The Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism is supporting energy storage demonstration projects on Hawaii Island and Maui to increase the grids’ ability to integrate more renewable energy. Exact project locations, energy storage technologies, and other details have not been announced.

Hawaii Electric Light Company (HELCO) will receive $900,000 and Maui Electric Company (MECO) will receive $1.2 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds for equipment and installation of energy storage systems. The two utilities will cover the interconnection costs.

Steve Lindenberg, senior advisor of renewable energy for the United States Department of Energy says the funds “are intended to expand renewable energy use across the Hawaiian Islands. The two storage projects will help answer many questions related to areas of dense solar applications. We look forward to the results being helpful throughout the state.”

State Energy Office administrator, Ted Peck notes that “Hawaii’s abundant renewable energy resources are widely distributed across the islands, therefore, incorporating steadily increasing amounts into our grid system is going to require a proactive approach. These storage system demonstrations managed by MECO and HELCO will help accelerate the use of distributed renewable energy to achieve the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative’s goal of 70 percent clean energy by 2030. The State and the Hawaiian Electric companies share a determination to find solutions to adding more distributed renewable energy generation while preserving grid operability and reliability.”

One of the Maui County’s projects will focus on the Moloka’i grid. Maui Electric will perform an interconnection study on a single circuit to determine what system upgrades are needed to enable more distributed generation to be added to the circuit.

Maui Electric president Ed Reinhardt says, “This stimulus grant will allow Maui Electric to understand the value of using battery systems to support more photovoltaic solar power and other distributed energy for our customers while maintaining the essential reliability our customers count on. It is a win-win situation for our customers and everyone in Maui County.”

Another project will be located on the Big Island, where renewable sources supplies around a third of the island’s electricity.

Jay Ignacio, Hawaii Electric Light Company president adds, “With Hawaii Island having the highest penetration of renewables such as geothermal, wind, hydroelectric and photovoltaic, evaluating energy storage is a key element to HELCO integrating more distributed renewable energy generation. We need to build our experience with energy storage to determine if this technology can help to allow the grids to take more distributed renewable energy.”

Installation of the energy storage system projects is planned to occur in the second half of 2011.

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