Broken Leg Imposes Break from Energy Blog

It’s been nearly a month and half a world away from our most recent post here at Hawaii Energy Options. My wife’s broken leg (in three places, prompting three operations) in France has focused attention on only the most important things in life, and try as I might, I can’t put ocean thermal energy conversion in that category.

But it’s impossible to ignore all OTEC-related news, so here’s a recent mention of the partnership between Makai Ocean Engineering and Lockheed Martin on the ongoing Hawaii project. The two have been affiliated for some time already, so it’s not clear whether this is new news.

Back to recuperation.

No Nukes in Hawaii – Period! Build OTEC Now!

A mayoral candidate in Honolulu has proposed building nuclear power plants on islands floating 15-20 miles offshore beyond the horizon. Let’s hope he’s just sunk his campaign.

If we’re going to build power islands and pour billions into the effort, there’s more than enough evidence that ocean thermal energy conversion is the technology to get the job done and not create massive environmental problems along the way. Our first post here in March 2008 attempted to generate greater awareness in OTEC, which appeared to be off the media's and public's radar.

The environmental community already is weighing in on this preposterous idea. Maybe the only good thing to spring from it will be greater community awareness and a government-backed drive to make OTEC a reality in this decade.

Just to be clear: No Nukes in Hawaii – Period! Build OTEC Now!

Refocusing this Blog Where It Belongs -- on OTEC

Waters west of Hawaii show OTEC's promise.

We write about electric cars and wind energy and undersea cables and geothermal and all the rest, but every now and then we have to come back to the center, and for this blog, the center is ocean thermal energy conversion.

Have you noticed the articles published all over the world that “introduce” readers and audiences to OTEC? It’s as if their authors are saying, “Listen up, people. Here’s a technology you really need to know about!”

That’s the feeling we got from a new piece at Gizmag.com, which declares “Hawaii ideal for ocean-based renewable energy plants”

Yes, indeed, and we’re happy to see the number of advocates is growing.

HECO Electric Car Rate Could Be Just the Beginning; Lower Rate Would Be Good, but What About FOFOP?

Not to be curmudgeonly about Hawaiian Electric’s proposed lower rate for electricity used to charge electric cars in the overnight hours, wouldn’t the utility do well to offer the lower overnight rate to all customers?

HECO’s stated goal is “to make Hawaii EV-ready as new, highway-capable EVs are expected to hit the market in the coming year.” That’s well and good, but there’s presumably another goal (not mentioned in this story) in increasing demand in the late-night, early-morning hours.

Renewable energy projects like wind farms often have no market for their electricity when the load drops at night. Higher demand in the overnight hours provides that market and displaces to some extent oil-fired generation at the utility’s power plants.

Giving all customers a lower rate at night presumably would push off some of the demand from the peak hours between 5 pm and 9 pm and lessen the requirement for HECO to fire up its higher-cost peaking units.

The Equity Factor

We wonder also how important the lower electric rate will be in influencing potential customers to buy an electric car. They’re the ones with either the cash and/or a good credit rating to make the purchase, so they’re primed to begin with.

Other factors such as environmentalism, sustainability awareness and FOFOP – fear of future oil prices – could be at least as important as lower electricity rates in motivating someone to buy an EV.

As announced, the lower rates will apply to a tiny segment of the population – a total of 1600 customers in the three counties HECO serves. Left out of the plan is the great majority without the buying power or inclination to participate in the coming EV craze. Without knowing the details of this new rate plan and how it would fit in with other plans, we have to presume that other categories won’t be increased over time to offset the lower EV rate.

Let’s hope the Public Utilities Commission recognizes the good intent of the lower EV-charging rate but expands the concept to a bigger good thing. Lowering the rates for all customers in the overnight hours would encourage expansion of wind and other clean-energy sales to the utility and benefit everyone – not just those who can afford the cash outlay for a new electric car.

Catching Up with OTEC – News from Elsewhere

Afternoon Update: Dr. Stephen Schneider, the noted climate scientist and co-Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (with Vice President Al Gore and other members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), died today in Europe. He twice was a guest on Hawaii Public Radio's "Energy Futures" program last year; we interviewed him on al variety of topics, including global warming's implications for Hawaii. The interview has been archived on the Internet.

* * * * * * * * * *

We hope the day will come when media stories about ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) – many many stories – will be datelined Honolulu. For now, we have to be content with news from around the world.

Like this one out of Tamil Nadu state in India. A new renewable energy park there will feature a number of green technologies, including OTEC.

Or this one and its companion piece that mention OTEC’s potential to generate ammonia and hydrogen for transportation fuel purposes, as well as generate clean electrical energy.

OTEC news related to Hawaii is on holiday, it seems. We’re pretty sure the U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin and the State Energy Office are all quietly at work on their parts of the puzzle.

For now, we’re content to let places like North Carolina keep the OTEC vision front and center, even though the players in the nation’s acknowledged favorite OTEC location – Hawaii – are content to keep it quiet.

Oahu’s First Wind Farm in 25 Years Breaks Ground

It’s been a wait of 9,253 days since ground was last broken for a wind farm on Oahu (Hawaiian Electric Renewable System’s Kahuku project – February 4, 1985), but Kahuku Wind Power LLC ended that wait today. The company has commenced building its 30-megawatt project in the hills above Kahuku on Oahu’s North Shore.

It’s somewhat ironic that the state’s most populous island has had to wait until 2010 to participate in the wind technology revolution. The Big Island and Maui have been on that path for years. It hasn’t been for a lack of trying; Hawaiian Electric’s plans for a plant in the Waianae mountains were done in by local opposition to the visual impacts.

The Kahuku region has a tradition of accepting what others reject. HECO called the area the “wind energy capital of the world” (maybe just a tad aggressively) after the HERS project and the world’s largest turbine, the Boeing MOD-5B, were in place in the Kahuku hills.

That description was shelved after every one of those turbines was dismantled due to machinery failure over the next few years, but Kahuku’s back – at least as wind energy capital of Oahu.

And that’s a good thing.

Kauai Publishes Its Energy Sustainability Plan

No two ways about it: We’ve been lax in staying abreast of energy developments in the Aloha State, but the guilt is too great. Here’s something that’s already a couple weeks old but worth mentioning before it’s truly ancient:

The County of Kauai has completed its Energy Sustainability Plan, and it’s now available online. The Plan seems pretty aggressive in some areas, including an increase in the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative franchise taxes by 30 percent.

It appears on the surface at least that the revenues would be devoted to supporting energy efficiency initiatives. That would contrast with the new$1.05 tax on each barrel of oil imported to the state; most of those revenues are going into the state’s general fund.

We’ll be watching developments on Kauai and the community’s efforts to build sustainability in the energy sector.

More ‘Big Wind’ Developments, plus Solar and OTEC

Following up on our caution last week about counting Molokai’s wind farm eggs too early, now comes word in the Molokai Dispatch of a temporary setback to locating the 200 megawatts of wind capacity on the island.

Deep in the story is this observation by the reporter: “A quick drive around the island reveals numerous hand-painted signs speaking out against wind development.” Similar postings signaled community opposition to a Laau Point luxury home development, which was never built.

We can’t know at this early date the extent of community opposition to wind. We’re just saying it could be significant, so be ready.

Moving On….

Renewable energy meetings are happening in Honolulu this weekend, beginning with NOAA’s public information session on its rulemaking and regulation intentions for ocean thermal energy conversion this afternoon at the East-West Center.

And beginning Sunday, 18,000 attendees are expected at the IEEE photovoltaic Specialists Conference in the Hawaii Convention Center. The first Eastern Pacific tropical disturbances of the season will still be too far distant if they head this way, so sunny days are expected all next week. Let’s hope the forecast for sun power policy is the same.

Hawaii Energy Pieces Seem To Be Coming Together, but Let’s Forget All That Talk about ‘Cheap’ Wind Power

You can hardly pick up a newspaper (the only one we have, now that the Advertiser is gone) without reading positive economic news for Hawaii, and the same can almost be said about green energy initiatives here.

Yesterday’s significant news was the awarding of a contract to a Los-Angeles company to study the route and conduct impact studies of a future undersea cable linking the islands of Oahu, Molokai and Lanai. The idea is to provide an energy export channel – the cable – from two future 200-megawatt windfarms, one each on Lanai and Molokai, to Oahu’s population and commercial base.

It’s far from a sure thing. Despite optimism about the cable and wind projects, numerous issues remain to be carefully assessed. Local opposition to truly massive wind energy projects could be significant on Lanai, which has become a get-away-from-it-all destination for wealthy mainlanders. A venture fund founder with a home on Lanai was quoted last year as saying, “I am not going to live on an island that’s the biggest wind farm in the Pacific.” Long-time local residents are no less resistant.

Molokai residents are known for their determined opposition to anything that would transform the nature of their island. They’ve successfully blocked port calls by cruise ships and high-end home development projects, placing environmental and cultural protection ahead of potential economic benefits.

Too Cheap for Meters?

The impacts study itself will cost $2.9 million in federal stimulus funds, and the cable’s cost is estimated today at $1 billion, which will be covered over time by Oahu’s electric customers. Big Wind is seen as a key element in Hawaii’s effort to replace fossil fuel for electrical generation (currently around 78%) with renewable energy, and there’s considerable enthusiasm for Big Wind.

An Associated Press story paraphrased a state official as saying customers will benefit in the long run from “cheap wind power instead of relying on potentially expensive oil.” But let’s just get used to not calling Big Wind “cheap” power. That’s the kind of talk used by nuclear energy proponents in the 1950s. Nuke power would be so cheap, they said, as to eliminate the need for electric meters. Compared to what future power prices could rise to if Hawaii continued its dependence on imported oil, wind power presumably would be less expensive, but it won’t be cheap.

Who’s on First?

We also wonder about what the impact will be on other potential renewable resources after 400 MW of wind power are locked in and plugged into Oahu's grid with a billion-dollar cable. NOAA is gearing up to regulate and promulgate rules for the first ocean thermal energy conversion demonstration projects (see Honolulu meeting notice), and it’s looking more certain than ever that Hawaii will see a pilot plant this decade. We even heard last week at the State-sponsored Clean Energy Day that the next US Navy budget will have $250 million in it for OTEC R & D.

Ocean energy is another decade or more away from making significant contributions here, but it’s worth asking now what the dynamic would be if a baseload energy source like OTEC were ready for development after an intermittent source like Big Wind already is online.

Both OTEC and Big Wind have a long arduous path before they’re in place, so let’s just leave it like this: We’d be more comfortable with the cable/Big Wind project if there were an equal commitment and push behind building Hawaii’s first ocean thermal conversion plant. In light of the significant issues Big Wind faces, let’s be sure OTEC gets its due in the years ahead. Hawaii will need a lot of energy eggs in its basket to get off oil.

Could This Be the Long-Delayed ‘Summer of OTEC’?

Maybe this is just the first of many ocean thermal energy summers after decades and generations even of OTEC’s long winter.

The National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration’s OTEC open house and information session next week is one sign that the climate maybe changing for this highly anticipated but always-delayed ocean technology.

Another indicator – the June issue of Oceanography, the official magazine of the Oceanography Society. It’s a special issue on Marine Renewable Energy, and among its offerings are lengthy pieces on the potential and obstacles to capturing solar energy in the oceans. This sentence jumps out:

“The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimate that the total combined potential for all ocean renewables in the United States exceeds national electric energy use.”

Realistically, smaller amounts are likely to be extracted by ocean energies, but even that could be considerable. The article continues:

“….ocean energy could ultimately provide at least 10% of the electric supply of the United States. In coastal areas, where these resources are plentiful, the indigenous sources may, on a regional basis, represent a much larger fraction of the local energy supply and may indeed by the best long-term energy option.”

It’s not unrealistic to think the majority of Hawaii’s electric energy needs could be obtained within a generation by exploiting OTEC and other ocean technologies. Eventually, OTEC could electrify the entire state while accommodating contributions from the other renewable technologies.

In other words, clean energy would power the entire state, including vehicles and eventually aircraft. That’s the vision that’s driving numerous clean-energy initiatives in Hawaii, the world’s most geographically isolated and one of its most oil-dependent societies.

The June issue of Oceanography from its first article to the last is recommended reading, and anyone truly motivated to learn more about OTEC might well attend NOAA’s open house in the East-West Center on June 17. It's free.

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.