Great description of Hawaii's electric grid.

[Frank]

not to derail this but...does using one's hybrid car battery bank as a substitute for a conventional pv system battery bank, make sense? or is it even possible? at night or on cloudy days that is, instead of pulling off the grid.

[Bullwinkle]

Read the details Frank - honda as usual has thought it thru very well. Fuel cells have been in the news before - GM was hot to trot - 'till they started catching fire.....

the fuel cells will replace batteries with stored hydrogen made by solar cells in the daytime and or natural gas should there be a period of insufficient day light

The achilles heel of generation has been storage - honda has cracked that nut imho

causes me to ponder what it would take to refine hydrogen sulfide as released by the island to hydrogen - a geochemical process that should be fairly simple... scrap that power plant........

bonus link: http://www.toledonewsnow.com/story/23515...y-refinery

[Frank]

hoooo bullwinkle...don't know how i missed the link you provided on my first read...much mahalos...think it may be time for shades, the future looks bright indeed

[Bullwinkle]

only issue is how us (me) old farts are going to pay for all this technology and have enough left over for the 3d printed kidneys.... Keeping my day job for now.........grin

[Frank]

ha!...this old fart is gonna make an effort to get to "the makery" in hilo for some training/education in the whole "3d printing" world...whats your thoughts on the use of present day hybrid cars as a backup energy system for homes?

[Bullwinkle]

hydrogen sulfide as fuel - no need for steam extraction:

http://www.electrochem.org/dl/ma/200/pdfs/0460.pdf

geochem - are you in the house?

[ericlp]

What happens when you drive your generator (your car) to work for 8 hours and your fridge needs power? Whooops.

I wouldn't wait around for honda to solve our problems. But, if it happens great. Just saying. There is a lot of feel good stories but making it happen where everyone can actually afford to do it and implementing it is another.

[OpenD]

quote:

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Originally posted by ericlpBut I feel Hawaii isn't really based on fixing any renewable problems I mean Helco in Hilo still runs off old steam turbines that are out dated and not very efficient. Efficient is a dirty word to Helco. What would it take to scrap the hilo plant for a gas Propane fired power plant?

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According to Helco's report this summer, 40% of the electricity they sell is already from renewable sources, and they're on track to hit 50% by 2015. Why in the world would you suggest diverting capital to convert one type of fossil-fuel burning plant to another kind of fossil fuel burning plant, when all forms of it have to be shipped in thousands of miles?

IIRC, the current electric energy generation mix on the Big Island includes 7% from residual oil (a byproduct of the oil refineries on Oahu), the least efficient energy source. IOW, just bump up the geothermal output and that wedge could be eliminated... but in the arena of unintended consequences, that would likely increase the price of gasoline, since residual oil would now need to be shipped back to the mainland to get rid of it.

The balance of the electricity sold in the county, about half, is generated using naphtha as the fuel. Naphtha is another fractional distillate from the oil refineries on Oahu, and therefore its cost is intertwined with the cost of gasoline. Cut off the market for naphtha and the price of gasoline will rise, as sure as the first light of morning is visible from the peak of Mauna Kea.

And need I say it... where does the propane come from? Yup, from refining oil in Oahu.

Rather than spend another penny on that obsolete technology, lets put the investment into, say, the proposed 50 KW geothermal generation plant for Kona!