Recognizing that reality, in recent years government officials have gone back to encouraging the use of small-scale energy systems. For example, to manage the demand for and supply of electricity, Hawaii is offering up to $4,250 to homeowners on Oahu, home to about 70 percent of the state’s population, and Honolulu, to install home batteries with their solar systems, powering as much as a third of the cost to do this. Utilities can use those batteries for power between 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., when energy demand typically peaks.
“It’s a great example of good policy pivot where utilities and regulators are saying, ‘We need to change the way we approach this,'” said Bryan White, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a research and consulting firm.
“Oil is a finite resource.”
Unlike most of the country, Hawaii burns a lot of oil to generate electricity — a common approach on islands because the fuel is easier and cheaper to transport than natural gas.
“We are unique in that we depend on oil for more energy generation than the rest of the US mainland combined,” said Marco Mangelsdorf, a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who specializes in the politics of energy and has lived for a long time. part of his life in Hawaii.
According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, oil-powered power plants provided nearly two-thirds of Hawaii’s electricity last year, up from nearly three-quarters a decade earlier. By comparison, rooftop solar yielded about 14 percent, up from 6 percent in 2014, the earliest year for which the agency has that data.
The state had imported about 80 percent of its oil from Russia, Libya and Argentina, providing a quality that Hawaii’s refinery can process. The other 20 percent came from Alaska.
