2014-12-18 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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although they were projected to save a lot of money because they, you know strong winds can break the plywood a lot of these machines especially even Lālāmilo had 100 Jacobs wind turbines and if you went to that site before they tore down the whole thing and sold the metal to China, you would see mangled metal. The winds were so powerful there it just twisted these 100 foot structures into pretzels and the plywood turbine blades would be flying to who knows where. Even at the HPA facility, I guess they call it the living laboratory at Hawai‘i Preparatory Academy, their turbines destructed; and you know, thank God, there were no children there because one of those blades just like went into the tree like a hatchet. So it just went into a real hard tree and it just buried itself. So these old wind farms, you know, are subject to very, when you have the best wind in the world, they’re subject to various (inaudible). Ms. Kelly: The new wind farm, the one that’s on the Kohala, North Kohala. Mr. Rolston: Oh yeah, the Hāwī. Ms. Kelly: Hāwī one. You know, how long is the longevity of these turbines? Mr. Rolston: Well the good news is you don’t have to worry about it because you do a power purchase agreement and the developer takes care of any damage and so they can last for 10 years or 20 years. So average projection is about 10 years, but we don’t have to worry about it because the developer is owning it and selling us the energy. Ms. Kelly: When you say selling us the energy, my understanding is they’re selling HELCO the energy. Where do we come, County people or County to benefit that? Mr. Rolston: Great, so at the West Hawai‘i Civic Center we have the developer that’s selling us energy and we pay them. At the Lālāmilo site, we’ll have developers selling us directly. Ms. Kelly: Direct? Mr. Rolston: Yeah. At the Hāwī wind site, they sell directly to HELCO. Ms. Kelly: Yeah, I know that. I was trying to figure out where does it come that the County benefit, but selling directly to the County is… Mr. Rolston: Yeah, through a power purchase agreement and some people call it public private partnerships. Mr. Mitchell: P3. Mr. Rolston: Yeah. When you have very high electricity rates like forty cents, forty-five cents, you know, you can strike deals at twenty cents where the developer makes very good money and we cut our electric bill in half. I believe that we should be getting much lower prices on our renewable cost. I don’t just believe in twenty cents per kilowatt hour, I believe in 10 cents. 9