How does Hawaii generate its electricity?
Hawaii, land of beautiful beaches, tropical delights and stunning sunsets, but back to the Sun Hawaii gets a lot of it on the island of kawaii. They have found a way to use solar power at night.
This is the first and biggest combined battery and photovoltaic system in the world. This project creates enough energy during the daytime to power up to 4,500 houses on Kauai at night. Solar power is not new, but storing this much energy from the Sun is the project commissioned by kawaii Island utility cooperative is owned by Tesla on about 50 acres of former sugarcane farm land.
Some 55,000 panels now stand soaking up the sun’s power during the day to store in these Tesla batteries before feeding that energy to the entire island grid during peak hours in the evening every day, these batteries will store enough power that they could Drive a Tesla car 150,000 miles, one obvious benefit less reliance on fossil fuels, the price of gas and oil can fluctuate, but the cost of this system will remain stable for the term of the utilities 20-year contract with Tesla it’s expensive to get Fossil filled here it is very expensive.
We’re saving, 10 million gallons of fossil fuel a year with these projects, this project alone will displace about 1.3 million gallons of diesel. I think this is a grid of the future. I’m. A reliability standpoint it it’s, adding a lot of value at no additional cost.
Solar and the batteries. Is that enough to power the island on its own all the time we still need to run some conventional generation, but hopefully with other projects coming audio to just lower them? All, in fact, Hawaii is charging toward complete renewable energy by 2045.
About 42 % of Kauai is energy. Sources are currently renewable. Our tire gets to be at 70 % by 2030, so we’re actively looking to do more of these projects. Here, the batteries aren’t Tesla’s. Only green solution on the solar farm, the company also employs some rather unique renewable resources.
The grass that’s growing here between the solar panels and under it it could get to be about 10 feet tall, but Tesla has come up with a very eco way to handle it sheep. They plan to bring in sheep like these used on another kawaiii solar farm to graze, keeping the grass nice and low.
So as long as the Sun keeps shining, kawaii will keep putting one of Hawaii’s best assets to work. You
