10-08-2012, 03:55 AM
I agree that more people should get involved in the process to help determine what will work best for everyone. The answer will not be to put solar panels on every home. There will still be businesses and apartments and others that solar systems will just not work for. Even homeowners would have to make pretty radical lifestyle changes to disconnect from the grid. And of course there has to be some way to store the power for nighttime use as well as for the areas that don’t get as much sun. There is no way with today’s technology to eliminate a power grid supplied by various sources of electricity. Unfortunately our County has a huge distribution system because of its size and the low population density here means we all pay more individually to have it.
I can’t imagine anyone living here supporting the idea of industrializing Puna. Our island doesn’t need that much more electricity. I think that more development would only be viable if there was a way to export the excess power to other islands and most likely right now Oahu would be the only one that could use it or afford it. So let’s resolve that all of our power resources are limited to serving Hawaii County. That might be a goal everyone can get behind. But don’t just eliminate Geothermal as one of the options. There has to be a safe way to utilize one of our own resources. Maybe we have found it or maybe not but I’m not ready to stop considering it.
Jay
I can’t imagine anyone living here supporting the idea of industrializing Puna. Our island doesn’t need that much more electricity. I think that more development would only be viable if there was a way to export the excess power to other islands and most likely right now Oahu would be the only one that could use it or afford it. So let’s resolve that all of our power resources are limited to serving Hawaii County. That might be a goal everyone can get behind. But don’t just eliminate Geothermal as one of the options. There has to be a safe way to utilize one of our own resources. Maybe we have found it or maybe not but I’m not ready to stop considering it.
Jay
Jay