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HECO gets creative
to keep the lights on
The utility looks for new
power sources and innovative
ways to trim rising demand
Hawaii's powerful construction boom is putting the heat on Hawaiian Electric Co. to keep up with rising energy demands, a point that was driven home by last week's close call with blackouts on Oahu.
Meeting on electricity demands
Hawaiian Electric Co. will hold a meeting next month to hear public comment on its Integrated Resource Plan, a 20-year outline of how it will meet the demand for electricity on Oahu.
On the company Web site (www.heco.com) in early November, HECO will post five options for how it might reduce customer demands and meet their needs, said Lynne Unemori, director of corporate communications. After taking into account public comments, HECO will present a final plan to the Public Utilities Commission in 2005. The public hearing meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Nov. 17 at Farrington High School.
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HECO officials point to strong development growth, including the new Wal-Mart store and the under-construction University of Hawaii Medical School in Kakaako.
"The load is growing so quickly because of a robust economy, a hot economy," said Tom Joaquin, HECO's senior vice president of operations. "The residential sector in particular is growing at a strong clip." New housing is being added around Oahu -- and existing customers are using more electricity, he said.
And on the horizon there's more: New military housing projects and expanding programs like the Stryker Brigade, plus the redevelopment of the downtown waterfront.
So Joaquin and HECO are searching for ways to meet the increasing need, and, when possible, reduce the demand.
Ideally, HECO likes to have 30 percent more generating power available than it needs, Joaquin said. On Wednesday with record-high demand of 1,327 megawatts and several generators out of service, that margin squeaked closer to 5 percent, spurring HECO to ask for customers to cut back to avoid a blackout.
"If we were in California, we would have asked the Grand Coulee Dam to release the floodgates and give us some power," Joaquin said. But each Hawaiian island has to be self-sufficient in its electricity generation.
In an interview Friday, Joaquin outlined some key moves HECO plans in the near future to improve its cushion between demand and supply.
» The PUC approved on Thursday the utility's plan to save 17 megawatts of power during peak load emergencies by temporarily cutting off home hot water heaters. This innovative program would ask residential customers to volunteer to have their water heaters controllable by a wireless signal. If and when power loads get dangerously close to maximum, up to 25,000 water heaters could be shut off. Participating customers would get a $3 monthly credit on their bill for participating, whether or not their water heater was actually shut off.
"We call them 'negawatts,' " Joaquin said, because they temporarily cut the power consumption by that amount. The program's details will be worked out early next year, he said.
» Still being considered by the PUC is a HECO proposal to save another 21 "negawatts" by having commercial customers sign up to have electric appliances of their choice be turned off by the utility in time of need. Examples of equipment that might be designated include decorative fountains or air conditioning chillers.
Both the "negawatt" programs would help the utility manage peak loads, which often occur 5-9 p.m. when many people get home from work and start using appliances and taking showers.
» HECO will complete a yearlong monitoring of the wind conditions on the ridge above the Kahe Power Plant in March. The research should determine if up to 50 megawatts of wind power generation would be possible. If so, the next step would be to ask area residents for their opinion about wind power there.
» If the city's H-POWER plant expands by adding a third boiler, it could supply about 8 megawatts more of electricity.
» Continue offering $750 HECO rebates to homeowners who install solar hot water heaters. In combination with $1,750 in state tax credits and low-interest city loans, the rebates encourage people to invest in the heaters. Though solar water heaters don't generate power, they do ease the load on the electric company and on people's wallets.
» Assist customers to build small power plants on their sites, which would burn synthetic natural gas to generate up to 11 megawatts of electricity and simultaneously use the "waste" heat to provide water heating or air-conditioning. Potential customers include large hotels, hospitals or military bases. The PUC is considering how it would regulate this "distributed generation" or "combined heat and power."
» Build a 100-megawatt diesel-fired generator in Campbell Industrial Park, which is also capable of burning bio-fuel, ethanol or hydrogen.
"If we're wildly successful with all these other things we're doing, we might defer building a new power plant," Joaquin said.
The benefit of that is no big capital cost to pass on to consumers through rates.
» Depending on the price of oil, which fires most of HECO's existing power sources, it also would consider a coal-fired plant, on the same property as the AES-Hawaii plant that now sells power to HECO.
But both said the utility should go further.
It should contract with consultants to reduce consumer energy needs, and build or allow many more smaller power plants closer to users, to trim transmission costs, Curtis said.
"I'd put in a bunch of 1- to 10-megawatt systems on commercial properties throughout East Oahu and military bases, the whole Downtown, Waikiki, and UH," said Curtis, who frequently testifies on energy issues before the Legislature and PUC.
"We don't have time for a long phase-over between fossil fuels and renewables," Curtis said. "We have to begin an aggressive phase-over now. To have too long a phase-over is to cook the Earth. Science has discovered global warming is for real."
Homeowner interest in making their own electricity will come, Joaquin said, when the cost of photovoltaics, which now cost about $20,000, get low enough that people can see a return on their investment, Joaquin said.
For example, Joaquin said, only a handful of homeowners have signed up to sell any excess electricity they generate back to the utility via "net-metering."
"In the long term we feel we need to look harder at alternatives," Mikulina said. "With the price of oil above $50 a barrel, the smartest thing is to invest in technology."
"Hawaii has a lot of wind and sun," Mikulina said, and the price of harvesting energy from them decreasing substantially year to year, even as oil prices have gone up.
"Energy conservation is an environmental activity that has economic benefit," said Mikulina. "When we turn off lights or install solar hot water heaters, it helps our pocket book as well as the environment."
