The Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative is planning to spend up to $52 million to reduce wildfire hazards between now and 2027.
That estimate is part of KIUC’s official wildfire mitigation plan, which is under review by the Public Utilities Commission.
The utility has yet to share if and how customers' bills may increase to pay for the costs of the utility’s plan, but KIUC Chief of Operations Brad Rockwell told the commission at a recent public meeting that the utility was keeping possible impacts to ratepayers in mind.
“As a not-for-profit member-owned cooperative, we're always… trying to strike the right balance between how much are we going to spend versus what kind of benefit we're getting,” he said.
Although the commission has yet to formally approve the KIUC’s plan, the utility has already begun to implement certain elements of it.
Rockwell shared that the utility has doubled its yearly budget for vegetation management, and crews are clearing a larger area around power lines and other utility infrastructure.
KIUC has set up several weather stations around Kauaʻi to get more real-time data on potentially hazardous conditions.
It’s also in the process of inspecting thousands of utility poles and replacing ones that show signs of damage or rot.
“A good thing about all these efforts and this money that we're spending to help improve and mitigate our potential of causing wildfire is that there's huge reliability benefits as well,” Rockwell said.
