Privacy Policy Superseded November 2018

Customer Information Privacy Policy

Hawaiian Electric is sensitive to your concerns about the confidentiality and privacy of your personal information. This privacy policy applies to all customer information (i.e., data about you and your energy usage), whether provided by you to our call center or to any of our offices, recorded by our meters, or collected by our websites.

Our Privacy Principles

  • We will not sell, rent, or license your personal information.
  • We treat customer information as confidential, consistent with legal and regulatory requirements.
  • We will only share your information with your consent, or as provided for in this policy.
  • We require any person or organization we share data with to protect customer information.
  • We do not allow any person or organization acting on our behalf to use our customer information for their own marketing purposes.
  • We do not track online behavior at an individual's level. We only track aggregated statistics to improve our products and services.
  • We only use customer data for customer service, billing, planning and grid management. We limit our data gathering to the usage data recorded by the meter, unless you have given us permission to measure in more detail, such as signing up for one of our special programs.

Below is a list of Frequently Asked Questions describing how we use and protect the information we collect about our customers.

What information do we collect?

We collect customer information based on our business relationship with you and your use of our services. Some examples include:

  • Information that allows us to establish your account and to communicate with you, including your name, address, telephone number, and email address.
  • Billing information related to your financial relationship with us, including your payment data, credit history, and Social Security Number.
  • Electricity usage data recorded by our meters.
  • Information gathered when you choose to participate in utility programs, such as those related to energy efficiency.

How is the information collected?

We collect customer information in a variety of ways, including:

  • When you contact us to set up or manage your home or business electric account.
  • When you choose to participate in a utility program, such as those related to energy efficiency, load management, on-bill financing, or school programs.
  • When you use electricity, usage data is recorded by our meters.
  • When we interact with third parties, such as credit agencies. For instance, we may disclose customer information for the purposes of collecting account balances or otherwise investigating, prosecuting or defending claims relating to a subject customer's account.

Why is the information collected?

We use customer information and electrical usage data to establish and maintain your account and inform you about your energy usage, as well as to manage, provide, customize, and improve our services and business operations.

Do we share the information we collect?

Hawaiian Electric Company, Maui Electric Company and Hawaii Electric Light Company share customer information for business purposes only. This can include affiliates and subsidiaries for purposes of providing electrical and customer service. We also share customer information when third parties are used to provide customer care, technology, and other services. We require any affiliate, subsidiary, or third-party organization that we do business with to have data security measures in place to protect and secure this data.

Disclosure of customer information may be required by regulatory processes through the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and government agencies. It may also be required by legal processes, such as a search warrant, subpoena, or court order. We may need to disclose customer information in certain exceptional circumstances. This may be needed to protect against malicious and/or unauthorized access, to protect legal rights or to address actual or threatened illegal or harmful conduct.

Required Data Sharing With Hawaii Energy: Hawaii Energy is an independent organization separate from Hawaiian Electric Company, Maui Electric Company and Hawai’i Electric Light Company. Hawaii Energy is authorized by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to administer energy efficiency programs. These programs are designed to promote energy conservation and help customers manage their monthly electric bills. We are required by the PUC to share customer and electrical usage data with Hawaii Energy in support of their conservation initiatives. To learn more about their programs, including the Home Energy Report, please visit www.HawaiiEnergy.com.

Smart Grid and Smart Meters

We’re modernizing the electric system by developing a robust, 21st century smart grid to better serve our customers. Some of the key benefits of this technology include more accurate electricity usage data, faster outage detection and restoration, and customer access to energy use information. A modern smart grid also can enable the integration of more renewable energy, such as wind and solar, which will reduce Hawaii’s dependence on imported oil.

We protect your usage data, requiring it be encrypted “in transit” from the meter to us and secured while on our computer systems.

We analyze data up to and including the customer consumption data measured at the meter. We won’t analyze your meter data to find out what is occurring in your home without your consent. We offer voluntary Demand Response programs that allow customers who sign-up to receive a credit on their energy bill in return for installing equipment on one of more appliances and allowing for automatic reduction of energy consumption on the appliance. Demand Response programs are entirely voluntary and usage data analysis is limited to testing and running the programs.

One of the advantages of having a smart meter is that we can make your electrical usage data available to you. Like many other utilities, we’ve adopted a standard format for electrical usage data called Green Button to allow you to download your own data. To find out more, visit GreenButtonData.org. There are a number of third party services that you may contract with to analyze your usage data. It is your choice and your responsibility when you download and share your electrical usage data with third parties.

Please see our Privacy Principles at the top of this page for how we treat all our customer data, including electrical usage data.

How do we ensure the collected data is secure?

We apply administrative, physical, and technical precautions to safeguard customer information. In accordance with industry standards, we operate with restricted access to data and we have implemented commercially appropriate security controls to protect customer information when it is stored or transmitted. While no computer system is completely secure, we believe the measures implemented reduce the likelihood of security problems to a level appropriate to the type of data involved.

A word about Phishing and Fraud

We may send you emails about our services. Likewise, we may from time to time call the phone number associated with your account. However, we will never email you or call you to ask for your online logon credentials (your user ID and online password).

We will never ask for payment through reloadable pre-paid cards such as Green Dot MoneyPaks. Payments should only be made at the locations listed on the back of your bill or on our website (see “How to Pay Your Bill”).

Some scams use technology to imitate our telephone caller ID or links to our website. When in doubt, open a new browser and enter our website address yourself, or call us directly. Both our website and our phone number can be found on your bill.

A note about "cookies" and internet browsers

A cookie is a small amount of data that often includes an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent from a website to your internet browser and stored on your computer's hard drive. Each web site you may visit can send its own cookie to your browser, if your browser's preferences allow it. We use a cookie to recognize you as a return visitor to our site for statistical reporting.

We also collect standard information available from your browser, including the type of browser you use (for example, Internet Explorer), the operating system of your computer (for example, Windows), and how you got to our website (for example, from a search engine or a link). This information helps us ensure that our web site accommodates our users' computer configurations and information needs and to improve customer service. We also store the IP address assigned by your Internet Service Provider. We keep this for a limited period of time to analyze and troubleshoot network or access issues if they occur.

We do not store cookies or collect browser data containing your personal information.

A special note about children

This website contains energy-related information that may be of educational interest to children. We do not intend to gather personal information online from or about children. We encourage all children and young teenagers to seek consent from their parents before providing any information about themselves or their households to anyone on the Internet.

Changes to this policy

If we modify our Customer Information Privacy Policy, we will post the revised statement here with an updated revision date.

This policy supersedes all prior policies of the same or similar subject.

If you have a question:

We want to assure you that we are committed to protecting your privacy. If you have any questions or comments about this Policy, please call us at 808-548-7311, Monday through Friday, between 7:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., or email us at ecustomer@hawaiianelectric.com.

Revised March 2014