans to convert HEI's oil-fired generating plants to run on natural gas, which were to use liquified natural gas imported from a British Columbia plant of FortisBC. The upgrades were cancelled as they were dependent upon approval of the merger.

On December 24, 2019, HECO announced that it would begin operating under a single name with its subsidiaries MECO and HELCO—Hawaiian Electric.

Maui wildfires

On August 8, 2023, brush fires ignited on various parts of Maui. Fires in Lahaina and Upcountry caused widespread damage to populated areas, and the Lahaina fire was responsible for at least 102 deaths and an estimated $5.5 billion in damage. Power lines owned by Hawaiian Electric were blown down and over 12,000 people on Maui were left without power. Investigations are currently underway to officially determine what caused the fire, and they are currently looking into whether downed power lines and decisions by Hawaiian Electric were the cause of the deadly wildfires. Hawaii was experiencing high winds and was under a red flag warning when the wildfires broke out, which Hurricane Dora passing to the south may have contributed to.

After the catastrophic and deadly wildfires, Hawaiian Electric's stock severely plummeted approximately 40%, its lowest since 2010, after it was facing a class action lawsuit that alleged that Maui’s devastating wildfires were caused by the utility’s energized power lines that were knocked down by strong winds, and that it chose not to shut off its power lines ahead of the Maui wildfires, despite knowing the safety risks of sparking a fire in those kind of conditions. It also stated that Hawaiian Electric still refused to shut down power lines despite it knowing that some of its power lines were knocked out by the heavy, high speed winds. On August 23, it was reported that Hawaiian Electric had no procedure in place for turning off the grid — a common practice in other fire-prone states.

Through a cooperative effort with HECO, High Technology Development Corporation (HTDC), an agency of the State of Hawai’i, initiated the Hawai’i Electric Vehicle Demonstration Project (HEVDP) consortium to develop an electric vehicle industry in Hawai’i. The islands had about 5,000 rechargeable vehicles as of 2017.