Artist's rendering of one of the projects, the 185 MW / 565 MWh Kapolei Energy Storage (KES) project from developer Plus Power. It will be interconnected on the island of Oahu and is the largest of the awarded projects. Image: Plus Power.
Hawaiian Electric has submitted eight contracts representing nearly 300MW of solar energy generation and about 2,000MWh of energy storage to be built on the islands of O'ahu and Maui.
The investor-owned utility has sent the contracts to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for review and approval. The projects form part of Hawaii’s largest renewables tender, which closed earlier this year and saw a total of 16 projects selected.
Hawaiian Electric said the six O'ahu facilities are expected to provide enough generation and storage needed to retire the state's only coal power facility, the 180MW plant at Campbell Industrial Park owned by AES, by September 2022. Meanwhile, the completion of two green energy projects on Maui will help enable the retirement of the 38MW oil-fired Kahului plant in 2024.
The capacity of the solar-plus-storage projects ranges from 7 - 120MW, while the lowest price is the Kahana Solar facility in Maui at US0.089/kWh.
To see the full version of this story, including a table of projects and prices per kWh, visit PV Tech.
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