C. Dudley Pratt, Jr., Hawaiian Electric Leader (1981-90), Renewable Energy Innovator, Leaves a Full Legacy

The news that former Hawaiian Electric President C. Dudley Pratt Jr. passed away Wednesday at his Kailua home brings back a flood of memories gathered over nearly a decade in the 1980s while working for him. Hawaii’s renewable energy industry is in debt to the man. Here are some of those memories.

The Holding Company

Mr. Pratt wrote his MBA thesis at the University of Hawaii on utility company diversification and wasted not a moment pursuing that vision at HECO once he was named president in January 1981. He followed Carl Williams, whose legacy was colored by an op-ed piece Williams wrote in the 1970s pooh-poohing green energy’s potential in the islands. The piece gave the impression that HECO was reluctant to get aboard the fledgling renewable energy movement in the same decade that saw the OPEC oil embargo, which led to Hawaii’s restrictive gas-purchasing rules (odd or even license plate numbers), gas lines and high utility bills.

Dudley Pratt’s arrival in the corner office marked an abrupt departure from HECO’s super-conservative past. Utility diversification had started on the mainland, and he foresaw the potential for oil price hikes and an era when HECO’s electric sales couldn’t keep up with the demand to continuously add value to shareholders.

Mr. Pratt’s public announcement of his intention to create the Hawaiian Electric Industries holding company came about one month after I joined the company as a direct report to him after serving as an aide to Congressman Cec Heftel. He wanted the company’s communications effort to keep pace with his ambitious plans and therefore had our office under his direct supervision, a circumstance that later was shown to have its drawbacks (discussed below).

A key moment in HEI’s creation (details of which I believe are publicized here for the first time) involved overcoming the reluctance of Transamerica Corporation to approve the diversification plan. The company owned enough preferred shares to block creation of the HEI holding company and signaled its intention to do so.

While Mr. Pratt and his team assessed the looming impasse, we learned from Harvey Meyerson, also a former Heftel aide who had moved on to work for U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii, that Mr. Matsunaga had been invited to speak to Transamerica executives in San Francisco. Mr. Pratt authorized Harvey to tell the Senator about the Transamerica problem. Whatever Mr. Matsunaga said or did in San Francisco did the trick, and Transamerica fell in line, removing the last barrier to HEI’s creation.

Mr. Renewable Energy

One of the subsidiaries Mr. Pratt created early in his tenure as HEI’s chief executive was Hawaiian Electric Renewable Systems (HERS) to facilitate construction of a wind farm in the hills above Kahuku and the Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu’s North Shore. A Department of Energy demonstration wind turbine had proven the viability of the wind regime there; one of the turbine’s blades still stands next to HECO’s Ward Avenue facility where Mr. Pratt had it installed. He launched HERS on a path to capture energy in the northeast trade winds by presiding over a rain-soaked and muddy groundbreaking and blessing of the land in February 1985.

A little more than a year later on a bright, blue-sky day, 15 600-KW Westinghouse turbines went into service, becoming Oahu’s first serious effort in wind energy technology. (The memento at left fixes the date as March 27, 1986.) Although the early-generation turbines were no match for the region’s corrosive sea-spray environment, the enterprise helped capture the public’s attention to the importance of what became a mantra around the company – “Get Off Oil!” (A new generation of turbines will soon be put to the test in the Kahuku hills.)

As those early Westinghouse turbines began to degrade, more than one suffered a catastrophic blade loss as centrifugal force threw blades into the ground while injuring no one or damaging the towers. Our black-humor joke in Corporate Communications was that the blades’ throw radius encompassed Lihue on the island of Kauai. These incidents never were reported in the media, even though we distributed short press releases each time they occurred. If we hadn’t been transparent and word leaked out, it’s likely the accidents would have been splashed across page one. Mr. Pratt’s insistence on openness and transparency once again proved to be the right approach, as was the case after Hurricane Iwa struck the islands in 1982, as discussed below.

Continuing to think big, Mr. Pratt had HERS acquire the world’s largest wind turbine, the Boeing MOD-5B, and had it installed in the Kahuku region. Tip to tip, the blades measured longer than a football field – 320 feet. Attendees at its dedication in 1987 included Senator Matsunaga, and an aerial photo of the experimental machine standing tall against the lush green backdrop of the Kahuku hills made it into USA Today.

Mr. Pratt’s vision for Hawaii energy independence extended beyond Oahu to the islands of Maui and Hawaii, where HECO subsidiaries Maui Electric and Hawaii Electric Light Company sold electricity at an even higher kilowatthour cost than on Oahu. MECO hosted a 340-KW demonstration Windane turbine near its Maalaea power plant for most of the 1980s. Maui has become one of the wind energy success stories in the islands.

Across Alenuihaha Channel on the Big Island, a small geothermal plant had been established in the Puna district. Mr. Pratt envisioned a grid linking Hawaii Island’s considerable geothermal resources – believed to be as much as 500 megawatts – with the other islands, including Oahu and its much higher power demand.

A deep-water direct-current cable would be the link, and Dillingham Construction Company, which was formed in Hawaii when the islands were still a kingdom, tested the feasibility of such a cable by accurately laying a small test line across the 6100-foot deep channel between the islands. The concept was abandoned in the 1990s due to widespread community opposition to large-scale geothermal development in the native forest. However, Mr. Pratt’s dream of creating a multi-island electric grid lives on.

Hurricanes and Other Moments

The 1980s were HECO’s “Challenge Years” due to a series of island-wide or near-island-wide power outages that hit Oahu much too often. Mr. Pratt oversaw a large-scale reliability improvement effort that circumstances beyond HECO’s control made necessary. Hurricane Iwa struck the islands on November 23, 1982, and although its greatest impact was felt on Kauai, Oahu’s winds exceeded 100 mph that night. (Photo shows distribution lines on the Waianae Coast the next day.)

The Corporate Communications staff rode out the storm in HECO’s Richards Street headquarters, about three blocks from the Honolulu Harbor power plant. So confident were we that we wouldn’t lose our lights that we had failed to bring flashlights or candles into the office. Someone found a pack of matches, which we used to cut the gloom as we called Load Dispatch at Ward Avenue over still-working telephone lines.

We reached Mr. Pratt in generator-lit Load Dispatch, where he was assessing damage to the system. About 95 percent of HECO’s customers were without power; only neighborhoods adjacent to the Waiau plant at Pearl Harbor were still being served. Our conversation lasted about 30 seconds. “The storm kicked the s--- out of the transmission system,” he said. “We’ve lost eight of our 138,000-KV lines.” He told corporate communications to “tell the public like it is,” the kind of guidance communicators want to hear.

We began our fruitless attempts to call the only radio station still on the air, KGU-AM, thanks to its emergency generator that came with its designation as an emergency broadcaster. The only number we had for the station was in the phone book, and that’s what listeners were using to call in with their personal storm stories. Failing to get through, we drove to KGU's studios on the top floor of the newspaper building and talked our way onto the air.

The wisdom in Mr. Pratt’s direction to “tell it like it is” was confirmed in the weeks and months to come. The public said repeatedly that HECO’s reports on damage to the electric grid and the repair efforts already underway by line crews working under harrowing circumstances were the first they heard as they sat in complete darkness. The only other broadcast on the dial was from a station with a religious format and a tower on Molokai that escaped damage. (The station's content at the height of the storm was a Bible-thumping sermon that many residents later said had freaked them out.)

Mr. Pratt directed a complete top-to-bottom emergency procedures review after the hurricane that made the company better prepared for future major outages. Corporate Communications’ new emergency SOP included a list of non-published phone numbers into every radio station’s control room, and departments throughout the company rewrote their SOPs based on lessons learned from Hurricane Iwa. Work began on a new 138-KV transmission line on flat land away from the mountains to improve system reliability. Other major outages – “Black Wednesday” in July 1983 and another island-wide blackout in August 1984 – spurred ongoing system reliability improvements on Mr. Pratt’s watch.

The Personal Side

We’re convinced that nearly everyone who knew Dudley Pratt would describe him as a gentleman – a bow tie-wearing one at that. (It was with reluctance that he abandoned his bow tie and adopted more conventional neckwear for his annual report photographs.) He was soft-spoken in public and virtually all his company meetings and presentations, but in his office he would often cut loose – growling and grousing about what was pushing his buttons at the time. His leadership was so respected within the company that when he would pass on one of Corporate Communications’ bright ideas at his senior staff meetings, he deliberately would refrain from speaking up for it, lest it appear to be a command decision. Consequently, the communications office had no champion for its proposals at senior staff. That problem was corrected after about 18 months, when Corporate Communications was slipped into the org chart of a staff vice president and later became an officer-level department in its own right.

Oil or no oil? Contrary to predictions heard everywhere at the time, Mr. Pratt was adamant that the world would never run out of oil. He believed improved technology would find resources that were still unknown or unreachable in the 1980s, and the past three decades have proven him right. BP’s oil disaster undoubtedly strengthened his resolve that getting off oil is the right path not only for Hawaii but the nation and world.

Getting away from it all Mr. Pratt’s version of the perfect vacation was to pilot Waipouli, the sampan he built in his back yard in Kailua, out to one of the small island outcrops in the Hawaiian archipelago northwest of Kauai. He’d stay out there fishing for a week or two with his pals, as at-home on the open ocean as he was in corporate boardrooms all over town (newspaper reports say he was a board director for 32 organizations).

Designing the future Thanks to the diversification effort that included the acquisition of Hawaiian Tug & Barge, American Savings Bank and other companies, the need for a new corporate logo to visually tie all the companies together became apparent. Clarence Lee, the award-winning and nationally known designer, had been working with HECO for years (and still is). Clarence was tasked with coming up with a new look that could be applied to all the HEI companies.

When the day finally arrived for Clarence to present his proposals, the two us went to Mr. Pratt’s office and took chairs in front of his desk, which, as usual, was clear of papers and clutter. Only two colored pencils were set off to the side, which struck me as curious. One pencil was yellow, the other green. Clarence began his detailed presentation, which continued for quite some time, and then sat back for a reaction. After a few moments, Mr. Pratt reached for the top desk drawer and quietly said, “I kinda like this” as he pulled out a piece of paper on which he had precisely drawn large H-E-I green letters in block form, surrounded by a green rectangle against a yellow background. The letters looked like the big block Y often associated with Mr. Pratt’s alma mater, Yale University.

What Mr. Pratt lay upon the desk a generation ago is what is now in all HEI documents – and so is his idea for a logo to tie all the electric utilities together, a circle behind a graphic representation of all the state’s islands that's painted on thousands of utility trucks, signs, transformers and pieces of equipment. (Clarence Lee has written to note that green soon was replaced by Punahou blue.)

That was Dudley Pratt – a hands-on leader who implemented excellent ideas and a vision to benefit not only the companies he headed but all the people of Hawaii. He was in fact a keiki o ka aina – a child of the land, descendent of 19th century missionaries, who saw an honorable mission in electrifying the islands he loved and carving new paths to energy independence.

Services for C. Dudley Pratt, Jr. will be held at 5 pm on June 7th at Honolulu’s Central Union Church – a fitting location for Mr. Pratt's memorial, having been founded 167 years ago as Seamen’s Bethel in the Port of Honolulu.

Castle & Cooke Plans Nation’s 2nd Largest Solar Farm

Castle & Cooke's 1.2-MW solar far on Lanai.

With all due respect to Florida, Hawaii is the Sunshine State. Consider what we learned just today – that Tampa, FL experiences 30,000 to 50,000 lightning strikes each year. They’re not bolts out of the blue; they’re bolts out of CLOUDS! Our back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests Florida is much cloudier than Hawaii, so there you have it.

In light of the Sunshiny Aloha State’s abundant solar energy cascade, a reasonable reaction to today’s news about a 20-megawatt photovoltaic solar farm destined for central Oahu might be, “It’s about time!” With pineapple no longer the cash crop it once was, Castle & Cooke (owned by Dole Food Company) is going to convert 120 acres of a pineapple plantation to a solar energy crop.

At 20 MW, the plant (which requires Public Utilities Commission approval) will be about 17 times larger than Castle & Cooke’s solar farm on the island of Lanai, now the state’s largest such facility.

The farm could be up and running as early as next year and would support the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative by taking another bite out of Hawaii’s massive dependence on imported oil for the generation of electricity. Every 20-MW bite counts.

NY Times Updates OTEC Project in French Polynesia

Today’s edition of the New York Times has a story out of Singapore that revisits efforts to deploy an ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plant in Tahiti. Hawaii Energy Options first reported on those plans in October 2008, but the story wasn’t exactly “new” at that point. Partners Xenesys (Japan) and Pacific Petroleum (Tahiti) were mentioned several months earlier in a press release on their joint venture.

There’s not much new or encouraging in the story about significant OTEC progress in French Polynesia, although it does note that the French and French Polynesian governments are picking up 68 percent of the costs of a feasibility study.

Lockheed Martin’s OTEC efforts rate a mention at the end of the story. Oft-quoted Ted Johnson seems to be sticking to his assessment that an OTEC pilot plant could be operating in Hawaiian waters within four years. His current target is 2014, a year later than his assertion when he addressed the Asia-Pacific Clean Energy Summit & Expo in Honolulu last September.

And so goes OTEC – forever slipping dates and pushing the first pilot plant onward into the future. We’ve been down this sluice run before, and it’s about time for OTEC to make a big splash in the here and now!

Once Called the ‘Wind Energy Capital of the World,’ Kahuku’s Still in the Game

It’s seems fitting that the community of Kahuku on Oahu’s North Shore will soon see the construction of its first new windfarm in a generation.

Wind Power, a subsidiary of First Wind, has received Public Utilities Commission approval for its power purchase agreement with Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO). Twenty-five years ago or so, HECO’s monthly “Consumer Lines” newsletter mailed with electric bills lauded Kahuku for its potential to be a wind energy leader because of its exposure to northeast trade winds.

HECO had collaborated with the U.S. Department of Energy in the construction and successful operation of the MOD-OA turbine in the hills near Kahuku a few years earlier. “Makani Huila” (Hawaiian for Wind Wheel) performed so well that HECO chief executive C. Dudley Pratt, Jr. directed the installation of one of the turbine’s blades at the company’s Ward Avenue building in Honolulu, where it still stands.

Hawaiian Electric Renewable Systems, along with HECO a subsidiary of Hawaiian Electric Industries, built a windfarm in 1985-6 with 15 600-KW Westinghouse turbines. The project overlooked the Turtle Bay resort but nevertheless had the backing of local residents and even the resort’s management, which distributed windfarm brochures to guests. New World Power Corporation, then operated by the Kuhns brothers, purchased the declining operation in 1993, but those early-generation turbines were no match for the elements, and nearly all traces of that project have been removed.

World’s Biggest Turbine

In 1987, Kahuku became the proud home of the world’s largest wind turbine – the 3,200 KW Boeing MOD-5B, the last of the federally sponsored turbines. The blades were longer than a football field, tip to tip, and the whoosh they created was truly impressive to visitors, including the late U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga, who attended the MOD-5B’s dedication. Production was lower than projected, however, and that project also was scrapped.

Kahuku Wind Power will build a dozen 2,500 KW turbines at its site and will benefit from the lessons learned from all previous projects in the Kahuku hills, as well as First Wind’s Kaheawa project above Maalaea, Maui. By all accounts, Kaheawa is a booming success, and we discussed its record with First Wind’s Noelani Kalipi on Hawaii Public Radio’s “Energy Futures” show back in September when we still had time to be the show's volunteer producer and host.

We wish Kahuku Wind Power in finally realizing the community’s potential to be one of the wind energy capitals of the world.

Hawaii Is Priciest Place To Own a Car, and Soaring Oil Tax Doesn’t Help

The price of rent, groceries, gasoline, electricity.... Hawaii is either at the top or real close in each of those categories, and now we learn it costs more to own a vehicle here than any other state. The hits just keep coming, don’t they?

According to Edmunds.com, the average vehicle ownership expense over five years is driven higher in the Aloha State thanks to Hawaii’s taxes, fees, insurance, fuel and maintenance.

And just wait ‘til Edmunds factors in Hawaii’s new $1/barrel oil tax increase that kicks in this July! That’s up from 5 cents per barrel. The increase will add about 2.5 cents to the price of a gallon of gas – not to mention the cost of just about all other goods imported into the state.

Ah, but it’s for a good cause, backers said, since increasing the cost of fossil fuels may just spur on the development of alternative energy sources. If that’s what it does, we’re fine with it, but a big chunk of the $22 million that’s expected to be raised annually will simply go into the state’s General Fund to help balance the budget. Let’s just say many of us will be watching closely to see exactly what good comes from this across-the-board increase in the cost of living here.

Nissan Leaf Heading to Hawaii

As the nation’s only island state with relatively short commuting distances, Hawaii would seem to be an ideal location for electric vehicles. Nissan North America Inc. apparently thinks so, too.

Hawaii will be an initial launch market early next year of the Nissan Leaf, an all-electric car that will be introduced on the mainland starting in December. According to CNET, federal tax credits of $7,500 would bring the Leaf’s prince down to just over $25,000.

With the high price of gasoline here helped along even higher by the $1/barrel boost in the oil tax, Hawaii consumers may be even more eager to try the Leaf than Nissan expects. A real quick survey found two people at the 10th Annual Hawaii Build and Buy Green Conference and Expo today who said they're on the waiting list for Leaf.

We won’t name names, but you can take a guess in the comments section below. Just think about which highly visible officials would want to be on the cutting edge of clean and green personal transportation in the state.

A New Hawaiian Island? Could Be, If OASIIS System Comes Our Way

"Megawatt Island" would capture solar energy, store it below.

Earth Day is as good a day to announce new approaches to generating electricity and reducing fossil fuel dependence as any other – maybe even better. GreenFix Energy chose today to distribute a press release on OASIIS, which stands for Oceanic Atmospheric Solar Insulated Incapsulation System.

You have to admit, OASIIS does seem to involve outside-the-box thinking. The basic technology is ocean thermal energy conversion or OTEC, about which we’ve been writing for more than two years. But OASIIS is a new twist on an old idea – incapsulation (sic) of ocean water in a chamber beneath a floating platform that’s 1 to 3 square kilometers in size! The water with its captured solar energy remains in the capsule rather than being dissipated by ocean currents. A video explains the process and the potential for villages, marinas and shopping on these power islands.

There’s nothing in the release to suggest anything more than an intriguing idea at this point – no patent, no financing, no firm plans. In this respect, GreenFix seems to be in the same boat as Deepwater Structures, Inc., which similarly publicized its untested but provocative technology idea a couple months ago.

We’ll be watching both companies to see where they go with their approaches to OTEC. As a cheerleader for the technology, we’re standing behind them – and other peoples’ money – 100 percent and wish them well.

Piece by Piece, Lockheed’s OTEC Plant for Hawaii Taking Shape

We choose to remain optimistic about ocean thermal energy conversion as “The Big Breakthrough Technology’ here at Hawaii Energy Options, no matter what the skeptics say. Doing so lets our mind’s eye see the first OTEC plant coming together, and the latest piece is from Owens Corning.

The company is showing off its modern composite technology that it says will be used to construct the large cold-water pipe for Lockheed Martin’s planned pilot OTEC plant, presumably intended for positioning off Oahu’s leeward coast.

The Owens product is called XStrand, a high-strength glass fiber that everyone involved will be able to withstand the subsurface conditions and pressures on the pipe, which is perhaps the biggest technology challenge in the OTEC system. Lockheed’s OTEC program manager Dennis Cooper shares our optimism.

“OTEC could enable Hawaii achieve energy independence within a generation,” says Cooper. “Our independent research and development work to date has shown OTEC to be technically feasible. The next step is to demonstrate it on a commercial scale.”

Such a demonstration would seem to leap-frog the pilot plant phase, but if that’s what Mr. Cooper wants, we say go for it – just as we’ve been saying since this blog’s initial post two years ago.

Don’t Bother Preaching to Depts. of Navy, Ag; They’re In the Choir

What came out of the two days of biofuel discussions at Marine Corps Base Hawaii this week was either mana from heaven or too good to be true, depending on your outlook. In short, the U.S. Navy Department and U.S. Department of Agriculture are partners in an effort to encourage creation of a biofuels industry in Hawaii that could be a win for everyone involved – Hawaii agriculture interests and the Navy included.

The big “need” mentioned repeatedly in the two-day forum is a substitute for jet fuel. To say the military burns a lot of it woefully understates the issue. According to Joelle Simonpietri of Pacific Command, 70 percent of the Department of Defense’s energy use in the Pacific is jet fuel, nearly all of which is derived from petroleum that comes from foreign sources.

Jackalyne Pfgannenstiel, assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, said national security depends on energy security, so finding biofuel alternatives to jet fuel is a major priority.

The Navy’s goals in its new approach to energy security are five-fold: reform the acquisition process; reduce petroleum use; “Sail the Great Green Fleet,” which translates to greening up the fleet’s fuel supply; increase renewable energy use ashore (to 50 percent by 2020), and increase renewable energy use Navy-wide.

Much was made in the media coverage of the potential for HC&S of Maui to become a major biofuel player, inasmuch it already has a century of expertise in growing cane.

Even as the biofuel forum was underway on Tuesday, solar technology was highlighted at a bidders gathering on a massive photovoltaic RFP at the Marine base. The week was an eventful one for renewable energy advocates in Hawaii and offered more than a little encouragement for good progress in the decade ahead.

Biofuel Conference at MCBH Kicks Off Major DoD Interest in Hawaii

Thanks be to those of you who’ve continued to visit this site for the past couple weeks while our attention was fully, completely and unequivocally diverted elsewhere. We even let the 2nd anniversary of our first post on this website pass without mention, which is probably a good indicator of how hectic life has been recently.

But we’re back, and there’s quite a bit to be enthused about, starting with front-page news this morning about the industry forum to be held at Marine Corps Base Hawaii next week sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Navy. The nation’s most dependent state on imported energy will “play key role in biofuel use,” according to the print edition's headline. (The Air Force photo shows an A-10C Thunderbolt II on a recent test flight using a 50/50 blend of biofuel.)

Registration was to have been completed more than a week ago, but we’ve taken a shot at attending and hope to be among the observers and participants next week.

Hawaiian Electric’s RFP

We suspect it’s no coincidence that Hawaiian Electric Company has just issued a request for proposals to provide locally grown biofuels for a new plant built at Campbell Industrial Park on Oahu, as well as its other generation plants that could be modified to burn biofuels.

We sat in on a meeting with a senior HECO official recently and heard about the potential for biofuel to be mixed with oil in firing the company’s Kahe power plant on the leeward coast. Tests will be conducted to determine whether and how much power output might be degraded with a biofuel mixture burned in a converted generation unit.

The Kahe plant is Oahu’s largest electricity generation site and therefore, we’ve always thought, the largest hurdle to overcome in making significant cuts in the amount of oil imported for that use. Converting the plant to burn a large percentage of biofuel would be a major advancement in getting off oil.

There’s sure to be a fair amount of buzz at next week’s forum about this prospect.

More OTEC News: US DOE Favors Lockheed Martin with 2 Grants

It’s not the amount that’s important; it’s the intent.

One million dollars is pin money to the Department of Energy, but Lockheed Martin and other ocean thermal energy conversion advocates have reason to be happy at the latest grant money headed toward Lockheed.

Whether it merits the big headline above Lockheed's PR release is another question. If the day ever comes when the government doles out really serious money for OTEC, we’ll all need bigger computer screens to handle the news.

And here's a gratuitous mention of Hawaii in this blog post to be sure the state shows up along with OTEC as often as possible in OTEC-related web searches. Hawaii is the obvious front-runner candidate for the first pilot plant and eventual commercialization.

Hawaii. Hawaii. Hawaii. We can't put say it often enough.

NDIA Publishes Detailed and Encouraging Article on OTEC Status

Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) isn’t advancing fast enough to satisfy advocates of this potential baseload generation technology. So when a 1400-word article appears in a National Defense Industrial Association publication that reads like a cheering section, it’s time for some fist bumping.

The piece is a soup-to-nuts review of the OTEC technology, including its history in Hawaiian waters and OTEC’S chicken-and-egg problem:

"Because of the high costs associated with water pumping technology, the OTEC concept will not be able to attract investors unless a demonstration plant is built, experts say.

“'The solution is to get a megawatt-class plant in the water up and running so that the industry can see, one, it’s feasible. Two, it works, and three, we understand the costs,'" says Robert Varley, program manager of the Navy’s $8.1 million contract with Lockheed Martin Corp. to develop a 10-megawatt pilot plant.

Lockheed’s Ted Johnson was in Honolulu recently conferring with State officials, including State Energy Administrator Ted Johnson, and told Hawaii Energy Options the company remains committed to building the pilot plant here.

With more than 9 months remaining in the year, there’s plenty of time left for 2010 to be the year OTEC moves from having great potential to being (water) shovel ready. Articles like this one keep the cheering section energized.

9 am Update: Not to be outdone, Renewable Energy World.com has a 1250-word piece today headlined Ocean/Tidal/Stream Power: The Road to Commercialization. The cheering is getting pretty loud!

NOAA Schedules OTEC Environmental Workshop in Hawaii this June

We don’t think it’s been widely publicized yet (let us know if we’re wrong), but two sources confirm that NOAA has scheduled an ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) workshop on environmental issues to be held in the last half of June 2010 at an undisclosed location in Hawaii. No other information is known at this time.

It’s encouraging to see continuing OTEC activity within NOAA. A “technical readiness” workshop was held in November at the New England Conference Center at the University of New Hampshire, and a NOAA delegation visited Hawaii two weeks later.

With yesterday's news that Deepwater Structures Inc. is soliciting investment in its plans to build an OTEC pilot plant using allegedly new technology, there seems to be more OTEC “buzz” in recent months.

If you know something more about this workshop, please let us know by leaving a comment, below.

With Radio Show in the Past, We Play OTEC Catch-Up: Solicitation for Project Financing, plus, ‘We Don’t Need Lockheed Martin To Do This’

As noted over at our sister blog, I’ve given up the volunteer gig at Hawaii Public Radio to produce and host a weekly energy-focused program called Energy Futures. We had a good seven-month run examining energy issues in the Aloha State in much greater depth than the daily news media can provide. But he time commitment turned out to be too great, and I’ll now be focusing even more on client work – especially in the renewable energy sector – in my Carlson Communications consultancy.

I’ll also be devoting more time here to Hawaii Energy Options, which frankly has played second fiddle to the Energy Futures show. And what better way to jump back in than with an online message from the Gerson Lehman Group that amounts to a solicitation of investor interest in a 100 MW OTEC pilot plan in Hawaii.

Quoting from the communication:

“Deepwater Structures Inc. (of Houston, TX) is looking for funding from investors for the renewable energy effort to build the first power plant in Hawai`i. The Govt. of USA, Dept of Energy would assist us with fund for this multi-million dollar project but there is a need to raise the matching 20% of the proposal funding from other source.”

Maybe there have been other similar solicitations in the two years I’ve been writing this OTEC-centric blog, but I can’t recall seeing one. It’s somewhat intriguing to see such a straight-forward and widely disseminated document. We’ll have to keep the Google Alert app tuned up to see what develops.

No Love for Lockheed?

Google also provided a link to this somewhat amusing story out of Nova Scotia – although Lockheed Martin may not think so.

It seems Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter met recently with Lockheed officials in Washington as he investigates ways to develop renewable energy technologies in the Canadian province.

What's puzzling is the Premier’s somewhat aggressive and perhaps unprovoked statement that, “We don’t need Lockheed Martin to do this,” according to the Chronicle Herald newspaper.

For its part, Lockheed Martin seems happy to work with Canada and intends to add 100 more employees to its Halifax staff.

Stay tuned for new developments in "Nova Scotia—Lockheed affair.”

French President Sees Potential of “Worldwide Revolution” Using OTEC

Leave it to the French to make a strong push for ocean thermal energy conversion. It was a Frenchman, after all, who first conjured up the theory.

President Nicholas Sarkozy touted OTEC for Reunion Island during a visit there last month, word of which has just reached us thanks to OTEC News. France has set aside a few million euros for a pilot project on Reunion that’s been underway for about a year.

Now, that’s the kind of federal support we like to see for our favorite renewable energy technology. We can only hope Washington, D.C will see the wisdom therein.

Hawaii Energy Issues Getting Their Share of Attention in the New Year

The State Legislature is busy considering energy-related legislation, a wave energy buoy has been deployed in Hawaiian waters, and enthusiasm for green energy is generally running riot in Hawaii. What else is new? Lots. Unfortunately, one of our other blogs has been soaking up most of our time this year, as has the show we produce and host on Hawaii Public Radio. We’ll do better.

Watch Out, California

That’s the Los Angeles Times’ admonition in yesterday’s long story about Hawaii’s ambitious green energy plans. And we have little choice, says the Times:

“Hawaii residents already pay the highest pump princes and electricity rates in the country…. More worrison still is global warming. The threat of rising seas and pounding storms linked to climate change has put Hawaii on a collision course with Mother Nature.”

The story features the work of the Natural Energy Research Laboratory of Hawaii Authority on the Big Island and among other initiatives mentions one of favorites, ocean thermal energy conversion.

No Way To Treat the PUC

Earlier in the week, the Honolulu Advertiser editorialized on the view that the “State needs to finance Hawaii’s energy revolution” and could do that by ensuring the Public Utilities Commission has the funds it needs to do its job.

And so it goes in Hawaii – the “Saudi Arabia of renewable energy” with more potential than it can adequately develop at any one time. Good thing we have two whole decades to meet the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative’s 2030 goals.

HPR's Energy Futures Program To Highlight Electric Car Developments

A short post (out of guilt for letting two weeks go by since our last one) about today's Energy Futures program on Hawaii Public Radio. Better Place and Hawaii Electric Vehicles will be featured on the hour-long "live" call-in show, which airs 5-6 pm HST today on KIPO-FM (89.3 in Hawaii) and is streamed on the Internet.

The program is setting aside its third 20-minute segment again to take calls on solar energy options for homeowners. Mark Duda, president of the Hawaii Solar Energy Association, will answer callers' questions as he did last week.

With the Hawaii State Legislature now in session, we'll be motivated to not let so much time slip by again, since there are bound to be plenty of energy options proposed before the end of April.

“New Technology Called OTEC” Brings a Smile to Our Lips

My father used to say all publicity is good publicity as long as they spell your name right. And it certainly is good news that ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is gaining a wider audience of appreciative “green” advocates.

Still, we had to smile when we came across this paragraph in a news story yesterday:

“But the (offshore) windmills also can be used to hold solar panels that would collect energy from the sun, underwater turbines that college energy from ocean currents and a new technology called ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) that uses the temperature difference between deep and shallow waters to run a heat engine.”

If 19th century technology is “new,” we’re all living in a post-new, post-modern futuristic age.

More power to North Carolina (pun intended), but we’re still holding out for the first pilot and commercial OTEC plants to be built here in Hawaiian waters. New, old – it doesn’t matter. Just build them.

Energy Policy Forum Briefing Is Blunt About It.....: Hawaii MUST Get Off Oil!

Energy Policy Forum's legislative briefing packed them in.

It was practically standing room only today in the State Capitol Auditorium during the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum’s annual legislative briefing. Members of the choir packed the place, with speakers and the audience all singing off the same page. Even the legislators were tapping their feet.

Such is the case when everyone lives, breathes and sleeps oil dependency depression and renewable energy enthusiasm. Moderator Jay Fidell started the session off by saying the program’s title should be “the State of Energy in the State of Energy.” It’s true; we all really are in a state about the imperative to develop Hawaii’s abundant renewable resources.

State Energy Administrator Ted Peck launched the presentations with the sobering thought that “Hawaii has an economic tsunami coming.” “In Hawaii, we feel the pain (of oil price increases) at the pump, pain at the plug and pain at the pallet,” he said as audience members nodded in agreement.

6:30 PM UPDATE: Matson Navigation Co. will raise its fuel surcharges for service to Hawaii, Guam and Micronesia on Feb. 7. The company said it was boosting the surcharge because of "rapidly rising fuel related costs."

Several panelists described their work to reduce the pain as quickly as possible. Joel Matsunaga, chief operating officer of Hawaii BioEnergy, covered his young company’s efforts to grow biofuel alternatives to jet fuel, the mother’s milk of the state’s tourism industry. (Hawaii Public Radio’s Energy Futures program will focus on the effort to develop alternatives to jet fuel on Monday, January 11 from 5-6 pm HST on KIPO-FM; the show also is streamed on the Internet.)

Matsunaga noted that one acre of palm trees yields 600 gallons of palm oil in one year, whereas one acre of micro-algae production can produce 10,000 gallons in that period due to algae's 12-day turnaround.

Ameresco senior project developer David Moakley described how his company partners with clients to reduce their energy consumption by making capital investments to upgrade their equipment and share in the energy savings. “We’ll cut you a check for the shortfall” if Ameresco doesn’t meet a client’s conservation goals, he said.

Numerous other speakers described their operations without straying far from the briefing’s theme, which was summarized by Senator Mike Gabbard, chair of the Senate Energy and Environment Committee.

“We all must become energy evangelists,” he said while urging members of the public to develop a community-wide will to “kick our fossil fuel addiction.” If the public demonstrates that will, Gabbard reasoned, politicians will be sure to notice and follow (or, we suspect, maybe even elbow their way to the front of the pack).

Ted Peck's "Bottom Lines" slide summarizes Hawaii's energy circumstances today.

Dr. Luis Vega Weighs In on NOAA’S OTEC Role and Other Development Issues

Hawaii Energy Options had a couple posts late last year (December 13 and two days later on December 15) speculating that NOAA might pose a bureaucratic obstacle to the development of ocean thermal energy conversion. Our source had suggested NOAA’s requirements to accumulate test data might unnecessarily delay OTEC’s eventual roll-out.

Those posts attracted some attention, as did our November 19th item about a meeting organized by Dr. Luis Vega of the University of Hawaii around the visit by a NOAA delegation. Luis today emailed his reaction to our December posts, and he subsequently granted permission to publish it. With our thanks, here it is:

Aloha Doug,

In my opinion, you are being a bit harsh (in the blog posts) because, on paper, licensing and permitting requirements for OTEC are not more cumbersome that the process established for other technologies in our country. I reached the following conclusion while evaluating the situation between FERC and MMS as well the State of Hawaii regarding wave energy: I hope that we can evolve into a situation represented by a one-stop-shop where industry can process all documentation stipulated for licensing & permitting under federal, state, city and county regulations avoiding duplicity, contradictory requirements and interdepartmental jurisdictional disputes.

Moreover, I am the one that has been trying to make people understand that OTEC design and construction, including ordering long-lead items, will take 4 to 5 years after funding is secured. The licensing & permitting process is not the issue. The real issue is posed by the requirement to finance relatively high capital investments that must be balanced by the expected but yet to be demonstrated low operational costs. Perhaps a lesson can be learned from the successful commercialization of wind energy that was due to consistent government funding of pilot or pre-commercial projects that led to appropriate and realistic determination of technical requirements and operational costs in Germany, Denmark and Spain. In this context by commercialization we mean that equipment can be financed under terms that yield cost competitive electricity. This of course depends on specific conditions at each site. Presently, for example, in Hawaii cost competitiveness requires electricity produced at less than about 0.17 $/kWh, while in Oregon the value would have to be closer to about 0.06 $/kWh.

My best wishes for 2010,

Luis

I am well-advised to respect the views of Dr. Vega on these issues. His track record with OTEC is among the most extensive in the field, and he now directs the National Marine Renewable Energy Center at the University of Hawaii. (The photo above was taken when he was a guest in that capacity on Hawaii Public Radio's Energy Futures program last October 19.)

As long as we’ve started a dialogue here at Hawaii Energy Options about OTEC’s future, let’s keep it going. Readers are invited to leave a comment on Dr. Vega’s assessment and/or our original December posts by clicking on the Comments link below, or you can write me at doug@commaaina.com with more extensive comments. I would like to print them, so if that is your intention, be sure to include a statement granting permission in your email.

Along with many others, we hope 2010 will start break-through progress in this decade to realize OTEC’s vast potential. As we said in the first post to this blog nearly two years ago, we think communications contributes toward that end.

Editorial Supports Cable Link to Create Multi-Island Grid; the President, too?

The President’s in town, so what better time for the Honolulu Advertiser to write a supportive editorial on the inter-island electric cable? Barack Obama’s reading file just might include his hometown paper when he’s vacationing here.

We subscribe to the theory that the more the President knows about his home state’s imperative to get off oil, the more successful that effort will be. That’s why we’ve sent two requests for him to participate in our Energy Futures program tomorrow at Hawaii Public Radio. It’s a “live” call-in show, so we’re still holding out hope he’ll join in – slim though that hope may be.

Today’s editorial in the Advertiser makes the case for building the electric link among the islands – and while they’re at it, to be sure all the appropriate environmental impacts are studied. As one of our guests in tomorrow’s Energy Futures show pointed out in an Advertiser commentary a few days ago, the assessment should cover the costs to upgrade transmission lines on the affected islands. Failing to do so understates the costs that will have to be recovered from ratepayers and taxpayers.

Of course, we support spreading the cost among all of the nation’s taxpayers, not just those in Hawaii. Hawaii’s is more dependent on oil for its energy needs than any other state, and we therefore are a legitimate target for federal funds to transform out of our oil dependency to a totally green-energy state.

So Mr. President, here’s an open invitation for you to ring us up on the 5-6 pm HST show tomorrow (941-3689) and also to send significant federal funds to Hawaii to hasten that much-needed transition.

Inter-Island Planning Begins To Link Four Hawaii Islands in Grid

The Advertiser's graphic with today's cable story.

Planning for an inter-island electrical cable network is advancing, according to a page one story in the Honolulu Advertiser today. The network would be both a hedge against future oil prices and a way to significantly reduce the use of oil in Hawaii’s energy mix.

The multi-billion dollar project as envisioned would enable the development of up to 400 megawatts of wind power on the islands of Molokai and Lanai for transmissions to Oahu, the state’s population center. The article breaks down spending on the project to date.

The development costs eventually would be shouldered by electric customers and taxpayers. The price of oil presumably will continue to rise in the decade ahead (it more than doubled in 2009), so a pricing formula for cable-delivered wind power could cost less than continuing the state’s reliance of oil for the generation of nearly 80 percent of its electricity.

The other consideration in favor of building the cable is that the neighbor island wind farms could significantly cut the state’s carbon footprint. The Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative calls for 40 percent of the state’s energy requirement to be supplied by renewable projects by 2030, with another 30 percent shaved off the peak by conservation.

And two decades beyond that is an unofficial goal that Hawaii will use no carbon-based fuel by 2050 – something we’ve been advocating for some time now. Our grandkids will still be youngsters in their 40s by then, and it’s their generation most of us are planning for.

Burying OTEC in Bureaucracy Would Be Calamitous Mistake

Two days ago we passed on the essence of a “let’s have coffee” conversation with someone who seemed earnest, sincere and well informed about the potential for ocean thermal energy conversion to drown in NOAA’s bureaucracy.

If not an OTEC “insider,” our coffee partner appeared to be close enough to the action to know what’s going on. His assessment that OTEC’s rollout could be needlessly delayed is alarming in light of the urgent need to develop non-polluting base-load generation sources. (Our thanks go out to OTEC News for picking up our November 13 post and generating an email to its far-flung list.)

Throw the Copenhagen climate conference into the discussion and NOAA’s presumed intention to over-regulate OTEC becomes even more egregious.

We don’t editorialize much here at Hawaii Energy Options except in generalized support for renewable energy development, with special attention given to OTEC from our very first post. But in this instance, we now urge anyone and everyone with influence and interest in OTEC to do everything you can to break the potential for an NOAA logjam before it’s firmly in place.

OTEC’s presumed ability to supply people around the planet with clean energy and clean water must not be needlessly delayed by red tape. Let’s be sure no additional roadblocks are in place just when this promising technology seems ready to fulfill its promise.

January 6 Update: Dr. Luis Vega comments on this post.

Will NOAA’s Bureaucracy Delay OTEC a Decade or More?

Our most recent post said we pass on rumors – even rumors of rumors – here at Hawaii Energy Options. There’s no city, news or managing editor looking over our shoulder, so it’s all fair game, far as we can tell, as long as we adhere to some objectivity standards.

That said, here’s what we’ve heard within the past 48 hours:

NOAA is so gummed up with bureaucratic inertia due to the “shell shock” it feels over the enormity of ocean thermal energy conversion that it will demand five years of operating data from even a pilot plant before giving OTEC its regulatory blessing.

Five years to build a plant, then five years of data gathering could effectively scare off investors unwilling to sit in a waiting game before OTEC could be meaningfully rolled out in Hawaii or anywhere else to counter our oil dependence.

“OTEC is on a scale so much larger than anything we’ve dealt with before,” a visiting NOAA official said last month. That seems like a tell-tale insight into the problem – if there indeed is a problem as was related to us.

When the NOAA slow-down was mentioned to an in-the-know official, he responded: “I have heard a bit about NOAA being potentially a barrier, but nothing substantial.“

Whether substantial or not, the issue of NOAA’s potentially go-slow stance has been suggegsted, so we raise it here. The issue is potentially too serious to let lie, so the question needs asking:

Is NOAA going to be an impediment to OTEC development due to an overly conservative regulatory environment? And if that’s the case, what can be done about it?

January 6 Update: Dr. Luis Vega comments on this post.

“Something Must Be Happening with OTEC These Days….”

We’re not above passing on rumors here at Hawaii Energy Options, and I hope Pat Takahashi doesn’t mind me quoting his email from yesterday as he commented on the comings and goings of various ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) personalities.

We won’t dip to the level of the celebrity blogs by naming names. Let’s just say Pat may get an OTEC earful over dinner tonight.

We will call your attention to our November 19th post about a visiting NOAA delegation sent to Hawaii to study up on OTEC. And while we’re at it, check out our September 2nd post that reports on a prediction that the first OTEC plant could be up and running in Hawaii by 2013.

We’ll wrap up today with a link to a YouTube video (thanks to Pat's email) on a car of the future powered by the fuel of the future – hydrogen, which can be mined from seawater using……you guessed it……OTEC, of course.

“The Most Important Conversation in History” is the Subject of HPR Program

Here’s another “expediency post” to this blog. We’re simply pointing you to our sister Energy Futures on HPR blog where we promote Monday’s hour-long conversation about the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference from a Pacific research perspective.

You’re invited to join us either over the air or on-line via streaming. Details are over at Energy Futures.

Thanks Be to All the Committed Renewable Energy Advocates

One year ago, we ticked off a few reasons to be thankful about Hawaii’s energy options, and there’s no reason to be less thankful this year, despite the clouds that hang over Copenhagen.

The President will be going there; that’s good. A key Chinese negotiator says China won’t set targets; that’s bad. But on balance, the fact that 192 nations are getting together to hash out issues critically important to the future of the planet is encouraging.

We’re thankful ocean thermal energy conversion continues to gain credibility and funding, and we’re optimistic that by Thanksgiving Day 2010, firm plans to build a pilot OTEC plant will have been announced.

We’re thankful oil prices have been lower this year than last, which means the pressure’s off on electric bills and gas prices – somewhat. The Hawaii public remembers those $140+ price levels, and that has led to quicker acceptance of the concept that Hawaii must get off oil as quickly as possible.

And we’re thankful Hawaii Public Radio gave us a shot to bring energy issues to the Hawaii airwaves each week (and worldwide thanks to on-line streaming). Staying relevant each week keeps us on our toes and involved, and for that we give thanks, too.

NOAA Officials’ Visit Hints at Stepped-Up Effort on OTEC Development

Dr. Vega briefs visiting NOAA delegation on OTEC advances in years past.

Hard on the heels of a conference devoted to the technical readiness of a commercial scale Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) system, a team of NOAA officials is in Honolulu for additional fact-finding.

Dr. Luis Vega, director of the National Marine Renewable Energy Center at the University of Hawaii and a long-time OTEC promoter, hosted today’s informal two-hour conversation among OTEC advocates. The visitors were Kerry Kehoe, Don MacDonald and Whitney Blanchard of NOAA’s Office of Coastal and Resource Management, which will be responsible for issuing licenses and permits for OTEC plants and operations.

Vega’s emailed invitation to UH researchers, state and federal agencies, energy industry consultants and engineers, OTEC promoters and others said the team is here to “gather information required to assess the technological readiness of OTEC for commercial deployment…. They also want to develop information that could be used for laying a foundation for an OTEC development roadmap that could provide guidance for federal, industry and academia investments.”

A certain amount of exasperation was present in the room, since many participants had thought two or three decades ago that they were following such a roadmap. Funds for a 40-megawatt OTEC plant had even been included in the federal budget in the early 1980s until President Reagan killed the program. Participants made it clear they believe financing, not technology, is still the impediment to commercialization and even the initial demonstration plant.

A Serious Effort

Kehoe said in opening remarks that NOAA believes the serious efforts underway by industry to bring OTEC to commercialization deserve a serious response by NOAA. Noting that the U.S. Navy is moving ahead aggressively with OTEC, he said “the last thing NOAA wants is to be behind everybody else.”

He said a regulatory gap exists for OTEC and that a “demonstration plant” isn’t even defined in existing regulations. NOAA would have a predicament if an OTEC demonstration plant applied for licensing. Kehoe said as many as 10 federal agencies have a role in authorizing the first OTEC demonstration plant.

“When people in these agencies hear about this technology, they tend to be shell-shocked,” Kehoe said, explaining that OTEC issues are arriving on desks that already are piled high with other work. “OTEC is on a scale so much larger than anything we’ve dealt with before,” he said. Others noted that a large OTEC plant will require the vertical movement of huge rivers of water – a realization that contributes to the shock.

A Coast Guard representative said public buy-in will be critical to achieving OTEC commercialization. He said “the public relations people have a job cut out for them” because of the anticipated high cost of OTEC commercialization and public perceptions of potential environmental impact. But others said they believe Hawaii residents have a good understanding about the need to reduce the state’s debilitating dependence on oil for 90 percent of its energy.

Some participants said so much data has been accumulated about potential OTEC plant sites in Hawaiian waters that writing an acceptable environmental Impact statement isn’t as daunting as it might appear. A pilot plant could be built using that wealth of information, they said, and future commercial plants would use lessons learned from that first small starter plant.

Expanding the Brain Power

Kehoe said the recent meeting at the University of New Hampshire (linked above) on the readiness of commercial scale development concluded that “no existing paradigm to fund OTEC will work.” He said the same amount of brainpower is required in the room to work on the financial side as exists on the technical side.

Kehoe also suggested that initial OTEC plants won’t be built with federal funding because of the high risk, but others noted that the federal government had funded the country’s first nuclear power plant, and the same may be needed to launch the OTEC technology. It wouldn’t be unreasonable, they said, for the federal government to fund the 10-MW demonstration plant.

The NOAA team’s meetings in Hawaii “have brought home how much our learning curve has to be based on what’s happening here in Hawaii,” Kehoe said, adding that he believes Hawaii will be the site for the first OTEC demonstration plant. That first plant therefore will be tailored to the issues that will emerge regarding OTEC here.

Kehoe concluded the session with an assessment that pleased the local audience: “If I were a Las Vegas odds maker, I’d say the odds are better than 50 percent that the first OTEC pilot plant will be built in Hawaii – and the first commercial plant, too.”

Still Have Doubts about Global Warming? Schneider Interview Can Help

Call it expediency or cross-promotion, our post today is a time-saver. We’re concluding our travel this weekend and will resume diligent monitoring of Hawaii’s Energy Options in a few days.

Until then, you’re invited to listen to an hour-long interview Monday afternoon (5 pm HST, 10 EST) with Dr. Stephen Schneider (above), who will be in Copenhagen next month for the climate conference that is looking more and more problematic.

Schneider’s interview is described over at our sister blog -- Energy Futures on HPR. Hawaii Public Radio has more than enough capacity to handle requests for Internet streaming of our program. (Post-program note: The show has been archived on the Internet.)

It's the OTEC HOUR today on Hawaii Public Radio

Rather than repeat what we've already posted over at our sister blog, Energy Futures on HPR, we'll simply link to that site and invite you first to read about today's program on Hawaii Public Radio and then listen via online streaming for a full hour of conversation on ocean thermal energy conversion technology.

Happy Anniversary, Berlin!

Post-Show Update

You weren't in Hawaii to hear the program or didn't catch the live streaming? You can listen to the archived OTEC show on Energy Futures at HPR's website.

Catching Up with the News on Kahuku’s Future Wind Farms

It’s always nice to be several weeks ahead of the “mainstream media” on renewable energy developments in Hawaii, as we were regarding plans for wind farms at Kahuku, Oahu as described in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin today.

Hawaii Public Radio’s “Energy Futures” show interviewed Keith Avery of West Wind Works and Noelani Kalipi of First Wind as our guests on the September 21 show, which you can access via HPR’s archives.

You’ll hear more from the HPR site than you’ll read in today’s paper about their companies’ plans by clicking on this link to the archived show, but the Star-Bulletin does have the advantage of showing graphics of the wind farms’ locations and what the turbines might look like in the hills as seen from Kahuku.

That’s something we still trying to work out over on the radio side.

State Takes First Step in Power Connection Between the Counties

The Superferry concept that for a while created a new link between the islands didn’t pan out, but maybe an undersea power cable will.

The State has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to conduct an environmental impact statement on a cable whose principal purpose would be to transmit wind power generated in Maui County to the state’s largest population concentration on Oahu.

“Big Wind” the plan is called and would equally split 400 megawatts of new wind generation between Lanai and Molokai; most or all of the power would be fed to Oahu. This and other renewable projects are part of the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative – the cooperative effort among state and federal governments and private industry to slash Hawaii’s dependence on fossil fuels in the coming two decades.

Here’s another link to the latest development, including details on the RFP.

Hawaiian Electric To Receive $5.3 Million in Grid Upgrade Funding

Here’s news that offers some hope that day-long power outages might be a thing of the past. How’s that for over-arching optimism?

Hawaiian Electric Company will receive $5.3 million of the $3.4 billion the Obama Administration has set aside for Smart Grid Investment Grants to improve the stability of the nation’s power grids.

Each of Hawaii’s island utility companies operates as a – well, an island – unconnected with any other power sources or grids, so our utilities have even better reasons to operate at maximum efficiency and quality.

Oahu residents remember the December 26, 2008 power outage reportedly caused by lightning that lasted half a day or longer for many. We can’t imagine that $5.3 million will go far in toughening up local power grids, but anything that helps keep the lights on is long overdue.

Catching Up with the News: Volunteers Will Draw a Disturbing Blue Line

This site has taken a back seat while we traveled to a time zone 12 hours distant from home, but we’re catching up with a compilation of energy-related items. Thanks for visiting over the past week despite the sameness of our material here.

Blue Line Project

Hawaii hasn’t held any cabinet meetings 20 feet beneath the waves like they just did in the Maldives, but we have as much motivation as those islands to fight against global warming and sea level rise.

Every island does – especially those that have chosen (as Hawaii has) to build right up to the coastline. One meter of sea level rise in this century – the IPCC’s conservative estimate – will create big problems for our grandchildren. We do care about our grandchildren, don’t we?

Thousands of volunteers of all ages will “draw the line on climate change” Saturday, October 24 throughout Hawaii. The blue line they’ll chalk will mark the high-water incursion where the likely impacts will be for one meter of sea level rise. Sign-ups are still being taken at the project’s website.

HPR’s “Energy Futures” Show

The inspiration for the Blue Line Project might well be Professor Chip Fletcher of the University of Hawaii. Fletcher studies sea level rise at home and around the Pacific and has had an impact on public consciousness with his computer-generated graphic. Yes, the computer draws a blue line – at many places far from the beach – to show locations of the high-water impacts.

Before leaving for France, we recorded a Hawaii Public Radio Energy Futures program with Fletcher and Associate Professor of Law Maxine Burkett, who directs the Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy at UH’s William S. Richardson School of Law. The show will be broadcast at 5 pm HST October 26 on KIPO-FM (89.3) and streamed on the Internet at that hour on HPR’s website.

HECO Promotes Electric Cars

Lastly, word comes today from Detroit that Hawaiian Electric Company has joined with 18 other utilities in the nation to promote the development of electric vehicles.

HECO President and CEO Dick Rosenblum said Hawaii “is a natural laboratory for developing and testing plug-in electric vehicles.” With relatively short commuting distances and new sources of renewable energy that can be used for off-peak battery charging, “we can be the place people come to see and experience EVs in action,” he said.

Hawaii Public Utilities Commission Chief Has His Say; Meanwhile, Searching for a Better Translation of 'Stromeinspeisungsgesetz.' Anybody?

A short post tonight just to send you elsewhere for a quickie report on Hawaii Public Utilities Commission Chairman Carlito Caliboso’s appearance on a public radio program today.

It’s not every day someone in his seat sits for an hour of “live” broadcasting with questions from callers, but Caliboso did, and that has to be good for the average consumer’s understanding of the complex energy issues facing our state.

Hawaii Feed-In Tariff Mechanism Collecting Endorsements

We’re not much into predictions except at New Year’s, but we’ll make one now: The Feed-In Tariff decision and order by the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission will generate more ink during the fourth quarter of ’09 than any other renewable energy topic in the 50th State.

Today’s Honolulu Advertiser headlines its editorial, “Isles take step toward green energy future” and leads off:

“The state has taken a critical first major step toward driving energy production with renewable sources by adopting rules that give companies an incentive to produce ’green’ electricity.”

We’ll probe just what the PUC’s action means when we host Chairman Carlito Caliboso on Hawaii Public Radio’s Energy Futures program next Monday.

Our hope (and expectation) is that renewable developers will use this rare opportunity to question Chairman Caliboso by calling the show. The numbers are 941-3689 on Oahu and toll-free from the neighbor islands and beyond, 1-877-941-3689.

Energy Futures is heard on KIPO-FM (89.3) each Monday 5-6 pm and also is streamed on the Internet.

Hawaii PUC OK’s Long-Sought Feed-In Tariff Concept

With a new mechanism in place that encourages development of renewable energy, Hawaii advocates see the dawning of a new era that could propel the state as the leader in the get-off-oil movement.

No state needs it more. Oil fuels the generation of 78 percent of the state’s electricity; coal adds another 10 percent or so. But those figures should decrease dramatically in the years immediately ahead.

As the Public Utility Commission’s ruling states in its 128-page decision, feed-in tariffs will “reduce the state’s fossil fuel dependence and accelerate the acquisition of renewable energy."

At What Cost?

Predictably, the cost of renewable energy – at least in the early years – is likely to exceed the traditional way of generating power through combustion of coal and oil.

PUC Commissioner Les Kondo’s dissenting view cautions against putting too much a burden on ratepayers as green energy expands. Said Kondo: “In my opinion, the amount that ratepayers are asked to bear to support more renewable energy cannot be without limits and should be one of the most important considerations in designing a (feed-in tariff) program that is reasonable, prudent and in the public interest.”

Fair enough. There obviously must be limits. Renewable energy can’t be pursued without regard for the ratepayer. But as we’re prone to say lately, this generation can be on a par with “The Greatest Generation” – our World War II predecessors. Wouldn’t that description be deserving for the generation that relegated fossil fuel to the “back burner,” as it were?

We think so, and we now look forward to the ins and outs of the new feed-in tariff system that will be become the mechanism for overcoming the throat-gripping stranglehold fossil fuel has on the Aloha State.

We’ll Step Aside and Let Others Lead the OTEC Cheering

Thomas Fuller, for example. He measures progress in fighting global warming by counting up the new patents that have been granted for innovative green-energy processes.

Fuller says 46 ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) patents have been filed in the past five years – 10 this year, which he says is disappointingly low. “I’m a big fan of OTEC…,” he says.

OTEC’s the reason we started this blog in the first place, so we’re obviously among the fans, too. So how about letting loose some big-time Department of Energy funds to kick start an OTEC plant right here in Hawaii?!

OTEC’s the long-tern answer to getting off oil. We know it, they know it – heck, Hawaii's Favorite Son Barack Obama knows it!

So let’s go with more of that OTEC funding. $100 million dropped on one of the major OTEC proponent companies could be enough to actually launch a plant here within just a few years. Lockheed Martin says a pilot plant could be operating by 2013.

There's no reason to wait.

Ocean Energy Research Attracts DOE Funding

The U.S. Department of Energy today announced a number of "advanced water power projects,” including three related to ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).

Here are the OTEC recipients; we’ll look into the specifics of these projects down the line:

• Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems International, Inc (Honolulu, Hawaii) will conduct baseline biological sampling studies of a proposed Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion site in Port Allen, Kauai, Hawaii in order to create a conceptual design of a site-specific warm water intake pipe. DOE share: up to $600,000; Duration: up to one year;

• Lockheed Martin Corporation (Manassas, Va.) will develop and describe designs, performance and life-cycle costs for both the nearshore and offshore Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) baseline cost figures. DOE share: up to $500,000; Duration: up to one year;

• Lockheed Martin Corporation (Manassas, Va.) will develop a GIS-based dataset and software tool to assess the maximum practicably extractable energy from the global and domestic U.S. ocean thermal resource and identify regions viable for OTEC and Cold Seawater Based Air Conditioning. DOE share: up to $500,000; Duration: up to one year.

OTEC – No Longer an Overlooked Energy Source

This blog was launched 18 months ago next Monday in a mixture of alarm (oil hit $111/barrel that day) and personal frustration that ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) was rarely and barely mentioned as an important potential renewable energy resource for Hawaii.

Our post two days later complained that a Honolulu newspaper’s editorial had left OTEC out of its list of “the Islands’ reservoir of power….”

That’s no longer the case. Oil prices that peaked at $147/barrel in July ’08 had the positive effect of accentuating the importance of developing a range of renewables in helping Hawaii get off oil.

Lockheed Martin says it can have a 10-MW OTEC plant operating off Oahu’s Kahe Point within four years, and Sea Solar Power has a representative in town now making a round of meetings about its intentions to build a plant 10 times larger.

So OTEC’s no longer the forgotten resource – still just a potential baseload power source but apparently closer to realizing that potential than ever before.

Here’s an excerpt from Governor Linda Lingle’s September 4th address to the Maui Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce on energy and other issues:

Now, they’re going to be issues with the undersea cable, no question about it. There are going to be environmental issues, there are going to be cultural issues, there are going to be financial issues; but we could say the same thing about the wind project that went up at Kaheawa. There were environmental issues, there were cultural issues, and there were financial issues. You could say the same thing about the wave energy project off the Haiku area. There are environmental issues, cultural issues, and financial issues. In fact, I can’t think of a renewable energy project that someone couldn’t raise an issue and then say, “That’s why I’m against it.”

Nothing as bad as burning oil

Think about it like this: is any one of those alternatives – wind, solar, wave, ocean thermal energy conversion, geothermal, hydropower – is any of them as bad as taking $5-7 billion a year out of the Hawaii economy and giving it to a foreign country or a foreign company to buy oil to ship it across the ocean to burn into the atmosphere?

I take the position that none of those are as bad as burning fossil fuel, sending pollution into the environment, sending our money outside of the state, creating no jobs for the people of Hawaii. Just taking those billions every year – the very thought of it should upset all of us. That depending on the price of oil, every year, we take our own money that we could be using to create jobs here at home for our people and we hand it off to a foreign country or a foreign company.

So when this issue comes up about the undersea cable, or issues about the solar farm, or an ocean energy project, maybe use this context. Instead of seeing that project in isolation, think about it in the bigger framework. Is it as bad as sending our money out of Hawaii to buy oil from foreign countries or foreign companies? And then burn it and send the pollution into the atmosphere? I take the strong position that there is nothing you can point to that is worse than what we are doing with our money, than what we are doing to our environment.

Belaboring Clean Energy on Labor’s Weekend

Writing not much and referring a lot – over to Hawaii Public Radio’s
Energy Futures show. Stop in.

10 MW Pilot OTEC Plant in Hawaii Can Be Built by 2013, Scaled to 100 MW by 2015: Lockheed Martin

Dr. Ted Johnson of Lockheed Martin discusses Hawaii's future OTEC plant.

The Asia-Pacific Clean Energy Summit & Expo continues tomorrow, but we heard enough today to satisfy our curiosity about Lockheed Martin’s plans for an ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plant in Hawaii.

Dr. Ted Johnson, Lockheed’s director of Alternative Energy Development, told a packed Ocean Energy breakout session that a pilot plant could be up and running within four years. It would be 10 megawatts and sit in at least 3,000 feet of water four miles off Kahe Point on Oahu’s western shore.

Kahe is the site of Hawaiian Electric’s largest generating station, so the plant’s intended location makes sense. When asked how long it would take to scale the plant up to 100MW, Johnson said it could be done in only two years if the pilot plant pans out. (The Honolulu Advertiser carried essentially the same information on 9/3.)

Two Big Questions

Johnson seems to suggest that the Department of Defense will be the funding source, although he offered nothing concrete. And if that source isn’t sufficient, Johnson said some kind of a “private-public partnership” could be pursued – again, no details.

The DOD’s huge reliance on fossil fuels might be what it takes for its purse to open with help from Hawaii’s Daniel K. Inouye, chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Inouye's not shy about his ability to target federal funding, and it's not a stretch to imagine him making it happen.

Beyond funding, Johnson said the cold water pipe is the biggest technological hurdle remaining to be overcome, but he seemed confident that a plastic material perfected by Lockheed Martin’s space program will prove up to the challenge.

Path to Commercialization

When asked about costs to build Lockheed Martin’s plant, Johnson said he likes to put it in terms of cost per kilowatthour to generate OTEC power – in the low 20s of cents, he said. The average electricity rate for all sectors in Hawaii's economy in May 2009 was 18.92 cents/KWH, the highest in the nation.

Lockheed’s projection of having a pilot plant in place and providing valuable operational data within four years seems pretty aggressive. One can imagine a least a year devoted strictly to obtaining regulatory and environmental approvals.

Still, this proposed schedule is encouraging. We’d feel even better if we knew Ted Johnson and Senator Inouye have each other on speed dial.