Ashley McGuire

Ashley McGuire

Ashley McGuire grew up in the Puna district of Hawai‘i Island. “It was a good life, but it was a tough neighborhood,” he said.

Ashley is an electrician-instrumentation technician at Honua Ola. When he’s not enjoying time with his family,  he’s making sure that “everything that has wires” is running smoothly at Honua Ola.

That’s a lot of responsibility. His job is to keep the plant operating at 100 percent, sending power to HELCO substations that will distribute electricity to communities islandwide.

“Honua Ola will stabilize the cost of power,” Ashley said. “Instead of burning fossil fuel imported from a foreign country that can jump a lot in price, we’re using wood chips from Hawaii Island’s managed eucalyptus forests.”

He likes knowing that the forest will be replanted as a sustainable resource. “For every tree we cut, we’ll plant more,” he said. “The jobs we have today will be here for our kids tomorrow.”