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Solar Power Battle Puts Hawaii at Forefront of Worldwide Changes

96 points by kpozin 12y ago

wyldfire 12y ago
It seems inevitable that continued advances in PV will either destroy the power utilities or force them to reinvent their business as electricity brokers (focusing on distribution and/or storage). Regulatory capture can slow this trend. But as the article indicates, it's only temporary. Advances in energy storage and moderated consumption allows customers to disengage from the grid entirely.
- grecy 12y ago
  I feel like this is one good example of big changes coming to the world and traditionally established big business in the next 5-10-25 years. Hilariously, many of the following big business have "guaranteed profits" from the Government, which is also going to have to change. If you're in the business of making electricity by burning stuff, or you sell oil, or cable TV, or internet, or 50 other good examples, you had better start reinventing your business now. Those business make very rich people richer, so they're going to fight it tooth and nail, which is a shame when they could be putting that effort into reinvention.
  - tsotha 12y ago
    >Hilariously, many of the following big business have "guaranteed profits" from the Government, which is also going to have to change. I doubt that will change. If you want companies to have enormous amounts of idle capacity waiting around for a cloudy day then you have to make sure they can make money.
    - grecy 12y ago
      We're not going to need that capacity anymore, so we don't need the companies anymore. i.e. when the massive majority of houses and business have their own solar and storage, we don't need to pour billions into coal plants and the grid to have it sitting around waiting for... nothing.
      - tsotha 12y ago
        I don't see how that will ever make sense. The only way you can guarantee your house will have enough power is to overbuild the storage by quite a bit. It's not worth the money.
        grecy 12y ago
        When the majority of houses have a good amount of solar and storage, then the grid we already have will be more than enough, therefore it can go into "maintenance" mode. (likely even reduction, I suspect)
- pingswept 12y ago
  I agree. If I were a utility, I would be working hard to figure out how to be a storage broker, because if homeowners figure out storage without the utility, the utility will eventually be left with nothing other than large industrial consumers (which might be a decent business, but probably less than half the size of the utility's current market).
kpozin 12y ago
Can anyone comment on the claim that private solar power generation affects the stability of the grid? What kinds of infrastructure changes would be needed to properly support power generation in private homes?
- HarryHirsch 12y ago
  Large-scale electricity storage is what is needed. One vanadium battery per block.
- dragontamer 12y ago
  Well for one, whenever a power-line goes dead... the Solar panels need to shut off so that the workers can safely replace the powerline. There's nothing quite like "Oh, some home in this neighborhood is still powering this powerline, despite the fact that we've shut off all the other power sources". That's quite the real "shocker" to the poor worker.
  - jellicle 12y ago
    This is required of all rooftop solar installations, and automatic. The problem you think exists... doesn't exist.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      I suspect if this weren't the case we would already have heard about all the burned houses. There's nothing the media likes to hype more than something scary and new. Of course, this is why engineers and electricians are licensed.
- brandmeyer 12y ago
  There is a disconnect between market forces in energy production right now. Right now, short-term grid frequency and voltage stability (periods of seconds to a few min) is regulated automatically by the governor response of the various generators on the grid. These governors bid in advance to set their proportional gain for frequency stability. Basically, they promise to autonomously raise or lower their throttle in the future based on the observed grid frequency and voltage, and get paid later when they make good on their promise. Long-term stability (periods of 15 min or so) are regulated with market action in the spot market for power. Very long term stability is regulated by markets that clear 24 hours in advance of their estimated delivery. However, some energy producers effectively have flat rate contracts that don't participate directly in grid stability. Wind and nuclear will negotiate a fixed power-purchase agreement (typical prices are about 50 USD/MW-hr or so in the US) that will be fixed for years at a time. Likewise, residential solar customers sell back their power under the same, basically fixed rate schedule that they use to buy power. So, as the penetration of fixed-rate power increases into the market, the pricing volatility continues to increase as well. There are technologies that can help. In fact, it is trivially easy to get a grid-tied inverter to be sensitive to grid changes with controls that model virtual inertia, impedance, throttle, and so on. This is part of what I do as a controls engineer. The difficulty isn't in implementing such controls, it is in adjusting the markets such that all of the existing players are comfortable with the result. Witness this in Hawaii - the retail price of power is so high that it makes obvious good sense to install your own generation. But instead of adjusting the rates to reflect the new availability of supply, the incumbent utility seeks to raise barriers to competition instead.
revelation 12y ago
Hawaii is a particular shit show when it comes to electricity utilities. From their own page on renewable energy, no less: Electricity can be made from a variety of energy sources. Some are fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. Over 90 percent of all the energy used in Hawaii for electricity, surface and air transportation comes from imported fossil fuels, mostly oil but some coal. (The synthetic natural gas used in Hawaii is refined here from crude oil.) I think nobody here has the patience to wait for this particular dynosaur-consuming monster to catch up. Heres their current fuel mix: http://www.hawaiianelectric.com/heco/Clean-Energy/Latest-Clean-Energy-News/About-Our-Fuel-Mix?cpsextcurrchannel=1#5 http://www.hawaiianelectric.com/heco/Clean-Energy/Latest-Cle... Scroll down to see to see Oil listed at >60%.
- jellicle 12y ago
  Pretty harsh criticisms. You must be an expert. Ok, what electrical generation capacity would you have built for Hawaii?
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Distributed solar on roofs, offshore wind, and combined cycle natural gas for peaking and base load until renewables complete their buildout.
    - falsestprophet 12y ago
      How do you get natural gas to Hawaii fifty years ago? You can't. You would use oil tankers like they did.
      - icebraining 12y ago
        Nobody is criticizing the Hawaiian electric grid of the 1960s.
        ars 12y ago
        Yes they are because it's the same grid as 2015. Power grids are built to last centuries, they are not replaced or changed quickly.
w8rbt 12y ago
What would happen if tens of millions of vehicles started feeding power grids while sitting in parking lots. I think that could happen someday soon. Edit: Bob Bruninga has written a bit about solar power in cars. Great content. http://www.aprs.org/APRS-SPHEV.html http://www.aprs.org/APRS-SPHEV.html
DanBlake 12y ago
The issue here is the mandate that when you create electricity with solar that the electric company must buy that electricity from you as you feed it back into the grid, regardless if they currently need it or not based on demand. These power companies dont want to become energy storage companies, its too expensive. They prefer to simply make as much electricity at the moment as is needed. I agree with the electric companies on this point. If they dont need the electricity, why should they be forced to buy it? That will increase costs for non-solar customers as they end up footing the bill for the battery storage needed by solar customers. I think the proper way to do these installs is to have customers always have on site batteries which store the energy for their own homes use. Yes, its nice to sell back electricity to the grid, but that feels like a very hackish way to use 'solar'. It makes sense also. If you want to save money on your electricity, you need to make your own, so you draw less from the grid- Not make it for someone else when nobody wants it. Does anyone know if the power company is required to buy all forms of electricity currently? Could you just setup thousands of solar panels in a field you own and demand money from the grid? Seems like a easy return on investment, depending on the cost of panels/equipment.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  The laws are usually based on "net metering", so they probably only apply to the amount of electricity you can pass through a residential meter.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  You are conflating the electricity producers with the grid. The grid itself actually saves money by installing storage, when compared to upgrading links, and does so when it can. As to, if they do not need the power, why should they buy it? Well, there are two reasons, one is that everyone else on the grid already gets to, so it would be anti-competitive to not allow it for the little guys, and the other is that someone will always want power, so it makes economic sense to buy the power and build storage to offset it and make money through arbitrage.
- brownbat 12y ago
  Most net metering programs take solar from a home when the grid is facing its highest demand and energy is most expensive for the power company. They then provide a credit to your bill in watts. With a solar installation, you're drawing energy at night, when the grid basically wants to give away power to keep things balanced. So you contribute a dollar worth of power, and you take out the same power at a later point in time, and the power company basically gives you a 5 cent credit. The power companies make fistfulls of cash on the arbitrage. They still hate it though, because distributed power generation threatens the model of power monopolies that get to fix prices while steadily reducing service. Hawaii in particular has faced historically terrible load balancing, so some of the distributed generation is a response to the poor existing services and constant outages. HECO basically created all the incentives for the public to hate and want to work around them. You couldn't just give them an out on whether they wanted to buy the power or not, since they despise distributed solar generation. They'd just build a messy and expensive quick spin up generator, buy expensive power from that during midday, and claim they don't "need" the solar, to deter investment in the technology, even though it'd be better for everyone if they bought the solar. You can't ask a kid how much he needs foul tasting medicine. Sometimes you just have to deliver it.
tedsanders 12y ago
I once worked at a utility studying this very issue. The typical worries about solar are: +Power intermittency (rapid, uncontrolled changes in power can push the voltage and frequency outside acceptable levels. This reduces reliability and can destroy electronics.) +Voltage regulation (also, on a local level, PV can mess with voltage compensators, pushing voltage outside of acceptable levels at the end of voltage regulation zones) +Morning power surplus (lots of solar power will drop the baseline demand from ~4AM to noon, reducing the amount of cheap baseline power you can run) +Harmonics (crummy inverters can inject unwanted sine wave harmonics into the grid, again bad for electronics) +Fault current danger (if a tree takes down a power line, both sides can be remain live if power is being pushed onto the grid by PV on both sides) +Inverter tripping (the main way to fix the fault current problem is to mandate that inverters passively follow the grid's voltage/frequency and then disconnect if they detect problems. However, with high PV penetration this has its own problem: a transient fluctuation can cause a domino chain reaction where all the inverters turn off, taking the grid down with them.) +Power factor/vars (one important function for the grid is to keep current and voltage in phase, but today's PV inverters are dumb and blindly produce power with a power factor of 1, which can mess with automatic capacitor banks meant to help counteract the inductive load of the grid) Now, some of these problems are more real than others, and many don't become an issue until PV penetration reaches like 30%. The good news is that these are all solvable problems. Energy storage or additional natural gas peakers can fix the intermittency problem, and for the other problems the grid can be redesigned to allow better two-way power flow and inverters can be designed to produce higher quality power. However, the bad news is that all of these fixes are expensive and all of them take years. Furthermore, many utilities do not have the expertise or confidence to make big changes to their grid and still guarantee reliable high quality power. Utilities are known for being slow and risk-averse, but they are risk-averse for a reason - blackouts are very costly to society. Another issue for the utility is how to charge for power. Historically, utilities have tried to keep things simple for residential customers by charging only for power consumed. However, if residential PV becomes popular, utilities will have no choice but to change their pricing model so that they can be compensated for the non-kWh value they provide (e.g., reliability, stability, option value, power quality regulation). The bottom line is that the problems from high PV penetration are real. Utilities are cautious, not evil, and they have good reasons to be. (Also, I think it's ridiculous when people claim that PV will kill utilities - barring a radical shift in technology/economics, wires and pooled power regulation and economies of scale make a grid hugely valuable, even if power generation becomes more distributed.) That said, these are all solvable problems and I am hopeful and optimistic about the long-term future of solar power.
transfire 12y ago
The cost is still too high, so the electric companies have little to worry about in the short run as long as they can find ways to improve their own margins. Of course lobbying for regulatory fees and reduced buy-back rates is one way to do that, but the utilities best be careful there. That could cause a blow back reaction. In the long run though it is all downhill. Battery tech is getting better at around 8% per year. Solar efficiency isn't far behind. What cost $20,000 now to add solar or $40,000 to get off-grid completely, will cost half that in about 10 to 15 years. If the trend lines continue then in 20 to 30 years years its a done deal. No house will ever be built again without it's own power generation system.
- bradleyjg 12y ago
  You can't get off the grid completely unless you are a) willing to suffer some downtime occasionally, b) way overbuild storage as compared to typical needs, or c) have your own backup fossil fuel generator. Any way you cut it high availability costs money. If you expect the grid to handle backup for you then you should expect to pay them to do so. TANSTAAFL
  - transfire 12y ago
    I don't think (a) is true because (b) and/or (c) is exactly what people will eventually do --although in the case of (c) it will be hydrogen fuel cells.
    - darkmighty 12y ago
      It costs at least some $400/kWh for battery storage. That amounts to $12k dollars for each house for supplying average consumption; that's a huge cost already. If you want (a) to be false, I guess you need to multiply that by two at least. It just doesn't make sense to make each house do it individually, the grid is a wonderful technology that reduces this risks, smooths consumption and provides storage/generation economies of scale. It just doesn't make sense to abolish it entirely for all but the most isolated places.
themgt 12y ago
If the utilities drag their feet, their could be reasonably good micro/neighborhood/apartment complex-level solutions - $100-250k of batteries on a loan & small buy-in per-unit, and the batteries & smart-system can optimize the buy/sell process around historical/current usage & prices & storage levels.
tzs 12y ago
Isn't Hawaii a special case because of its isolation? If so many people install solar in Southern California or Arizona that the local utility has more power coming in during the day than it can use or store, it can sell the excess via the national grid to someplace that can use it. As far as I've been able to determine from the internet, there is no connection between Hawaii power grids and the mainland. In fact, it looks like the grids of each island might be isolated from the others.
- david2777 12y ago
  Exactly. None of the islands grids are connected. I worked for a power plant on the big island a few years ago and even then there was a big issue with too much power during the day and not enough at night. Coupling that with the intermittent wind power and you have a very hard grid to maintain.
  - tsotha 12y ago
    Why aren't they connected? Is it just too expensive? Seems like it would be a big advantage to do so.
    - McKayDavis 12y ago
      NextEra (the energy company that recently bought HECO) is looking to do just this. A Sept. 2013 report by them estimates a capital cost of approximately $600 million for a 200 MW cable connect between Maui and Oahu. (source page 8 of [1]) This is the low end of the scale with other estimates ranging from $553 Million to $1.24 Billion (page 9). Note that this does not connect the Big Island to the grid either. The preliminary proposed route can be seen on page 84 of the report. [1] http://nexteraenergyhawaii.com/pdf/initial_comments.pdf http://nexteraenergyhawaii.com/pdf/initial_comments.pdf
spenrose 12y ago
An excellent overview of the scale at which we need to integrate renewables: http://www.vox.com/2015/4/15/8420297/fossil-fuels-race-renewables
mark212 12y ago
anybody else confused about why a guy who lives in Hawaii, one of the most temperate climates in the populated world, is spending $700 per month in electricity? serious question for Hawaiians: do people run the a/c round the clock there? Or is it something else?
- jahnu 12y ago
  Got to be Bitcoin mining.
- tlb 12y ago
  Some microclimates of Hawaii, like up Mauna Kea, get fairly cold. Electric heat can use a lot of power there.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Could be a business.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Many people, at least on O'ahu, live in urban areas with serious "heat island" going on. In those locations, if your windows catch the prevailing winds, you don't need a/c, or perhaps only rarely. If there are buildings or terrain blocking the breeze, however, you'll be more comfortable if you have a/c, or if you make some lifestyle changes that make it less necessary. That said, when I lived there, my bills never approached that figure, even with a/c.
- tsotha 12y ago
  It may not be A/C. A pool with a single speed pump plus an in-ground hot tub could conceivably run between four and five hundred bucks a month for heating. Of course if that's the case he could save a couple hundred bucks a month by installing a solar heating system and a two speed pump.
- damoe 12y ago
  I live on the big island and pay over $.40/KWH so a $700 bill would be more like $200 on the mainland. That is one reason why my new house is off grid solar - cheap (compared to $.40/KWH), clean electricity. The other is that the grid here is unreliable. I had 87 outage events last year for a total of 37 hours and that is not including the nine days with out power post hurricane. Now don't get me started on internet quality!!!
diafygi 12y ago
I have a solar startup that specifically focuses on automating interaction with utilities, and the excitement and ambition in the solar industry right now is off the charts. There is an unbelievable amount of momentum in favor of solar, and most solar companies see these problems as totally solvable. Hawaii is seen as a microcosm for the way the rest of the U.S. will be in 10 years or less. Here's some of the things that solar has going for it: 1. The Governor of California recently set a mandate to reach 50% renewables by 2030[1]. We want to hit this target in ten years or less. 2. The Department of Energy's Sunshot initiative is funding solar technology and software development to drive the installed cost below $1 per watt by 2017[2]. So far, we are on track to hit these targets. 3. Batteries are getting super cheap, which will turn solar into a non-intermittent source and allow solar+storage to be just as cheap as grid prices[3]. In fact, there is actually quite a bit of worry about grid defection (we are starting to see this Hawaii)[4]. 4. Wall Street is funding solar projects at a massive rate[5]. The bottleneck right now in solar is finding customers, not financiers. 5. The federal subsidy for solar is expiring in 2017, but the industry is on track to absorb the cost and continue to thrive without any subsidy[6]. This will make us much harder to kill off politically. 6. The advent of community solar will solve the renting problem, where renters be able to buy pieces of a remote solar farm since they don't own their roofs[7]. This opens up the solar market to serve the entire electricity-using population, not just the building owners. What will be hard: Stranded assets. Solar is growing so quickly that it will soon be able to replace the capacity of existing fossil-based generators that still have lifespan[8]. Investors in those assets will see them stranded. This will start with coal and natural gas plants over the next 10 years, but as batteries get cheaper and electric cars get more prevalent solar will start stranding oil assets[9]. This is where things get hard. Utilities are traditionally pretty bad competing (since they usually don't have to), but oil companies are another story. They are very used to ruthless competition and have a lot of experience bribing their way into governments. We are expecting very heavy push back from oil after 2025 because electric vehicles risk leaving already purchased oil in the ground. I, for one, can't wait until we fight that fight. It is the fight that our generation will be remembered for. P.S. The entire solar industry is hiring (including my startup). [1]: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-renewable-goals-20150108-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-renewable-goal... [2]: https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/pdfs/dpw_white_paper.pdf https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/pdfs/dpw_white_pa... [3]: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-cheap/ http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-... [4]: http://www.rmi.org/electricity_grid_defection http://www.rmi.org/electricity_grid_defection [5]: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/23/why-wall-street-is-learning-to-love-solar-energy.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/23/why-wall-st... [6]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/What-Happens-When-the-ITC-Expires https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/What-Happens-Wh... [7]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Solar-Summit-Slide-Show-The-Evolution-of-Solar https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Solar-Summit-Sl... [8]: http://www.utilitydive.com/news/jon-wellinghoff-utilities-are-not-driving-clean-energy-growth/292912/ http://www.utilitydive.com/news/jon-wellinghoff-utilities-ar... Disclosure: Jon is one of our advisors. [9]: http://theenergycollective.com/energydeborah/2216626/podcast-energy-247-are-stranded-assets-oil-and-gas-myth-or-reality http://theenergycollective.com/energydeborah/2216626/podcast...
Corrado 12y ago
I think that a home battery product from Tesla might help with some of these worries. If the rumors are true, Tesla want to take their existing car battery technology and turn it into a wall mountable product. This would allow homeowners to generate their own electricity during the day and use it at night. I'm not saying that people will completely drop off of the grid (though I'm sure some will) but it might be a way for the utility companies to manage peak demand. There is possibly even a good small business idea in building software to handle this type of thing.
vishaldpatel 12y ago
Pretty awesome. The energy companies would turn from energy producers to energy storage and distribution. Really exciting indeed! =)
- tsotha 12y ago
  The root of the problem here is storage is more expensive than production.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
It is an interesting conundrum. I'm looking forward to whole house inverters with decent battery packs to take me completely off grid. At that point a simple fuel cell tied to the gas line to top off the battery pack when low on energy and you're good to go.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
fapjacks 12y ago
HECO is the central and most prominent racket of all on those islands. Just ask anybody living there.
rurabe 12y ago
Is it really that hard to forecast the amount of power residential PV generates? I'm pretty sure you could build a model that is pretty good just based on weather data, but failing that why not just put a single small PV panel on each (plant, substation, power pole... choose your level of granularity) and have it report back the amount of solar energy in that location? That should get you a very good idea of the amount of power coming in.

96 points by kpozin 12y ago

It seems inevitable that continued advances in PV will either destroy the power utilities or force them to reinvent their business as electricity brokers (focusing on distribution and/or storage). Regulatory capture can slow this trend. But as the article indicates, it's only temporary. Advances in energy storage and moderated consumption allows customers to disengage from the grid entirely.

grecy 12y ago
I feel like this is one good example of big changes coming to the world and traditionally established big business in the next 5-10-25 years. Hilariously, many of the following big business have "guaranteed profits" from the Government, which is also going to have to change. If you're in the business of making electricity by burning stuff, or you sell oil, or cable TV, or internet, or 50 other good examples, you had better start reinventing your business now. Those business make very rich people richer, so they're going to fight it tooth and nail, which is a shame when they could be putting that effort into reinvention.
- tsotha 12y ago
  >Hilariously, many of the following big business have "guaranteed profits" from the Government, which is also going to have to change. I doubt that will change. If you want companies to have enormous amounts of idle capacity waiting around for a cloudy day then you have to make sure they can make money.
  - grecy 12y ago
    We're not going to need that capacity anymore, so we don't need the companies anymore. i.e. when the massive majority of houses and business have their own solar and storage, we don't need to pour billions into coal plants and the grid to have it sitting around waiting for... nothing.
    - tsotha 12y ago
      I don't see how that will ever make sense. The only way you can guarantee your house will have enough power is to overbuild the storage by quite a bit. It's not worth the money.
      - grecy 12y ago
        When the majority of houses have a good amount of solar and storage, then the grid we already have will be more than enough, therefore it can go into "maintenance" mode. (likely even reduction, I suspect)
pingswept 12y ago
I agree. If I were a utility, I would be working hard to figure out how to be a storage broker, because if homeowners figure out storage without the utility, the utility will eventually be left with nothing other than large industrial consumers (which might be a decent business, but probably less than half the size of the utility's current market).

kpozin 12y ago

Can anyone comment on the claim that private solar power generation affects the stability of the grid? What kinds of infrastructure changes would be needed to properly support power generation in private homes?

HarryHirsch 12y ago
Large-scale electricity storage is what is needed. One vanadium battery per block.
dragontamer 12y ago
Well for one, whenever a power-line goes dead... the Solar panels need to shut off so that the workers can safely replace the powerline. There's nothing quite like "Oh, some home in this neighborhood is still powering this powerline, despite the fact that we've shut off all the other power sources". That's quite the real "shocker" to the poor worker.
- jellicle 12y ago
  This is required of all rooftop solar installations, and automatic. The problem you think exists... doesn't exist.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    I suspect if this weren't the case we would already have heard about all the burned houses. There's nothing the media likes to hype more than something scary and new. Of course, this is why engineers and electricians are licensed.
brandmeyer 12y ago
There is a disconnect between market forces in energy production right now. Right now, short-term grid frequency and voltage stability (periods of seconds to a few min) is regulated automatically by the governor response of the various generators on the grid. These governors bid in advance to set their proportional gain for frequency stability. Basically, they promise to autonomously raise or lower their throttle in the future based on the observed grid frequency and voltage, and get paid later when they make good on their promise. Long-term stability (periods of 15 min or so) are regulated with market action in the spot market for power. Very long term stability is regulated by markets that clear 24 hours in advance of their estimated delivery. However, some energy producers effectively have flat rate contracts that don't participate directly in grid stability. Wind and nuclear will negotiate a fixed power-purchase agreement (typical prices are about 50 USD/MW-hr or so in the US) that will be fixed for years at a time. Likewise, residential solar customers sell back their power under the same, basically fixed rate schedule that they use to buy power. So, as the penetration of fixed-rate power increases into the market, the pricing volatility continues to increase as well. There are technologies that can help. In fact, it is trivially easy to get a grid-tied inverter to be sensitive to grid changes with controls that model virtual inertia, impedance, throttle, and so on. This is part of what I do as a controls engineer. The difficulty isn't in implementing such controls, it is in adjusting the markets such that all of the existing players are comfortable with the result. Witness this in Hawaii - the retail price of power is so high that it makes obvious good sense to install your own generation. But instead of adjusting the rates to reflect the new availability of supply, the incumbent utility seeks to raise barriers to competition instead.

revelation 12y ago

Hawaii is a particular shit show when it comes to electricity utilities. From their own page on renewable energy, no less: Electricity can be made from a variety of energy sources. Some are fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. Over 90 percent of all the energy used in Hawaii for electricity, surface and air transportation comes from imported fossil fuels, mostly oil but some coal. (The synthetic natural gas used in Hawaii is refined here from crude oil.) I think nobody here has the patience to wait for this particular dynosaur-consuming monster to catch up. Heres their current fuel mix: http://www.hawaiianelectric.com/heco/Clean-Energy/Latest-Clean-Energy-News/About-Our-Fuel-Mix?cpsextcurrchannel=1#5 http://www.hawaiianelectric.com/heco/Clean-Energy/Latest-Cle... Scroll down to see to see Oil listed at >60%.

jellicle 12y ago
Pretty harsh criticisms. You must be an expert. Ok, what electrical generation capacity would you have built for Hawaii?
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Distributed solar on roofs, offshore wind, and combined cycle natural gas for peaking and base load until renewables complete their buildout.
  - falsestprophet 12y ago
    How do you get natural gas to Hawaii fifty years ago? You can't. You would use oil tankers like they did.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Nobody is criticizing the Hawaiian electric grid of the 1960s.
      - ars 12y ago
        Yes they are because it's the same grid as 2015. Power grids are built to last centuries, they are not replaced or changed quickly.

w8rbt 12y ago

What would happen if tens of millions of vehicles started feeding power grids while sitting in parking lots. I think that could happen someday soon. Edit: Bob Bruninga has written a bit about solar power in cars. Great content. http://www.aprs.org/APRS-SPHEV.html http://www.aprs.org/APRS-SPHEV.html

DanBlake 12y ago

The issue here is the mandate that when you create electricity with solar that the electric company must buy that electricity from you as you feed it back into the grid, regardless if they currently need it or not based on demand. These power companies dont want to become energy storage companies, its too expensive. They prefer to simply make as much electricity at the moment as is needed. I agree with the electric companies on this point. If they dont need the electricity, why should they be forced to buy it? That will increase costs for non-solar customers as they end up footing the bill for the battery storage needed by solar customers. I think the proper way to do these installs is to have customers always have on site batteries which store the energy for their own homes use. Yes, its nice to sell back electricity to the grid, but that feels like a very hackish way to use 'solar'. It makes sense also. If you want to save money on your electricity, you need to make your own, so you draw less from the grid- Not make it for someone else when nobody wants it. Does anyone know if the power company is required to buy all forms of electricity currently? Could you just setup thousands of solar panels in a field you own and demand money from the grid? Seems like a easy return on investment, depending on the cost of panels/equipment.

maxerickson 12y ago
The laws are usually based on "net metering", so they probably only apply to the amount of electricity you can pass through a residential meter.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
You are conflating the electricity producers with the grid. The grid itself actually saves money by installing storage, when compared to upgrading links, and does so when it can. As to, if they do not need the power, why should they buy it? Well, there are two reasons, one is that everyone else on the grid already gets to, so it would be anti-competitive to not allow it for the little guys, and the other is that someone will always want power, so it makes economic sense to buy the power and build storage to offset it and make money through arbitrage.
brownbat 12y ago
Most net metering programs take solar from a home when the grid is facing its highest demand and energy is most expensive for the power company. They then provide a credit to your bill in watts. With a solar installation, you're drawing energy at night, when the grid basically wants to give away power to keep things balanced. So you contribute a dollar worth of power, and you take out the same power at a later point in time, and the power company basically gives you a 5 cent credit. The power companies make fistfulls of cash on the arbitrage. They still hate it though, because distributed power generation threatens the model of power monopolies that get to fix prices while steadily reducing service. Hawaii in particular has faced historically terrible load balancing, so some of the distributed generation is a response to the poor existing services and constant outages. HECO basically created all the incentives for the public to hate and want to work around them. You couldn't just give them an out on whether they wanted to buy the power or not, since they despise distributed solar generation. They'd just build a messy and expensive quick spin up generator, buy expensive power from that during midday, and claim they don't "need" the solar, to deter investment in the technology, even though it'd be better for everyone if they bought the solar. You can't ask a kid how much he needs foul tasting medicine. Sometimes you just have to deliver it.

tedsanders 12y ago

I once worked at a utility studying this very issue. The typical worries about solar are: +Power intermittency (rapid, uncontrolled changes in power can push the voltage and frequency outside acceptable levels. This reduces reliability and can destroy electronics.) +Voltage regulation (also, on a local level, PV can mess with voltage compensators, pushing voltage outside of acceptable levels at the end of voltage regulation zones) +Morning power surplus (lots of solar power will drop the baseline demand from ~4AM to noon, reducing the amount of cheap baseline power you can run) +Harmonics (crummy inverters can inject unwanted sine wave harmonics into the grid, again bad for electronics) +Fault current danger (if a tree takes down a power line, both sides can be remain live if power is being pushed onto the grid by PV on both sides) +Inverter tripping (the main way to fix the fault current problem is to mandate that inverters passively follow the grid's voltage/frequency and then disconnect if they detect problems. However, with high PV penetration this has its own problem: a transient fluctuation can cause a domino chain reaction where all the inverters turn off, taking the grid down with them.) +Power factor/vars (one important function for the grid is to keep current and voltage in phase, but today's PV inverters are dumb and blindly produce power with a power factor of 1, which can mess with automatic capacitor banks meant to help counteract the inductive load of the grid) Now, some of these problems are more real than others, and many don't become an issue until PV penetration reaches like 30%. The good news is that these are all solvable problems. Energy storage or additional natural gas peakers can fix the intermittency problem, and for the other problems the grid can be redesigned to allow better two-way power flow and inverters can be designed to produce higher quality power. However, the bad news is that all of these fixes are expensive and all of them take years. Furthermore, many utilities do not have the expertise or confidence to make big changes to their grid and still guarantee reliable high quality power. Utilities are known for being slow and risk-averse, but they are risk-averse for a reason - blackouts are very costly to society. Another issue for the utility is how to charge for power. Historically, utilities have tried to keep things simple for residential customers by charging only for power consumed. However, if residential PV becomes popular, utilities will have no choice but to change their pricing model so that they can be compensated for the non-kWh value they provide (e.g., reliability, stability, option value, power quality regulation). The bottom line is that the problems from high PV penetration are real. Utilities are cautious, not evil, and they have good reasons to be. (Also, I think it's ridiculous when people claim that PV will kill utilities - barring a radical shift in technology/economics, wires and pooled power regulation and economies of scale make a grid hugely valuable, even if power generation becomes more distributed.) That said, these are all solvable problems and I am hopeful and optimistic about the long-term future of solar power.

transfire 12y ago

The cost is still too high, so the electric companies have little to worry about in the short run as long as they can find ways to improve their own margins. Of course lobbying for regulatory fees and reduced buy-back rates is one way to do that, but the utilities best be careful there. That could cause a blow back reaction. In the long run though it is all downhill. Battery tech is getting better at around 8% per year. Solar efficiency isn't far behind. What cost $20,000 now to add solar or $40,000 to get off-grid completely, will cost half that in about 10 to 15 years. If the trend lines continue then in 20 to 30 years years its a done deal. No house will ever be built again without it's own power generation system.

bradleyjg 12y ago
You can't get off the grid completely unless you are a) willing to suffer some downtime occasionally, b) way overbuild storage as compared to typical needs, or c) have your own backup fossil fuel generator. Any way you cut it high availability costs money. If you expect the grid to handle backup for you then you should expect to pay them to do so. TANSTAAFL
- transfire 12y ago
  I don't think (a) is true because (b) and/or (c) is exactly what people will eventually do --although in the case of (c) it will be hydrogen fuel cells.
  - darkmighty 12y ago
    It costs at least some $400/kWh for battery storage. That amounts to $12k dollars for each house for supplying average consumption; that's a huge cost already. If you want (a) to be false, I guess you need to multiply that by two at least. It just doesn't make sense to make each house do it individually, the grid is a wonderful technology that reduces this risks, smooths consumption and provides storage/generation economies of scale. It just doesn't make sense to abolish it entirely for all but the most isolated places.

themgt 12y ago

If the utilities drag their feet, their could be reasonably good micro/neighborhood/apartment complex-level solutions - $100-250k of batteries on a loan & small buy-in per-unit, and the batteries & smart-system can optimize the buy/sell process around historical/current usage & prices & storage levels.

tzs 12y ago

Isn't Hawaii a special case because of its isolation? If so many people install solar in Southern California or Arizona that the local utility has more power coming in during the day than it can use or store, it can sell the excess via the national grid to someplace that can use it. As far as I've been able to determine from the internet, there is no connection between Hawaii power grids and the mainland. In fact, it looks like the grids of each island might be isolated from the others.

david2777 12y ago
Exactly. None of the islands grids are connected. I worked for a power plant on the big island a few years ago and even then there was a big issue with too much power during the day and not enough at night. Coupling that with the intermittent wind power and you have a very hard grid to maintain.
- tsotha 12y ago
  Why aren't they connected? Is it just too expensive? Seems like it would be a big advantage to do so.
  - McKayDavis 12y ago
    NextEra (the energy company that recently bought HECO) is looking to do just this. A Sept. 2013 report by them estimates a capital cost of approximately $600 million for a 200 MW cable connect between Maui and Oahu. (source page 8 of [1]) This is the low end of the scale with other estimates ranging from $553 Million to $1.24 Billion (page 9). Note that this does not connect the Big Island to the grid either. The preliminary proposed route can be seen on page 84 of the report. [1] http://nexteraenergyhawaii.com/pdf/initial_comments.pdf http://nexteraenergyhawaii.com/pdf/initial_comments.pdf

spenrose 12y ago

An excellent overview of the scale at which we need to integrate renewables: http://www.vox.com/2015/4/15/8420297/fossil-fuels-race-renewables

mark212 12y ago

anybody else confused about why a guy who lives in Hawaii, one of the most temperate climates in the populated world, is spending $700 per month in electricity? serious question for Hawaiians: do people run the a/c round the clock there? Or is it something else?

jahnu 12y ago
Got to be Bitcoin mining.
tlb 12y ago
Some microclimates of Hawaii, like up Mauna Kea, get fairly cold. Electric heat can use a lot of power there.
maxerickson 12y ago
Could be a business.
jessaustin 12y ago
Many people, at least on O'ahu, live in urban areas with serious "heat island" going on. In those locations, if your windows catch the prevailing winds, you don't need a/c, or perhaps only rarely. If there are buildings or terrain blocking the breeze, however, you'll be more comfortable if you have a/c, or if you make some lifestyle changes that make it less necessary. That said, when I lived there, my bills never approached that figure, even with a/c.
tsotha 12y ago
It may not be A/C. A pool with a single speed pump plus an in-ground hot tub could conceivably run between four and five hundred bucks a month for heating. Of course if that's the case he could save a couple hundred bucks a month by installing a solar heating system and a two speed pump.
damoe 12y ago
I live on the big island and pay over $.40/KWH so a $700 bill would be more like $200 on the mainland. That is one reason why my new house is off grid solar - cheap (compared to $.40/KWH), clean electricity. The other is that the grid here is unreliable. I had 87 outage events last year for a total of 37 hours and that is not including the nine days with out power post hurricane. Now don't get me started on internet quality!!!

diafygi 12y ago

I have a solar startup that specifically focuses on automating interaction with utilities, and the excitement and ambition in the solar industry right now is off the charts. There is an unbelievable amount of momentum in favor of solar, and most solar companies see these problems as totally solvable. Hawaii is seen as a microcosm for the way the rest of the U.S. will be in 10 years or less. Here's some of the things that solar has going for it: 1. The Governor of California recently set a mandate to reach 50% renewables by 2030[1]. We want to hit this target in ten years or less. 2. The Department of Energy's Sunshot initiative is funding solar technology and software development to drive the installed cost below $1 per watt by 2017[2]. So far, we are on track to hit these targets. 3. Batteries are getting super cheap, which will turn solar into a non-intermittent source and allow solar+storage to be just as cheap as grid prices[3]. In fact, there is actually quite a bit of worry about grid defection (we are starting to see this Hawaii)[4]. 4. Wall Street is funding solar projects at a massive rate[5]. The bottleneck right now in solar is finding customers, not financiers. 5. The federal subsidy for solar is expiring in 2017, but the industry is on track to absorb the cost and continue to thrive without any subsidy[6]. This will make us much harder to kill off politically. 6. The advent of community solar will solve the renting problem, where renters be able to buy pieces of a remote solar farm since they don't own their roofs[7]. This opens up the solar market to serve the entire electricity-using population, not just the building owners. What will be hard: Stranded assets. Solar is growing so quickly that it will soon be able to replace the capacity of existing fossil-based generators that still have lifespan[8]. Investors in those assets will see them stranded. This will start with coal and natural gas plants over the next 10 years, but as batteries get cheaper and electric cars get more prevalent solar will start stranding oil assets[9]. This is where things get hard. Utilities are traditionally pretty bad competing (since they usually don't have to), but oil companies are another story. They are very used to ruthless competition and have a lot of experience bribing their way into governments. We are expecting very heavy push back from oil after 2025 because electric vehicles risk leaving already purchased oil in the ground. I, for one, can't wait until we fight that fight. It is the fight that our generation will be remembered for. P.S. The entire solar industry is hiring (including my startup). [1]: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-renewable-goals-20150108-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-renewable-goal... [2]: https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/pdfs/dpw_white_paper.pdf https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/pdfs/dpw_white_pa... [3]: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-cheap/ http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-... [4]: http://www.rmi.org/electricity_grid_defection http://www.rmi.org/electricity_grid_defection [5]: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/23/why-wall-street-is-learning-to-love-solar-energy.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/23/why-wall-st... [6]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/What-Happens-When-the-ITC-Expires https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/What-Happens-Wh... [7]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Solar-Summit-Slide-Show-The-Evolution-of-Solar https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Solar-Summit-Sl... [8]: http://www.utilitydive.com/news/jon-wellinghoff-utilities-are-not-driving-clean-energy-growth/292912/ http://www.utilitydive.com/news/jon-wellinghoff-utilities-ar... Disclosure: Jon is one of our advisors. [9]: http://theenergycollective.com/energydeborah/2216626/podcast-energy-247-are-stranded-assets-oil-and-gas-myth-or-reality http://theenergycollective.com/energydeborah/2216626/podcast...

Corrado 12y ago

I think that a home battery product from Tesla might help with some of these worries. If the rumors are true, Tesla want to take their existing car battery technology and turn it into a wall mountable product. This would allow homeowners to generate their own electricity during the day and use it at night. I'm not saying that people will completely drop off of the grid (though I'm sure some will) but it might be a way for the utility companies to manage peak demand. There is possibly even a good small business idea in building software to handle this type of thing.

vishaldpatel 12y ago

Pretty awesome. The energy companies would turn from energy producers to energy storage and distribution. Really exciting indeed! =)

tsotha 12y ago
The root of the problem here is storage is more expensive than production.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

It is an interesting conundrum. I'm looking forward to whole house inverters with decent battery packs to take me completely off grid. At that point a simple fuel cell tied to the gas line to top off the battery pack when low on energy and you're good to go.

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fapjacks 12y ago

HECO is the central and most prominent racket of all on those islands. Just ask anybody living there.

rurabe 12y ago

Is it really that hard to forecast the amount of power residential PV generates? I'm pretty sure you could build a model that is pretty good just based on weather data, but failing that why not just put a single small PV panel on each (plant, substation, power pole... choose your level of granularity) and have it report back the amount of solar energy in that location? That should get you a very good idea of the amount of power coming in.