Hawaii Has All the Right Conditions to Replace Fossil Fuels with Renewable Energy
Here’s an article about a “Perfect Storm for Renewables,” which describes how Kauai, one of the less-populated Hawaiian Islands, is poised to hit 40% renewable energy on their electricity grid. This is largely driven by homeowners who have installed solar PV, which already provides an enormous chunk of the island’s peak energy.
In truth, it wouldn’t be impossible to achieve 100%, and then go on to replace gasoline powered cars with electric vehicles. Of course, this would require energy storage, by far the most popular form of which is pumped hydro – the three components of which are off-peak energy, water, and elevation. Good news for Kauai, which boasts places of 5000+ elevation and 400 inches of annual rain.
In fact, harnessing the hydro resources alone (forget about pumping it) from the highest and wettest part of the island would generate about 150 MW, according to my calculations based on this chart, where I estimated that 15% of the island’s 562 square miles receives an average of 200 inches of rain which then falls an average of 2000 feet. That’s more than enough for the entire island, which is currently at 125 MW, even without the PV.
With a maximum speed limit of 50MPH it would be easy to have electric cars here. No real high performance needed.
Here is another article about micro grids that Arizona State University is pursuing.
http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2014_06_25_nations_largest_university_pursues_a_microgrid
Here is the resume of the person leading the charge at ASU.
http://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/people/persbio.php?pid=4739
It is good to see this kind of thing happening.
Brian
Your comment about EVs is 100% correct. I’m reminded of the work I did studying the subject for the tony but frugal island nation of Bermuda. My client was talking about the +/- 3 miles/kWh expected with freeway-capable EVs, but in actual driving conditions on those narrow roads, it’s far greater than that, unless the driver has a death-wish.
I’m glad I actually looked to see what the highest speed limit was. I was going to say you could get away with a “Citicar” but the top speed on those is 40MPH and people I have talked to that own them say you really never want to go that fast in one.
Craig,
Good point about the hydropower, but you have to know more than just the average rainfall and the average elevation drop. In order for hydropower to make sense, there must be a large river within a seal-able valley It’s about the concentration of water flow and the difficulty of securing an artificial lake. If 1000 inches of water were to fall per year on a perfectly smooth hemispherical dome, then hydropower would be more expensive than anyone could imagine.
I suspect there’s some room for hydropower – especially a hydropower option that includes a pumped storage reservoir… without the pumped storage there’s no way you could ever get to 100%, but there’s probably good geothermal resources – considering… It’s certainly possible.
The most promising thing about renewables on Hawaii (any island), is that the core electricity is derived from diesel. So your competitive price point is extremely high. You are correct, it should be doable, and it will likely be done within the next 15-20 years. But it probably won’t be much hydropower, and it certainly won’t be possible without a large hydropower storage reservoir.
Right. When you look at the topography of the mountains, you see that in certain places you get lucky and there are natural rivers; in others you’d have to do a substantial amount of earth-moving so that the rain forms rivers. I certainly haven’t studied the costs of that.
Craig,
For Hawaii, there would also be the opportunity costs. They are a tourist Mecca… People come from all over the U.S. to view the beautiful lush rainforests on the volcanic mountains… If they were to try a serious earth-moving operation that would endanger the view on the side of one of those mountains, it could harm their tourism industry, which would cost them a lot more than they would pay for electricity from diesel for the next 50 years.
There is probably a river or two that can be converted to an upper/lower reservior for pumped hydropower, and there’s solar and wind resources aplenty that could be accessed without damage… but I think the real gold-mine should be geothermal. There’s no way that, with the shallow thermal resources they have in Hawaii, they couldn’t easily beat the diesel price point with enhanced geothermal – perhaps tied to a solar thermal tower via a dual-sourced ORC (provided by Doty Energy).
😉
Yes, that’s absolutely true. Such a proposed project may receive objections on religious grounds as well.