Tam Hunt - PGV Statement

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

This fixed cost roughly equals the average retail price of electricity on the mainland..."

Another fixed cost for HECO is paying for tree trimming under electric lines every two years, because they choose to cut branches 6 inches below the wires, not several feet or to the ground so trees won’t immediately grow back.

I knew someone in central Oregon where ranches are 20 miles apart. The electric company there runs 20 miles of poles and wires for a single customer and charges them less per kWh than we pay. How many customers does HECO have in the 20 miles from HPP to Hilo?

More than one.

[MyManao]

How many customers does HECO have in the 20 miles from HPP to Hilo?

HPP to Hilo.. is that the size of your world Edge?

What about the folks in Wood Valley, or up the many long stretched to a few houses going mauka along the North Hilo and Hamakua Coast.. the same long stretches to a single property mauka off the highway in South Kona, Kau.

Are you hip to the fact that there's electricity in Waipio valley.. major infrastructure going down that pali.. to a couple houses.

How about those transmission lines over the saddle? Have you ever driven the Power Line Trail from the saddle over to Volcano and down to Kau? You can see it cross the Mauna Loa Strip Road. Big time infrastructure.. tens, hundreds, of miles without any consumers..

And what, exactly, does a spool of wire cost? A pole delivered to the Hilo base yard.. or the land it gets planted in? Do you know any linemen? You should talk story.. try to grok just how big, and expensive, our grid is.

[HiloJulie]

How dare anyone question the never-ending knowledge base of the Manao, who is always right about everything, while everyone else is wrong wrong wrong, but the cost for the installation of grid service items, such as poles, wires, etc., are considered capitalized expenses of the utility and are generally amortized over the anticipated useful life of such installed components. which range from as low as 30 years to as high as 50 years.

The price of oil is expensed when bought.

[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. 

===

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

---

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

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

Cheers,
Kirt

[kalakoa]

fiber cable has reached us (but not doable being so far from road)

Standard MST drops exist up to 2K feet, or they could hard-splice a section of middle-mile. Not impossible.

 no discussion of the fact that solar panels are not forever and will eventually need to be replaced

They still make good roofing/siding even if they no longer generate power.

[Punatang]

Vindicated: Reflections of an Early Pandemic Contrarian

Tam Hunt      April 4, 2025

"Neal Milner acknowledged in his mea culpa that the Great Barrington Declaration, which I endorsed early on, was indeed “an opportunity to do science as it’s supposed to be done: A group of knowledgeable experts having an open discussion that adhered to debate, critical examination including self-examination, doubt and self-doubt.” He admits that he “uncritically accepted the demeaning counter-to-science language of the scientists critical of the declaration” and “didn’t think much about this even close to home — professors censuring their colleagues for advocating dissenting views.”

The lesson here isn’t “I told you so,” but rather a plea that we never again abandon rationality during crises. When societies are gripped by fear, dissenting voices become essential safeguards against groupthink and panic-driven policies. Yet these voices are precisely the ones most likely to be silenced." - Tam Hunt


https://tamhunt.medium.com/vindicated-re...bec87c2ba8

[HiloJulie]

Another fixed cost for HECO is paying for tree trimming under electric lines every two years, because they choose to cut branches 6 inches below the wires, not several feet or to the ground so trees won’t immediately grow back.

The best example of how ridiculous this HECO "policy" is, is best shown here in the Acres where every few years comes the Ashplundh crew in a bucket truck and another support truck on contract with HECO to trim the treetops at the 6 inch below the line mark, followed by a few weeks later with the same truck, the same crew now on contract with Hawaiian Telcom cutting the already cut treetops to 6 inches below the telephone/fiber optic lines.

You would think for the sake of the consumer, these costs could be shared between HECO and Hawaiian Telcom, but, well here we are.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

HPP to Hilo.. is that the size of your world Edge?

It’s a limited view, isn’t it?  A few months ago when I arrived in Hilo, I got on a jet airplane and flew to Honolulu.  To expand my horizons.  From there I got on another jet airplane to Tokyo.  Even more distant horizons.

You would be surprised what can be seen from a plane in Japan.  Mountains.  Long stretches of forests where there are no roads and no buildings.  Yet, across those expanses are concrete platforms with tall towers, connected by wires.  It’s hard to imagine how they were constructed, my best guess is helicopters?  What must it cost to build one tower after another with no access, up and down, over valleys, across mountaintops?  Power lines that go on for great distances supplying no electricity to anyone mile after mile?  And yet, electricity costs $.20 kWh.  In a country with two separate networks, one at 50 hz the other 60 hz, and somehow it all works at a reasonable cost to consumers.

   


I wanted to add that since the cost of transmission lines for electricity is somehow dependent on the price of milk (see quote below), Hokkaido dairy products are nearly as expensive as in Hawaii.  One of a few high cost necessities in Japan.  But the Hokkaido soft serve at the Costco food court there is worth every penny.  How do they make it THAT much better?  OMG.

a gazillion ways the costs of transmission for the guy in the heartland is cheaper no matter.. the cost of a gallon of milk. Pole for pole it's off the scale here compared to there.

[Durian Fiend]

Everything posted in this thread about Hunt to date has made him less appealing to me.

[Punatang]

Who is next?  I still need a third example for Edge.