We interviewed the chair, commissioners and more at Hawaii's Public Utilities Commission.
Author Bio:
Steve Mitnick is President of Lines Up, Inc., Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly, and author of “Lines Down: How We Pay, Use, Value Grid Electricity Amid the Storm.”
“We have four cross-island transmission lines of 69 kV. During that storm, three of them got affected, so we only had one transmission line remaining across the island.”
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Author Bio:
Robert Kaneshiro is Operations Superintendent at Hawaii Electric Light.
Leland Cockcroft is System Planning Engineer at Hawaii Electric Light.
“Community Based Renewable Energy is where you have a solar farm but people that live in a condo or have an odd-shaped roof may be able to invest in those panels and get a bill credit as if they have rooftop solar.”
Author Bio:
Yoh Kawanami is co-director for customer energy resources at Hawaiian Electric.
“In order for anyone to accomplish their sustainability goals or for Hawaiian Electric to accomplish our reliability goals, the future is all in the telecom and the technology.”
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Author Bio:
Christian Whitney is the director for pole infrastructure enterprise at Hawaiian Electric.
“Our islands are relatively small, and the acreage footprint is going to start to become a more contentious issue. We’re going to need to look for technologies that don’t use up as much of our precious resources.”
Author Bio:
Jack Shriver is the director for generation project development at Hawaiian Electric.
“If you’re going to operate a business here in Hawaii for 20 years or so, you will be expected by the community to become a part of it, to be able to engage on an ongoing basis.”
Author Bio:
Scott Seu is SVP for public affairs at Hawaiian Electric. Hawaiian Electric announced that Seu will become CEO this year.
“Our electric supply plans are aggressive. They’re forward leading within the industry and there does not exist technology today at this moment in time that will meet all of our needs over the next 20 or 30 years.”
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Author Bio:
Colton Ching is SVP for planning and technology at Hawaiian Electric.
Perhaps the highest of the high points of visiting Hawaiian Electric and Hawaii's Public Utilities Commission was when Commission chair Jay Griffin announced during the pre-hearing conference we attended that "the Mitnicks" of Public Utilities Fortnightly were sitting in, as welcome guests of the Commission. (One Mitnick had flown in from Washington, D.C., the other from Tokyo.) Or perhaps when we watched the moving Hawaiian blessing of the West Loch Solar Project of Hawaiian Electric and the U.S. Navy.
Author Bio:
Steve Mitnick is President of Lines Up, Inc., Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly, and author of “Lines Down: How We Pay, Use, Value Grid Electricity Amid the Storm.”
