Dive Brief:
Hawaii regulators last week approved Hawaiian Electric s (HECO) proposed power purchase agreement (PPA) with a 185 MW battery storage project in Kapolei, Oahu, despite concerns that the system might initially have to charge off fossil fuel generation.
The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (PUC) hopes that the Kapolei project will help ensure grid reliability during and after the scheduled retirement of a coal plant on Oahu in 2022. However, regulators also imposed a series of conditions on HECO in approving the agreement, including foregoing certain performance incentives and requiring the financial retirement of other fossil fuel units by specific dates.
HECO, however, says these conditions could actually throw a wrench in the Kapolei project’s development. While technically an approval, the order imposes such unprecedented conditions that the company and the developer may be prevented from moving forward with this innovative and cost-effective project, spok
The following is a contributed artcle by Fredrich Kahrl, managing partner at 3rdRail and Jim Williams, associate professor at the University of San Francisco
Achieving the Biden administration’s ambitious plans for decarbonizing the U.S. electricity sector will require a historic political compromise among states. The logic of this grand bargain has grown increasingly clear over the past decade. It requires a stronger federal role in the electricity sector and a greater regionalization of electricity markets that will chafe state lawmakers, but the opportunities outweigh the risks.
From an external perspective, it appears that the Biden administration has devoted much time and effort to defining the endpoints of ambitious climate goals, but less time navigating the politics of incremental steps. This is out of step with experience of the past decade: long-term federal goals and signature policies will change with the vagaries of political cycles, but incremental changes in techno