Tam Hunt - PGV Statement

[knieft]

There are farms and ranches on the mainland, one house on hundreds or thousands of acres, electric lines connected to the next house a mile away, the next another mile… talk about a large grid with few customers.

And yet, they pay less per kWh than Big Island HECO customers.

I was reminded of the same in northern Wisconsin. Perhaps Hawaii pretty much missing out on the New Deal rural electrification program is a big part of the result considering so many areas of the big island remain off grid.

When we moved to Opihikao in the late 90s, we were told that we could connect to the grid by paying for pole/wire extensions from near the “truck ramp” on Kamaili road to our property for $80k and then would be responsible for poles/wiring from the road to our house 700ish feet away. All for the privilege of paying a couple hundred dollars a month electric bill and power outages. But there was a landline we used for a while.

The situation is the same today, but I am sure the price would be considerably more.

A neighbor with 27 acres bought a connecting lot in the little subdivision mauka that was grid connected simply to get wired from there instead of paying for the non-existent line along the road.

Interesting that fiber cable has reached us (but not doable being so far from road) using the telephone poles, which I guess aren’t good enough for power. (Starlink bill is 60% less than when we signed up so that is cool.)

Our original off grid system was 12 volt panels, most of which have reached their end of life. There is usually no discussion of the fact that solar panels are not forever and will eventually need to be replaced, even though the modern panels are gonna produce more energy than used in their manufacture. Still.

Though probably our particular modern panels will be under lava before they give up. 

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It is no concern of mine how Oahu runs their grid, but I remain awestruck that geothermal isn’t powering the entire side of the island with very reasonable rates. Then even everyone’s Ryobis and electric cars would be closer to “green”. Light rail (on our few major roads) and/or bubbling off hydrogen all night to power transportation seem like a real possibility as well. But 30 years and nothing has changed really. The hypocrisy of eco-warriors fighting geothermal has not changed either, though I suspect they don’t get all the credit for suppressing geothermal…even with the “no fracking” policy.

Cheers,
Kirt

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https://votehawaii.org/candidates/hunt-tamlyn-tam

“she/her” is referred to a few times…?

Cheers,
Kirt