Hawaiian Electric may collapse after fires, forcing reckoning for utilities - The Washington Post

The multibillion-dollar liabilities faced by Hawaiian Electric for the deadly wildfire in Maui — compounded by Maui County’s lawsuit against the utility on Thursday — are reverberating through the electricity industry and is forcing a reckoning for power companies and their customers, nationwide. Hawaiian Electric, which serves nearly all of Hawaii’s 1.4 million residents, is careening toward insolvency, much like Pacific Gas & Electric did in California in 2019. Investors in the company are scrambling to sell their shares, and bond rating agencies are downgrading the Hawaii utility’s ratings because of its role in potentially causing or contributing to the most deadly U.S. wildfire in a century. It is a pattern playing out with frequency across the West, and likely to spread to other states as much of the electricity industry finds itself unable or unwilling to meet the growing challenge of adapting power systems to extreme weather. In Texas this week, the power grid is again on the b

The multibillion-dollar liabilities faced by Hawaiian Electric for the deadly wildfire in Maui — compounded by Maui County’s lawsuit against the utility on Thursday — are reverberating through the electricity industry and is forcing a reckoning for power companies and their customers, nationwide. Hawaiian Electric, which serves nearly all of Hawaii’s 1.4 million residents, is careening toward insolvency, much like Pacific Gas & Electric did in California in 2019. Investors in the company are scrambling to sell their shares, and bond rating agencies are downgrading the Hawaii utility’s ratings