HONOLULU (KHON2) -- More options for consumers to choose whom to buy power from might be coming to Hawaii, in what would be a sea-change from the monopoly HECO has held for decades.
It's a surprising revelation that came about in an Empowered forum KHON2 put together to tackle power reliability issues in the wake of recurring blackouts.
“We're going to start that,” said Leo Asuncion, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission. “I've asked my staff if we can start it on July 1st, open a docket, an investigative docket around taking all the discussions over the past 20 plus years.”
Asuncion is talking about wheeling -- a utility industry term for when a power producer that is not the main utility uses the common grid to transmit electricity to a buyer. In other words, renting a ride on HECO's lines to give consumers another choice.
It's something that's been talked about for decades but never gets out the gate, leaving HECO on most islands, and KIUC on Kauai, as the sole power companies, unlike most other major mainland cities where wheeling is common and competition is broad.
"In fact, when I was at the utility, we were discussing it, Asuncion said. "The commission is going to take a look at what is the right framework for wheeling in this state? We're already doing it in small areas like community-based renewables and the kind. But this is looking at it in totality. Can it be a model that the utilities use? Can it be a model that everyone else can use?"
It's not entirely foreign to Hawaii. A new community solar project recently launched on Molokai is akin to a wheeling model in that the power made there is distributed on the utility's lines to the benefit of buyers elsewhere.
“Shared solar actually allows you to generate in one place and to basically give people credit throughout the island,” explained Mark Glick from the Hawaii State Energy Office. "That will be the first large scale community-based renewable energy that definitely deserves a broader look. I would say it's not been as effective as that could be, and it's certainly taken much longer. So I had discussions with Leo and the Public Utilities Commission. I think that's going to be something that they might be able to address through rules."
All of this came up after KHON2 called on utility, regulation, policy, lawmaking and union leaders to find out what's being done quickly to prevent recurring power problems from becoming the norm and make Hawaii's power sources more reliable, plentiful and sustainable. The recent recurring outages are causing many consumers to wonder aloud: Can HECO keep the lights on and could other providers or models alternative to an investor-owned monopoly do it better?
“I think that on Kauai, we've shown that it can happen out here in the Hawaiian islands,” explained Beth Amaro from the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative. “It takes a utility being up for sale or able to be acquired, and so that's probably the biggest piece. But it would just take, as what happened here on Kauai, a group of individuals who would be willing to put in the sweat equity to work with the National Renewables Cooperative Organization to work with resources at hand to make it happen, but it certainly could be replicable on other islands."
But even lawmakers who have held HECO to account say that's easier said than done.
“Oahu’s economy alone is 40 times the size of Kauai,” said Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, chairman of the Senate Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee. “So just saying what worked on one island will work on another island is not as simple. Those types of transitions can be very disruptive, but we do have a model to compare to, and so it's something that we've taken very seriously at the legislature.”
For its part, HECO says they hear the community loud and clear and they're working hard to keep the trust.
“Safe, reliable power that's cost effective and that people can afford, taking care of the people that are least in a position to advocate for themselves,” said Jim Kelly, Hawaiian Electric vice president of government and community relations. “Everyone is committed to the 100 percent renewable goal and the decarbonization of our economy. There are disagreements about the best way to get there, the fastest way to get there. But the good thing is that we're all together working on this.”
