And IIRC, electricity in Hawaii is so expensive because they generate most of it with diesel.
Each island is also its own isolated electric grid, so reliability is not great and shifting renewables to other islands isn't possible currently. Unfortunately, the ocean is deep between the islands and connecting them would probably cost close to a billion dollars all in. A bit of a stretch for our small state.
$0.50 a day for more reliable power.
Everything comes to Hawaii by boat or plane, and boats run on diesel. So our power plants burn diesel, instead of coal, because coal, while cheaper per unit energy, would be a whole additional supply chain just for power plants.
And yeah, there's more solar and wind every year, but not nearly enough to provide the overprovisioning and storage necessary to use it for baseline power.
The other islands burn diesel, from the refinery on Oahu.
The ships also burned heavy fuel oil until this year.
This isn't an issue. There are coal ships, coal trains, coal trucks, you name it. Storage is easier too, you just dump it.
For example, my own solar doesn't factor into the percentage of power generated in California. No one can tell you the price per kwh.
All PGE knows is that sometimes they send me power, and sometimes I send them power. They have no idea what my internal usage and costs are.
[1] https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/clean-energy-hawaii/integra... (red = saturated local electrical infra)
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/audit-of-hawaiian-electric-...
> Contrary to stakeholder criticism, Hawaiian Electric's support of Hawaii's groundbreaking 100% by 2045 renewable portfolio standard (RPS) has been strong, the audit found. "It has exceeded its mandated obligations" and criticisms "appear to be largely unfounded."
> The problem is cost, it said. Meeting the RPS and the challenge of integrating rooftop solar have led to increased workload and costs, the audit recognized. But Hawaiian Electric increased staffing "with little evidence of any business cases supporting these additions."
There's also this bit:
> Additional concerns and opposition to the plant have been raised by Native Hawaiians, who view all forms of volcanic activity as manifestations of the goddess Pele. To the Native Hawaiians who revere Pele, geothermal wells and energy production are a desecration of her body and spirit.
I think most research is focused on utilizing less unique space- rooftops, open plains, open ocean. Shorelines are tiny spaces for how ecologically unique they are, plus they tend to be highly desirable for other human uses as well.
I think it was somewhere in oceania that they were installing the protoype in. The unit looked sort of like (this)[https://imgur.com/a/ymulbWF] but wider and in hd of course.
By wider I mean it looked more like a catamaran style boat and the one in the imgur link is more like a monohull boat. The one in the video which they deployed maybe 15-30 yards off shore from a beach was where they installed it and it had branding from their company on the side and some bright yellow accents.
Fortunately there are still people working on it.
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...
I see 17 and 15c off peak. Part peak is 23 for EV-B.
I've been in countries where cooking 1 dish on electric oven will cost you $1.
Much of Europe has price hovering in between 30c to 50c during day hours normal usage, and easily more than double of that during extreme peaks like ones you have in Texas now.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Again, I specifically mean day time office, and residential "retail" price, which is 2-3 times bigger than wholesale.
Which countries in Europe charge their electricity to consumers based on 'extreme peaks' at between 60 to 100 cents? https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
In France its 18c during peak hours and 12c at night. Retail obviously.
It's a bit higher than i remember, but still.