2014-12-18 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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basically some nice pictures on our geothermal farm, some pictures on our wind farms, our run of the river hydroelectric which is 100 years old. So one thing people may not know about hydroelectric is once you put the power plant, putting it in, it lasts for up to 100 years. So like Nikola Tesla who did the Niagara Falls power plant (inaudible) for 100 years and this particular run of the river plant is running for a 100 years with a thth couple of refurbishments in between. We are 5, the next slide, slide eight. We are 5 in the United States in solar, in the amount of photovoltaics we have; and that’s th significant, because we aren’t very large compared to other states, but we are 5 in the United States in solar electricity. Ms. Kelly: Who’s first? Mr. Rolston: I believe it would be California and then, believe it or not, in the world, Germany because of their green regulations wanting to integrate a lot of solar and they are having problems with that at this point. So the next slide, slide nine, shows our renewable energy future. We are the one island that could get to be 100% renewable energy so we are targeted to lead not only Hawai‘i, but the United States for the next 10, 20, 50 years in renewable energy anywhere in the United States. So what’s significant is the leadership and most things that we’ll have and that are cutting edge in renewable energy integration will happen here. So that’s also significant because a lot of stuff we’re trying now has not been proven and a lot of stuff we’re trying now, you know frankly, cutting edge kind of like (inaudible) type stuff. So in the future you’ll see electric vehicles hooking up to a residence and going completely off grid with the car being able to power the house for like three days with electric vehicle battery. You’ll see things like micro grids where a whole community goes off grid and they will supply its own power. These things will happen on our island first. A couple projects that we’re working on that will be not just cutting edge, but kind of what of booted the whole renewable energy movement in Hawai‘i is OTEC. We started with OTEC down at NELHA, some refer it as OTEC, but we started in ‘73 the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. What’s significant about Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is, when you think about solar, so what’s significant about the ocean is it’s really the world largest solar collector, so if you will, the top of the surface of the ocean in Hawai‘i is 80 degrees and the, our ability to get down to the deep water at 3,000 feet, which is at 40 degrees, allows you to create an enormous amounts of energy. So we’re back in the OTEC game and County of Hawai‘i, island of Hawai‘i is in partnership with Japanese government to build the next OTEC at the Natural Energy Laboratory, which once again will put us on the map as far as cutting edge technology. Ms. Maddox: Will, is there a timeline for that plant? Mr. Rolston: We’ve been working on that for the last four years. Makai Ocean Engineering who has the (inaudible) tower already up is putting a 100 kilowatt OTEC as we speak, so that’s already on site. So 100 kilowatt OTEC in operation will be the largest in the world and then we are moving into a 1 megawatt OTEC which we’re negotiating currently. To build an OTEC of that size would require two to four years. Ms. Maddox: Thank you. 3