Powering the future: Maui-based interns gain hands-on experience at power plant
by Rhonette Poepoe | Sept. 23, 2025
To help more Maui residents build successful careers and continue to call our Hawai‘i islands home, Hawaiian Electric is debuting new workforce developments like the Maui Power Pathways Program as a solution.
The Maui Power Pathway Program is Hawaiian Electric’s first-ever summer internship in collaboration with UH Maui College. This free, eight-week training was offered to Maui residents this summer to help build a pipeline of candidates for future career opportunities at generating stations on Maui and within the company.
Recently, I had the opportunity to meet the graduates who successfully completed the program. After learning about the graduates’ experiences, the result was a win-win. The program offered each graduate a monetary stipend, provided a tangible pathway in education, and offered hands-on work experience, all culminating to the opportunity to potentially secure a position as an Operator Helper, a vital role within Hawaiian Electric’s generation division. In addition, UHMC granted each graduate a free semester toward education at the college.
Dylan Delgado, a 2025 Maui High School graduate, found out about the program on UHMC’s Instagram account and said he was attracted to apply as a way to spend his summer doing something productive. “I didn’t understand how power generation worked so exploring the unknown made me interested in getting my hands on that stuff,” he said.
The program offered interns a chance to gain real-world experiences in various roles within the generation division at Hawaiian Electric on Maui including electrical systems, combustion turbine operations, instrumentation and control technology, diesel mechanics, and plant operations. When Dylan signed up for the Power Pathway program as an operator intern, he expected to shadow the plant operators. Instead, he found himself doing hands-on daily operator tasks. “They let me start up engines, do maintenance and other tasks as a regular employee would do,” Dylan shared.
“The part that I enjoyed the most was working with the CT (combustion turbine) mechanics,” Dylan said. “They were a really good group to work with and they are people I aspire to be, the work that they do is very important for the plant and how the turbines operate there.”
Dylan shared his insights with me on what he learned, and the experiences gained through the internship. While most tasks were enjoyable, he expressed that the internship was also challenging, especially as he went through the rigorous prep for the Plant Operator Selection System (POSS) test, which is a required exam potential employees need to pass to qualify for a position within the company’s power generation facilities.
Through this experience and having taken the POSS test, Dylan is now more confident and feels prepared to perform the Operator duties if given the chance. He commented, giving thanks to our company, UHMC and the staff at the Māʻalaea Plant, “they were informative, helpful and patient. I was able to thrive incredibly in such a short amount of time due to the educational environment provided.”
By having the access and exposure, working at the power plant on Maui, Dylan also discovered that there are other jobs needed to maintain and run the company’s generating facilities.
“Getting into this internship, I learned that there are so many other careers and possibilities open at Hawaiian Electric,” Dylan said.
Learning about what it takes to keep the power on and serving our communities brought a deep appreciation in him.
“It was truly an honor and a privilege to have been able to learn about the importance and general process of the power generation that keeps our island running and I am extremely grateful for having been given the opportunity to participate in this internship and I would be privileged to work and become a plant operator at Hawaiian Electric,” Dylan said. “I love my island home of Maui, and I’m excited at the thought of being able to pursue a career that keeps me here and allows me to serve my community.”
I loved hearing Dylan’s experience as it is a powerful testimony to the true success of strategic, community-centered workforce development being built right here on Maui. Through the groundbreaking collaboration between Hawaiian Electric and UH Maui College, lives were transformed, and a sustainable future is being built for our Maui residents. This exemplifies what true success looks like when education and opportunity come together, creating lasting impacts.
Read more about this new program in the related news release here.
Listen to the full interview with Dylan Delgado on YouTube.
Rhonette Poepoe is a public affairs specialist in Maui County at Hawaiian Electric.
