Hawai’i is the first—and only—state in the nation with a resource plan to achieve all renewable generation.
This path started in 2001 with Act 272 setting a renewable portfolio goal. Three years later, Senate Bill 2474 set an enforceable renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of 20% by 2020. The subsequent five years saw various tweaks made to the law, mostly to incorporate energy efficiency measures. In June 2009, an amendment to House Bill 1464 extended and increased the RPS to 40% of “net electricity sales” by 2030. June 2015 saw Governor David Ige signing HB 623, which set an unprecedented 100% RPS by 2045.
A year and a half later, the Hawaiian Electric Companies (serving 95% of the state) filed their Power Supply Improvement Plan (PSIP) that laid out a resource plan for attaining all renewable generation by 2045. The plan calls for adding large-scale resources as well as maximizing distributed energy resources. Solari played a key role in writing and communicating this PSIP.
In June 2017, Hawaiian Electric filed what is essentially a companion grid modernization plan. This plan proposes to update the energy networks on the five islands served, which paves the path to bring online more renewable resources while maintaining reliability and adding customer choices.
Our most recent blog post,
The Hawaiian Plan: 100% Renewable Energy by 2045 (and companion position paper), discusses these two plans in greater detail, and addresses the need to communicate with customers.
Will future resource planning for increasing renewable penetration require concurrent and complementary grid modernization planning, or even an overhaul of the entire resource planning process? We are researching this very issue, and plan to publish our findings early next year.
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