A reader sent these thoughts on our electrical power situation which seemed worth sharing.
Civil Beat recently reported that the inter-island cable seems to be doomed.
The local utility has declared that every island can be energy independent.
This is because the pace of local clean energy development has been twice as rapid as expected.
“HECO now estimates that it will meet the 40 percent renewable energy benchmark somewhere between 2018 and 2022, about a decade ahead of schedule, without cables. Currently, 14 percent of the islands’ electricity comes from renewables. That could approach 80 percent by about 2030, according to the report.”
That’s phenomenal.
First, it shows how rapidly the technology has been changing. Second, it shows how rapidly the utility has been changing. The previous head of HECO, Dudley Pratt, constantly admonished the utility to adopt new technology, a call that seemed to fall on deaf ears. The irony is that this change was forced on HECO by a conservative Republican governor. That’s how conservative HECO has always been.
But let’s parse the opposition to the so-called Big Wind. There is the popular cry from the outer islands that it would be an imposition from the metropole, and destroy a special way of life. The counter-argument is that Oahu has always had to carry the outer islands financially. Also, the way of life on the outer islands seems to revolve around guns, trucks, beer and football. Not so special.
But there is a different argument that the Big Wind is insidious because it buttresses the control of a corrupt corporate monopoly. Kauai is independent from HECO, with it’s own energy cooperative, and Kauai is much more advanced in terms of renewables than the other islands. Also, HECO owns all sorts of businesses like a major bank and insurance company that makes them huge political players. The whole point of utility companies is that in exchange for constant, guaranteed profits, they will come under the control of political system and values of the electorate. Just the opposite is true of HECO. It’s not just a question of energy independence or security or of addressing global warming. It’s an issue in democracy.
This therefore raises the question if HECO might be dismantled, with each island getting its own energy cooperative like Kauai. And energy cooperatives have no business in banking or insurance.
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Perhaps Larry Ellison will get the ball rolling by taking over electric utilities on Lana’i.
Before patting HECo on the back over their progress toward renewable energy usage I would ask the following question. How much of that progress is due to the utility’s efforts and how much is actually due to individual homeowners and businesses installing their own solar arrays?
8 rambling paragraphs followed by the pre-determined outcome.
As it happens, I can answer the question of how much rooftop solar contributes to renewable energy across the three Hawaiian Electric Companies. For 2012 we reported that 13.9 percent of utility sales came from renewable sources, up from 12 percent for 2011.
Here is the megawatt hours contributed by renewable technologies. You can do the math on percentages:
PV from independent power producers 9,643
Biofuels (chiefly at Campbell Industrial Park) 22,607
Hydro (mostly BI) 65,066
Customer –sited, grid-connected 182,638
Geothermal (BI) 266, 234
Biomass (waste-to-energy and bagasse) 341,790
Wind 388,256
While rooftop solar is the fastest growing segment, its contribution to total renewable output is significant but far from the largest part of the picture. Also, as the sun shines only during the day and is at its maximum for only a few hours per day, solar has a very low “capacity factor,” that is the ratio of actual output to the theoretical output of a generator’s nameplate capacity running 24/7 throughout the year.
PV, wind and hydro are a variable renewable technology, which means that the utility cannot depend on them entirely to meet customers daily demand. Variable technologies must be backed up by quickly available firm technologies, either renewable or conventional. Biomass, biofuels and geothermal are firm renewable technologies. Hawaiian Electric, with our high penetration of variable renewables, is a national leader in working to find ways to integrate more of it onto our grids, with experiments underway on batteries, wind and solar forecasting and other developments.
A small note on your readers comment: “HECO owns all sorts of businesses like a major bank and insurance company that makes them huge political players.”
HEI is a stock holding company that owns Hawaiian Electric Company and its two subsidiaries, Maui Electric and Hawaii Electric Light Company and American Savings Bank. There are no other significant holdings; no insurance company. (Young Brothers and other attempts at diversification were divested long ago.)
Dudley Pratt, who became president of Hawaiian Electric in 1981, was indeed a visionary. Under his leadership, Hawaiian Electric was on the vanguard of wind power development with the creation of the wind farm at Kahuku, at that time one of the earliest and largest such facilities in the nation. The drive to create renewable energy then, as now, was in large part the cost of oil. Once OPEC dropped the price of oil to around $20 a barrel, most renewable technologies ceased to be financially viable for normal utility use. Also, wind generation was new then and the turbines and wooden blades could not hold up against sea air and fierce but unsteady Kahuku winds. The contribution of that experience to wind technology was significant. Today wind turbines are routines found in the offshore ocean around the world. (It is tougher to do off-shore wind here because we have a steep undersea drop and no shelf.) In short, I do not think it quite correct to say that Dudley’s drive for renewable fell on “deaf ears.”
Lumping hydro with PV and wind as non-firm power sources is somewhat misleading. It depends on the hydro configuration; if part of a dam, it is pretty firm, and could, in theory, be used to store energy from non-firm sources.
Aloha Ian
Thanks for your great coverage of energy and politics.
The inter-island cable was an asinine idea, anyway.
“Currently, 14 percent of the islands’ electricity comes from renewables. That could approach 80 percent by about 2030, according to the report.”
On what page can I find the “80 percent” figure in the HECO IRP Action Plan report (tried searching for it but couldn’t find it)?
Your reader’s first comment is incorrect. The utilities did not say the islands can be independent for energy. Energy — stored in oil that has been imported to and refined on Oahu — has flowed in one direction (to the NIs) for decades. The problem is that some on the NIs object to the idea of energy — in the form of renewably generated electricity — flowing in the opposite direction. Until the NIs decide to build crude oil unloading and refining plants on each island they will not be independent from Oahu, much less the rest of the world. What the utilities said was that under some scenarios it may be possible to reach the legally required 40% renewable sales by 2030 without importing renewable energy from another island. A far cry from energy independence.
Are you comparing 1) foreign oil that gets refined on Oahu and shipped to NIs to 2) electricity that would be generated on outer islands and transmitted via an undersea cable?
First, it would seem that the oil refinement process on Oahu and oil transport to the NIs does not really inconvenience anyone on Oahu. It’s not an imposition that would entitle Oahu to demand equitable treatment or some sort of compensation.
Second, this process of oil refinement and shipping can continue without the existence of Hawaiian Electric.
Hawaiian Electric just might need an inter-island grid in order to justify its existence. Hence the Big Wind. It turns out that such an inter-island grid does not seem to be needed and won’t be built. So there is no need for Hawaiian Electric.
“Also, the way of life on the outer islands seems to revolve around guns, trucks, beer and football. Not so special.”
Well this guy has it all figured out doesn’t he (or she.)