Civil Beat discusses the report ranking various renewable energy costs
Wind energy is at the top of the list of energy sources that Hawaii should be tapping to meet its renewable energy goals, according to a recently released federal study.
Why? Because it’s cheap, says the 240-page study done for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory by Booz Allen Hamilton.
The report appears to validate state officials and Hawaiian Electric Co.’s emphasis on developing wind energy, including the controversialBig Wind project, which has been touted as the centerpiece of the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative. The study says that without out it, the state won’t meet its mandate of 70 percent clean energy by 2030.
But the study estimated market prices for wind energy at one-third of what Hawaiian Electric Co. has agreed to pay for the renewable energy source in recently negotiated contracts with wind companies. Meanwhile, solar companies in Hawaii say that the report over-inflates the cost of solar. And that has the solar advocates crying foul.
The Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative Scenario Analysis was produced by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL would not say how much the study cost…
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But Mark Duda, an executive at local solar company, RevoluSun, and the former head of the Hawaii Solar Energy Association, said that the cost assumptions for solar energy that the report used were way off, particularly when it came to rooftop solar. Booz Allen estimated it to be between 47 cents and 71 cents a kilowatt hour.
“These costs appear to exceed actual costs in Hawaii dramatically,” said Duda. “To the extent the PV costs per kwh had an impact on the study’s conclusions, then I would have significant concerns about those conclusions.”
He said that costs for residential rooftop solar, not taking into account financing, averaged about 14 cents a kilowatt hour. Larger commercial systems averaged 9 cents per kwh, and utility-scale systems, 12 cents per kwh…
Read the whole article with tables showing comparable costs here