How the Hawaiian Power Grid Works
⚡A few of the complexities involved in managing a mini power grid.
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Drawing the line between what’s worth the investment and what’s just gilding the electric lily is tough on such a small scale, multiplied by several islands, and with such a quickly growing portfolio of renewable energy sources.
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Where are the sources for this video? Channel with engineering on it's name but not even citing any sources for information in the video in the description? meh
Congratulations, this was the video I watched today with a Ground News sponsorship when I finally decided to give it a go. Mostly I'm hoping to move away from one of the few Google things I still use (he says on KZhead). Now to see if I can find/add all my 'must have' sources on it as a start....
Hey, have you heard of the blackout in 1991? One power station on Oahu went down and it surged through the other four stations on the island. We were in the dark for a longer time than any other power-outage I've been in. I was a kid working at a McDonald's at that point, and helped to feed people through the end of our non-frozen supplies, making sandwiches out of the buns, lettuce, and cheese, just so people wouldn't go hungry before they closed up their own businesses and went home.
If you want to highlight an island which faced the same challenges and has completed to switch to 100% renewable you can take a closer look at El Hierro of the Canary Islands.
Grady, do you have a brother that's a lawyer? kzhead.info/sun/i7SznLGrf6OIqoE/bejne.html
I can honestly say this is the first time I've ever stopped and considered how Hawaii generates enough power when it is all by itself. Thanks for the thought-provoking video this morning
I read the title and thought "wow, i have never thought about it before. Now i am curious"
I've been thinking about how they process their waste, just never their nuclear waste.
I love love love that Grady inspires us to question our built environment. Coincidentally I’m on my last day of a hawaiian vacation on Oahu and power generation was one of the first things I asked my local friends about. That along with where they get the particular sand necessary for concrete (as far as british columbia!), another possible video topic not just for sourcing but future directions. As you can imagine, shipping boatloads of sand around the world is not the most efficient model. Endlessly thought provoking
The answer, usually, when something seems improbable or unfeasible, they import it.
Years ago when we lived on the Big Island HELCO had the rear ends of four WW2 submarines at the North end of the island They were last resort Diesel generating capacity if everything else failed. Aloha
As a resident on Oahu I appreciate your video. I remember the bad weather you were mentioning, luckily rolling blackouts didn't affect us in Ewa Beach. Our home solar system was able to charge up to 50% during this time. For the past 2 months February and March we've been 100% off grid thanks to great weather.
Most home solar have no ability to store power, and if the grid goes down then home solar is worthless. Only the rich will have a true battery backup. But I guess home solar helps the state overall so is good.
Your not off grid until you cut the connection to the grid
@@amyself6678 i suppose if you are a drug addict and incapable of working, yes, then i agree with you, you cannot afford a battery. you can also not afford anything at all.
@@amyself6678 The people I know who have home solar power fall into 2 categories. Those who installed enough to reduce their power bill, but not enough to run a surplus during the day, thus no power to store. Those who installed enough to store surplus energy during the day, then use it at night. They sure as hell have batteries, because even if they aren't trying to go off grid, the price they pay for electricity is much higher than they can sell back to the grid. These are people acting entirely in self interest, no need for weird government conspiracy.
@@amyself6678 an 80 kwh lithium ion phosphate battery backup, which is enough to supply a home which consumes over 2000 kwh a month, is around $17,000. add to this inverter costs of around $7,500, and solar panel costs around $7,000, plus a few thousand extra for installation and such, you get a system cost around $35000-40,000. But consider that is over a systems lifetime, where the batteries and inverters have a 12 to 15 year lifetime, and the panels a 25 year lifetime, it averages out to a monthly cost of around $215 a month over a 25 year system lifetime. And if your average power consumption for Hawaii is around 2000 kwh per month, that bill from grid power is $930 a month. Also keep in mind 2000 kwh's of monthly energy usage would be extremely high for hawaii, hawaii has a pretty mild year round climate, which means a fairly light AC load, which is one of the biggest energy users in most american homes. So a more typical monthly KWH usage in Hawaii would be under a 1000 kwH. Even with the presence of the battery backup, the complete solar + battery system is a lot cheaper on a cost per KwH than relying on hawaii's grid power. And keep in mind my cost estimate is a rather high end estimate with a decent safety margin built in. Its expensive to pay all that much upfront, but the long term savings are immense. and i would hardly call a $35-40,000 investment a rich persons investment. that's decidedly middle class, albeit yeah the middle class is shrinking quite badly these days, but income inequality is not an issue related to solar power.
Engineer from Hawaii here. Thank you so much for doing this video and keeping it well-informed within our context! So many of our problems arise from our unique geography and isolation, and many of them are really engineering problems. You've made my day here. Will be sharing it with local people who ask me questions about this kinda stuff. Mahalo! Oh, side note for future reference, since you brought up your efforts to being correct and respectful (thank you so much!). The word "Hawaiian" is used for Hawaiian "Kanaka Maoli" ethnic people, not residents of the State. State residents are simply "locals". I know, it's a little confusing, but it's sorta like calling all people living in Japan "Japanese" even if they are not ethnically Japanese; the term is reserved for ethnicity, not residency.
Having lived in both Hawaii and Japan I learned more of an appreciation of "American". It doesn't matter who you are or where you came from, if you are here and want to be part of USA then you are "American".
As someone born and raised on Maui. I’ll add this. Don’t call yourself a local if you moved here. If you were not born on the islands you’re not local. No matter how long you’ve been on the islands.
@@guynumber3100 okay haole
I have a question for you, if I may? The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Hawaii is Geothermal. Is there something about the nature of Hawaii's massive amounts of naturally occurring below ground heat that makes it harder to develop? I look at a place like Iceland, which at least to my eye, has a very similar situation and they've capitalized on it for power generation in a massive way. Sorry if the answer is obvious, I'm just not seeing it.
@wills.9807 No problem! So actually when you think of Hawaii and volcanoes, you probably don't really understand what's going on geologically. Not many do! If you look at the island chains, you'll notice they get smaller. That's the tectonic plates moving North West (and the islands along with). The older islands are smaller cuz erosion. So, basically, only one island is active, the Big Island (Hawaii). That's where the "hot spot" is geothermally. But these lava flows breach in unexpected places sometimes. 2018 a flow paved a neighborhood. So infrastructure close can be at high risk. There's also water tables, cultural obstacles, tough geography to work with, and some anti-development mindset, amongst many other things. The "major hot spot" is actually forming a new island too, Lō'ihi. It'll form land in 50,000 years.
I did some design work on a simple cycle combustion turbine generator install near Kapolei about 15 years ago. Besides the high wind, high seismic, and unfriendly volcanic geology and a high salty water table, there were other atypical costs. It had to be a 'black start' unit, so it had its own batteries and diesel generators to fire up the CTG w/o off-site power, not cheap. Additionally, the unit was credited for providing power to emergency facilities, hospitals, fire stations, etc. therefore increasing its IBC importance category from the normal III to IV, a considerable expense and an increase to the design loads. Lastly, shout out to Palo Verde generating station at 5:05. My favorite plant and an absolute beast. Nice video.
Doesn't look very Verde
Excellent video! Retired power engineer here - worked on a study for the US DOE back in the early 80's that highlighted most of the same points you mention. While it might seem that the industry has been dragging its feet on addressing the problems, the fact is that solutions rely on technology that simply didn't exist and that had to be developed, and that takes time. And there's more to be done - which is why power engineering may seem to be boring and mundane, but in fact is one of the most dynamic fields to be in. And by the way - the situation is Texas is actually quite similar to Hawaii - slightly larger in scale, but still an isolated grid with some of the same issues.
and slightly different since they could be part of the national grid and chose not to be...
" slightly larger in scale, " Slightly? The Texas population is around 20x bigger than the Hawaiian population.
He mistakes power prakeing plants with baseload plants. Everyone will tell you need a lot of gas power plants or storage to support RE.
@@simon2493 "Everyone will tell you need a lot of gas power plants or storage to support RE." This is exactly correct. There is no way to deal with intermittent power sources reliably without somekind of dispatchable storage.
Texas does interface to the main U.S. power grid and has bought and sold power before. What makes Texas different is that unlike other states it can disconnect from the grid & be independent.
0:55 for those wondering the building at the top of those stairs is the ha'iku radio station historically before it was retired from that use it was used by the us navy to send signals to navy ships operating all over the pacific
I think aircraft navigated off it too. Loran C. GPS put it out of business.
I've hiked the "stairway to heaven" twice back in 2013-2014 when I live on Oahu. Fantastic views from the top .
Thanks! I was wondering what that was, I was thinking radar station, but it wasn't moving and looked too old school to be a phased array.
It was coast guard not navy
The dishes on the tower were to get a link from one side of the island to another, (mountains between them) from what is now Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay (was Navy base back then) to one of the bases over by Pearl Harbor. Transmitting and receiving wires extended from the building down to the valley below for long range Navy communications starting back in the 40's to ships and bases overseas, even reaching Navy ships as far away as Tokyo Bay.
When I was in Iceland I was amazed by how much infrastructure has been built out for geothermal power generation. It seems like a no-brainer for Hawaii that they should go all in on geothermal on the Big Island, and drop a DC interconnect cable to the rest of the islands to share the power. Iceland did this in the late '90s, and as a result their citizens get electricity for basically free. They have so much extra power that it's cheaper for companies to mine bauxite in Australia, ship it to Iceland, and smelt it using the excess power in Iceland than it is to smelt it in Australia.
The volcano is sacred to a lot of native Hawaiians. It'd be like building a nuclear power plant on the temple mount in Jerusalem.
@@jeffspaulding9834 Just a bunch of voodoo horseshit really. A shame it's holding them back.
Except as said in the video the costs of connecting the islands is not cheap. Also their one geothermal plant broke due to lava
In contrast to Hawaii, there are no 3000m deep fissures on Greenland. Hawaii consists of up to 9600m high Volcano Mountains on the 5000m deep ocean floor.
@@jeffspaulding9834Religion has always been a barrier to progress
I worked on some minor engineering projects in Hawaii (from CA) and it really is such a challenging place to roll out and maintain infrastructure. Just getting equipment and material resources staged for a small job became a massive project in itself.
You just have to add “ship from US” to your schedule plan…
I work as traffic control for Helco so I often go where ever they go and I’m constantly told how often we get help from California and their engineers, lineman, etc. Apparently we return the favor when ya’ll get wild fires but it’s crazy to think how willing you guys are to fly out across oceans to help each other out.
@@BruTheThreatwho doesn't want to spend time in Hawaii?
@@RowanHawkins locals lol. I’m kidding but it’s just my first perspective of a job that involves you getting sent to another state. Gotta respect that, I couldn’t be bothered to be more than 2 hours from my home let alone across the pacific
@@BruTheThreat Haha, our guys were fighting to get the assignments. Free island vacation on the company dime!
9:42 old man yelling at cloud, but the old man works on Hawaii's grid and is completely justified
🤣🤣🤣
Could not see that.????
It’s me yelling at clouds for costing me money on my net metered solar, lol.
Hawaii is not the 50th state. It's still under decades and decades of unlawful Military occupation by the fake gov't UNITED STATES, which isn't even a gov't but a military corporate subcontractor providing services of gov't but isn't actually a gov't no matter how much attorneys are duped and duping us into such a "belief."
Sounds safer than tilting at those big windmills!
I grew up on Oahu and one thing we used very little of was electricity. No AC or heat didn't need much lighting, Washer and dryer were outside and often didn't use the dryer. I'm glad you brought up all the issues with piling solar onto a small grid as there are many complaining about no longer being able to put power back on the grid now. It's a much more complicated issue than it looks on the surface. Also looking forward to your next video. There is a big difference between a rotating mass making electricity and a digital inverter and then a transformer based inverter as well. But I did see on google street view that the house we lived in went from a flat tar and gravel roof to a conventional pitched roof with solar panels and it looks like they have replaced the jalousie windows with regular windows and added air conditioning. My only complaint about living there was the constant ear infections from not having a dry place to sleep at night so AC is a very good thing.
you have those glass slat windows too?
@@joshw.2739 Yup. Every window. Had to move the furniture away from the windows when hurricane Eva came through to keep it from getting wet as they don't hold out wind driven rain very well. This was back in the early 80s and the windows were a constant maintenance nightmare. The gear boxes would freeze up and a pain to clean. At least the bathroom ones had the frosted privacy ones.
@@theinfernalcraftsman gotcha, I was there in like 2006-2009 when my father was deployed. never had motorized ones but even my school rooms had those style windows. they were just opaque plastic and metal so they could be sealed flush in the event of a lockdown.
@@joshw.2739 The old ones we had were aluminum and steel. The gearbox was an aluminum casting with a hand crank and they would corrode and jam up. They somewhat closed but would still have a gap as even the good ones wouldn't close to where they were any closer than 1/4" at the joints. The school I went to had the same vintage ones as well as they were old back in the 80s. Lockdowns didn't exist back then though Radcliff wasn't super safe back then either.
@@dobbo7690 I haven't been back since I left in 89. Allot has changed there especially the population explosion there.( I remember H1 still being under construction) None of the stuff I would want to go back to exists anymore either. Friends have told me I would be disappointed if I came back as it's not even close to the place I remember. I can jump on a plane and get there really easily but the cost of hotels rental cars etc are nutz now. I don't need a resort just a best western... I have been in tx longer than anywhere else now and I miss the summers when a hot day was 92* and places closed in the afternoon cause it was hot... Now here I see 92* as a cool summer day since our temps are regularly 105-110 and don't drop below 80* at night with temps still in the high 90s at midnight.
“Reliability comes from redundancy“ is powerfully meaningful and poetic.
Technology Connections was the first channel I saw to bring up the difficulties of distributed electricity generation. I'd definitely be interested in a video that goes into this in more detail
That rotating physical mass's inertia stabilizing the frequency was a very informative.
The metaphorical inertia of the grid manifests as the literal inertia of the rotating coils.
The gyroscopic frequency stabilizer coil rotation device causes the inertial reaction of the physical mass manifestation.
All of this is done through an instrument comprised of dodge gears and bearings, Reliance electric motors, Allen-Bradley controls, and all monitored by Rockwell Software's Automation’s Retro Encabulator. Now, basically the only new principle involved is that instead of power being generated by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it’s produced by the modial interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive diractance.
Makes me wonder if you can use giant flywheels. But yeah if you’ve watched how they connect/synchronize generators they have to physically get the phase of the flywheel in sync with the frequency. In the old days they would just use lights connected between the phases of the generator and grid and get them to extinguish. If they screw up the synchronization the generator can quite literally self destruct.
@@NicholasAndre1Yes. I think some Finnish power provider / grid operator (Fingrid) builds exactly such stuff. Yeah, here: Search for "Synchronous condensers to enhance grid stability in Ireland, Finland and Scotland".
As a retired power engineer this is an excellent review of the power system, generation and system control.
Fantastic! This is the first time I've heard anyone outside of power systems electrical engineers bring up inertia on the grid! Part of the value of building out pumped hydro storage is increasing the spinning mass connected to the grid to stabilize frequency. It's great that someone is finally discussing these more complex issues!
Is it the fly wheel effect?
Super interesting video.
Agreed. Never really thought about how Hawaii makes power.
In the UK it is common for power inertia to be added into the grid, either via especially built projects that basically spin large weights to keep inertia in the system, or by converting generation plant into "large spinny things" when the power station is decommissioned. It seem that there is an opportunity to do that on Hawi'i
They have chemical batteries.
@@VitalVampyrChemical batteries don't provide grid inertia.
@@Muppetkeeper Chemical batteries aren't inertial batteries. They both store power though.
That was initially done with the Zion nuclear plant in Illinois when it was shut down. It was referred to as a synchronous condenser.
@@VitalVampyr putting a bottle of water on a high shelf stores power, but it doesn’t make it the same thing
it never occurred to me before, but it is pretty wild that places like Kiribati and Tuvalu have electricity and internet and all the other utilities we take for granted too.
I remember being in an Internet2 meeting about 20, maybe 25 years ago, where we were discussing the high cost of getting Internet2 connections to our various educational institutions. There was a guy from the University of Hawaii there and he was just getting T1 bandwidth (1.5mbps) to the mainland for 10x what we were all paying for 1gbps and even 10gbps connections. Hawaii's much better connected nowadays, with multiple fiber cables to North America, Australia, southeast Asia, Japan, and South America.
A lot of the deep sea cables make intermediate landings at various pacific islands such as Hawaii which brings the benefit of being able to use some of that capacity. Also solar and wind are 90% constant so using those as power sources is a no brainer. Still many communities across the islands rely on small generators.
To your point: getting internet to various distributed islands is challenging for sure
Hawaii was actually a pioneer for modern networking. ALOHAnet was basically the foundation for the Ethernet protocol that virtually everyone uses today.
@@HayesHaugenThat's a good point. The undersea fiber connections are another bit of mindblowing kit. Having to carry the power supply for the amplifiers in the same conduit as the fiber optics (albeit in different jacket layers) and make that sturdy and corrosion resistant and not environmentally damaging and so on is one of those things that makes you marvel that our distant ancestors were single celled life forms.
As a Native Hawaiian on the island of Maui, I love this video and always wondered about our grid when I saw your video about the United States grid. Saying how the U.S. can pull power from across the continent. Also, that was a smooth transition to the AD.
Quality pronunciation for a mainlander :) . As someone who grew up in Hawai'i and San Antonio (AF brat) once I started learning about power grids and started to properly understand the differences of scale of Hawai'i vs places like Texas... I started to wonder about how the islands' grids worked. This is great!
You need to come to South Africa and do a video about our electric grid. We have almost daily outages like this because the government doesn't look after the power stations properly
It would be hard for him to be apolitical, I'd imagine. But it would be very interesting and informative. Greetings from America
KZheadr Itchy Boots, a Dutch woman who does a vlog on her motorcycle adventures throughout the world, is riding through the countries on the west side of Africa at present. In at least two of the countries that she went through, the capital city gets its electricity from a ship docked in the harbor.
Japan has a crazy power grid too. I think they even use 2 different cycles in the North and South.
yeah, they have 100v over there, and then 60hz towards one side, and 50hz on the other
though I believe the two grids do have interconnects nowadays, they’re just a LOT more complicated than interconnects between grids at the same frequency
I think (I guess) that one half is based mostly on British tech and the other half on American tech. At least they don't drive on one side of the road in one part and the other side in the other... (The Japanese drive on the left.)
@@Lucien86 German and American actually IIRC. But yeah, power companies in different regions imported their generators and other grid equipment from different international vendors, and while they've managed to convert smaller pockets of irregularity to the closer of the two big regional standards, getting the entire country to switch to one or the other would take a LOT of reinvestment
Fun piece of trivia... the Japan map for the board game Powergrid has that disconnect in the middle between Osaka and Tokyo, essentially dividing the board into two halves.
As a big fan of this channel, construction attorney, from San Antonio but temporarily in Hawaii, this is exactly what I was hoping for.
In Germany (and Europe) solar inverters have to monitor the voltage and frequency. If these values go out of tolerance, the solar inverter must switch off. An automatic relay is required. A large Chinese manufacturer ignored the regulations and then had to repair hundreds of systems free of charge. The manufacturer did this "voluntarily" and did not want to be named in return.
Probably Huawei, we have some Huawei inverters at the company I work for.
In South Africa we call this load shedding. It’s almost constant, with 2 hour outages 2 to 3 times per day. Eskom (our SOE and only power provider) have to shed 2000MW of load most of the time, can go up to 8000MW in which case we have 4hrs on, 4hrs off while it lasts
I would like to see an episode on Québec's grid, it is almost completely done with renewables and government-ran instead of a private company.
and the caq is slowly destroying it like everything to say it doesn't work so let's sell it
i never knew this, i live in ottawa and depending on where i cross into quebec i have noticed a lot more turbines and panels
@@SinaebThe time-tested method for greedy leaders to line the pockets of them and their friends in private industry...
@@GakulonOntario Hydro met a similar fate and we're paying for it with high electricity costs, out dated power generation plants, and plenty of aging infrastructure.
@@IanBMorris But think of the shareholders!
My step dad would’ve been a great interview for the H-Power Energy Plant. Back in 1990, right before the plant got put online, the City and County of Honolulu, which had retired incinerators at their refuse transfer stations, decided to test run burning commercial and residential trash to see if they could keep up with the the amount of trash coming in without getting backed up, and also see if they could generate enough power to what H-Power was proposing they could do. My step dad and his crew ran their incinerators 24/7, and after that 1 week test, they realized, although not as clean as H-Power because the incinerator process wasn’t used in many years and had no air scrubbers in place, they generated MORE reusable energy in the same amount of time, and it was a lot cheaper to run incinerators at an already built facility than to build a whole new facility that sole purpose is to burn trash and create energy. But because H-Power was in its final stages of completion, they never went through with the incinerators, and they now have sat defunct since the 90’s.
As someone who lives in Hawai'i I have wondered the details for a long time and this video is awesome.
One thing that needs to be mentioned is how much more spare capacity you need to achieve reliability on a small grid. You can spread out redundancy cost so much more on a larger grid. I know. I live on an island and we get power outages, especially after storms.
You saw the reliability/cost curve. Pick where you want to live on that graph and grid will be built for that. Since electricity started to be sold commercially, there were detailed analysis about how big to build one or more plant to supply the customers they believed they would buy power. Every subsequent decision is based on the new increasing demand, the existing aging infrastructure, the inputs (like fuel) that is available and accessible and the technology available at the time of the analysis.
You really become aware of this when you run on generators. The vast majority of the time, a single Honda EU2000i generator is enough to power my home. BUT.. try to start any large motor (AC, fridge, dehumidifier) and you're pushing your luck if too much is running. Twinning a second EU2000i eliminates the issue, but at twice the cost.
@@grayrabbit2211 not knowing your needs, but if you are off grid, I think a battery backup is a pretty good idea like power wall, let’s you run generators efficiently, and shut them off when not needed.
The best example: on a single generator solution, you need a whole second generator if the first one breaks. So twice the cost. On a 5 generators solution, you can still get away with only one additional generator (assuming you consider that you’ll immediately repair the broken one). Only 20% more.
@@jsbrads1 Hurricane recovery. Backup batteries won't help here. I spent ~110 days running on generator after Hurricane Ian. Blame FEMA. The local power company had the main power lines restored in about 10 days, branches in the next 7. Red tape prevented people from reconnecting.
Rolling blackouts, just another day in South Africa...... Once again, thanks for the great vid.
When I went through training for solar I was told that the Hawaii grid operators had rules put in place to require specific tolerance settings on "dumb" inverters. This allowed the grid operators to control large sections of distributed production by playing with the frequency in small changes, but enough to take the frequency outside of the setpoints on those inverters. Which had the effect of allowing the grid operators to balance the load with production from solar and fuel fired sources even without direct communication with those "dumb" inverters.
This is the first video that I have to downvote for all the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt he is saying about home based grid-tie inverters. These devices are designed to industry specifications and must be installed by licensed electricians. He clearly owns utility stock, or has buddies at the utility. If you can spin the meter backwards to the point that you make enough money to completely zero out the monthly bill, you should be allowed to do that, even if that means you aren't paying a base fee for infrastructure. You did pay for the use of it, with the energy you supplied to the grid.
Never realized how complex Hawaii's power situation is! 😮 Great deep dive into the challenges and uniqueness of island grids. 🌴✨
HECO customers pay 3x of the average American, yet here in California it still manages to cost more. San Diego used to pay the most expensive rates in the country, only to be surpassed by PG&E in Northern California this year. It's insane that Hawaii can be making all these strides and still charge less than we are here in CA.
it's almost like having your power companies foot the bill for wildfires makes rates go up.
And yet they have had wires that start fires, so where is that electric rate going? my guess is PG&E executives and shareholders. Just like in TX where their power and gas systems freeze up every time it gets cold, It could be winterized but its far easier for the profits to be pocketed rather than invested back into the grid.
It all ties back to average wages and the cost of living. California has the third highest average salary, but the cost of living is 40% higher than the national average. It makes sense in economic terms.
The cost of electricity is actually affordable in both Hawaii and CA, the true cost comes from what the power company charges you for transmission.
@@filanfyretracker SDGE last year "For San Diego's investor-owned utility and energy grid builder, 2023 was another record-breaking profit-making year. The company made $936 million according to reporting by Rob Nikolewski of the Union-Tribune. That's $21 million more than the company made in 2022." Rate users are money in the bank for SDGE PGE etc.
Why is there only 1 geothermal plant on a volcanic island?
I'd guess that most of the spots which are hot but not *too* hot keep moving.
I was baffled by that too!
Because it would be too logical to have more. It's a blue state. The volcanoes have rights. Yeah, I know. You think I'm kidding.
The ultimate answer is always “money.” The upfront costs are larger and there isn’t a large US competency in GT. Hawaii would need to sustain a local skill set and build out excess capacity, with no one to purchase overproduction.
Volcano is seen as deity by some of the locals. Not joking.
I would love to see a similar video on Puerto Rico! The grid there has been so unreliable that many are switching over to private microgrids. As battery storage prices drop, these types of installations start to make more sense.
Long time viewer and from Hawaii; I'm pleasantly surprised to see you cover a video about our grid system!
i went to the big island about a year ago and talked to the guys at 5 different power plants across the island even got video from one of the guys over at the geothermal plant who watched as lava flowed from massive fissures only around a thousand feet from the plant also got a story from one of them about the fact they thought the facility would be impacted or destroyed by the lava and after the main road was cut they had to use a few quad bikes to go in through a backroad to the facility to grab the servers form the server room during the 2018 estates eruption they said earthquakes as powerful as 6 on the Richter scale were happening every few minutes at the facility and a SINGLE steam well was producing enough steam to be able to power the entire facility ( they usually use around 7-8 to power the facility)
Could you do a video about Puerto Rico's power grid. We were affected by a hurricane back in 2017, and people lost power for months. Maria was that hurricane. Compared to Hawaii, I think we had it worst.
I'm an amateur radio operator. I remember talking to other hams on PR in the months after that storm. They were talking about how much of the island stayed without power for so long despite having stockpiles of copper cable, transformers, switchgear, etc. What no one thought to stockpile, apparently, was poles. They had all this new cable and equipment, but no poles on which to hang any of it, 'cause the storm had knocked 'em down or sheared 'em off.
I suggest taking a look at the state grid of South Australia. It's way ahead of Hawaii and has already surpassed 70% of electricity supply from wind+solar and it will continue well beyond that. It's using syncons to assist with inertia as well as big batteries for fast response management. Highest rooftop solar penetration in the world. Annual electrical energy demand ~14 TWh.
There are dozens of countries that are way ahead of Hawaii. He only thinks Hawaii is a leader because he's not looked outside the USA.
I enjoy sewage infrastructure as much as the next guy but I'm happy to see a new topic being covered!
One thing with "net metering" is the you really need hourly metering for distributed sources. That kWh you buy during peek hour a day with no wind (or evening/morning with no sun) is way more expensive than the one you sell when there is a steady wind and not a cloud in the sky on a Sunday when most businesses are closed (and in a season where AC is not needed). And even then there is a difference between what you get paid at the point of production (sometimes negative), and the higher price paid by the consumer at another point of the grid, because transmission still costs.
11:44 "increased efficiencies" is the worst lie in the history of electricity distribution. Increased efficiency leads to lower costs, which increases demand, just look at LED lighting, especially outside. If the cost goes up for other reasons, efficiency in some areas may compensate for those costs for the basic needs (such a fridges and utility lighting) but in the end, more efficiency is always compensated by induced demand, the same way an extra lane on a road does.
@@57thorns I'd need some sources on that one lmao Definetly feels more like saying "increasing the fuel economy of cars induces demand for cars" which while broad enough to not be dismissable off-hand, it's definetly nothing like the induced demand of adding lanes
@@ValentineC137 As I mentioned, the amount of products for lighting has exploded, especially mood lighting and outdoors. Where there once used to be either very modest and only in some instance a lot of e.g. Christmas lights, now it is much more common to put on a big light display. As for the cars better fuel economy, the car will be used more of course. Anything from shopping at a shopping center outside town instead of the local grocery store to weekend trips. In both cases the total cost might be lower, and the total energy usage lower for most, there will be those that use more energy as well.
Then it isn't net metering anymore. It's the instantaneous wholesale spot price.
OTOH Net metering is a nice simple way to encourage people to install solar panels in the early days of the energy transition. When the state's entire production of renewables (including commercial scale solar and wind) is still only 10%, any power produced results in a direct saving in imported fuel. I'd agree that it won't work if domestic solar is producing a significant amount of the total (we're seeing lots of time-of-use tariffs and even half-hourly variable rates in the UK) but it's still a sensible option for Hawaii.
13:13 Here in the UK, we've had an electricity charging plan called Economy 7. It was basically designed to switch your tariff to a cheaper rate from the evening and through the night until peak demand started again in the morning. For some reason, parts of it are being phased out and apparently it's ever more difficult to set up if you move to a new property or supplier. So much so that it's often mentioned on property details when the house is for sale! It makes a lot of sense both environmentally and cost saving. I take it from the fact that the suppliers are ever more keen to keep quiet about it that it's truly worth having!
In Michigan it's not optional. They charge you more during the day now.
Vacationing in Oahu right now and we've been driving by that power plant every day. Awesome timing!
You have an excellent speaking style..not hyper nor monotone. Very pleasant to listen to. Of course your content is most engaging and informative.🇨🇦
It will be cool to hear your take on South Australia; they run, for weeks at times, over 90% wind and solar. In these grids, "Grid Forming" batteries drastically reduce the need for spinning masses. You made an error in referring to "Firm Baseload" and "baseload ramps up and down". "Baseload" and "Firming" are normally two deferent technologies. By definition, baseload plants do not / cannot ramp up and down. I stress this because so many people think "baseload" is required for a reliable grid, but with a high renewable penetration, baseload becomes redundant and firming becomes critical.
What is the cost of electricity there?
@@gregorymalchuk272 If you buy from a retailer it is about 30c US per kWh for peak and 15c US off-peak as per a Google search. Installing rooftop solar is about 1/3 of what it cost in US.
@@gregorymalchuk272 According to AEMO. ~$66AUD for February per MWh (as opposed to ~$110 for NSW, $120 for QLD and ~$80 TAS/VIC) ~$32 for January
That sounds awful lmao
Thank you for making the hard sacrifice of spending time in Hawaii and exploring it's infrastructure for us!
And by going to Hawaii, you mean getting lots of stock footage online.
@@nosrepa Are you telling me that was Grady on top of the radio tower?
The stability of the rotating mass cannot be over emphasized! I used to be an engineer on ships, part of the job was generating the electric power. I would be sure to keep the generator(s) running @ 60 hz. Yet I would get off a 4 hour watch, and find the electric clock in my room would be off as much as 4-6 minutes. A clock run off a quartz crystal was right on the money. This demonstrated to me, that even though the frequency meter showed a generally steady 60 Hz, those brief excursions, when a motor would start and stop, would add up quickly, and not give a steady time base frequency. Those were relatively small generators, 1.5-2.5 Megawatt range. Larger rotational force = steady frequency. Very interesting video, I was Chief Electrician on Matson ships, so I've been to Hawaii many times and, strangly, never considered where and how they got their power from. I knew people there, that told me that they had an electric generation plant on Maui that was powered with the leftovers from the surgat cane.
So they dont have this any more. But back in the older days in the load dispatch center controlling the grid they had big analog clocks on the wall driven off system frequency, and they would adjust the frequency to maintain these clocks accurate to a reference clock by varying the frequency up and down to account for drift. To within a couple seconds. Nobody using grid clocks anymore though so it’s largely irrelevant now.
My experience from being on the big island is that they have a great appreciation for their land but appreciate the love and preservation of all humanity!
Some interesting issues I hadn't really thought about before when it comes to a shift towards a distributed supply of electricity, from home solar installations etc. Enlightening and thought provoking video as always!
Making the meter go backwards (@11:13) is something I like to see!
A salute to the pioneering effort from Hawaii which, as referenced, will by necessity produce solutions from which others will also benefit.
I always thought the Hawaiian islands would have undersea power cables between each other. It's interesting to find out that they're actually all separate! That definitely makes it more challenging, having to rely solely on your own generators.
As someone who workes for a local PowerGrid i love these videos. explaining to a wide audience how they got their electrical power is always welcome!
Many people asking about the use of nuclear power, so after a bit of Googling and asking an electrical engineer friend, I think, I found one of the reasons. A nuclear power plants need a lot of time to spin up/spin down (achieve peak power or change their output level), hence they need other power plants to balance the load out on the grid. For larger grids this isn't a problem, there are many other options for power generation than can be spun up in case a of sudden load shift. For example a hydroelectric plant can achieve it's peak power in mere minutes, if the demand suddenly increases. Shutting down/starting a pressurized water reactor can take 4 days. On most of these smaller grids loads can shift in hours or even minutes.
Some reactors can load-follow - notably those in France - but it's more expensive. The number I've heard is that (with fresh fuel - this gets slower for more heavily used fuel) an EPR reactor can increase it's power by 80% in 30 minutes. Most of the cost of nuclear doesn't depend on how much power it's producing, so if you're not always running at or close to 100% then your cost-per-MWh is going to be even higher than it already is now. I think a bigger reason is that all the currently-used reactors are far too big - the average use (annual usage divided over time, so it doesn't account for peaks and troughs) is about 1GW for all of Hawaii. The reactors most commonly being built today are the AP-1000 (1GW), the APR-1400 (1.4GW) and the EPR (1.6GW), so they're all far far far too big. Ideally you also want to build multiple reactors at a single site to get economies of scale, too. I'm a big fan of nuclear power, but this just seems like a really bad place to use it.
Right. Nukes are good at "base load" and let other plants do the adjustments for change in demand. But it also seems like a good job for battery systems. At least with nukes, you know there's going to be power. Oahu once had 43 straight days of rain in 2009. It's impractical to build a battery bank that big to backup solar for that many days.
@@znix9695 Wow, I did not know, that there are commercial power generating reactors out there that can adjust their power level on the fly, this fast! It's fascinating, I have to read up on it. Yeah, the other reason is economies of scale. The infrastructure needed to run a such powerplant is huge. Nuclear is just not worth doing in a small scale. Yeah, I know there are some BWRs driving submarines and ships, and there are also research reactors out there, but most of the time they are not for commercial power generation, there are other reasons why they exist.
@@russellhltn1396 That's why I am confused as to why they only have one geothermal plant in the state. You are on a geothermal hot bed. I would think they would take advantage of that and use geothermal as their baseload. By the sounds of the video, they are instead focusing more on intermittent solar and wind and battery banks, which to me seems still unreliable and susceptible to significant meteorological events.
@@tbengineering7066 Protestors have a very strong hold on the state. Look up "Super Ferry" or "Thirty Meter Telescope". Some people will protest geothermal as an insult to Madame Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanos.
This case study reminds me of Malta, an island nation that relies on a gas power stations (imported resource), and the Sicily-Malta underwater interconnector cable. The grid is not very reliable and power cuts are frequent. There's often an overreliance on the interconnector too (which isn't good when a stray ship drags its anchor into it).
Special inverter circuits connected to battery banks can react like inertial loads forcing the grid frequency to remain constant. Electrons don’t care if you push them with transistors and a battery or with a giant spinning metal coil.
Great video, I’m currently studying energy integration systems. Having energy vectors & appropriate storage devices is a key component on reliability - flexible systems are key to integrating renewables & high reliability. Cost and reliability are 2 contradictory optimisation factors. The Hawaiian island have great potential for geothermal energy too, capitalising on Icelandic research or even floating buoy turbines utilising inter island tidal currents.
Loving these infrastructure videos
Very educational video, I’ve worked in power plants in many countries. It’s great to hear an accurate description of the grid
You have such a gift for teaching and for communicating.❤
Another informative video from Grady. He explains things very well. I wish he also would have added how batteries can provide the needed inertia to the system, and also provide several other grid stabilization services. Also, discussion of the role that virtual power plants (VPP), made of thousands of home solar + battery systems can play. Finally, it would be good to add coverage of the Kauai Power Cooperative’s efforts to go 100% renewable. They are further along than the other islands in achieving this goal.
Gradey, you always make such great videos - thanks so much for sharing your terrific content!
Thank you. You made a lot of points I had never thought of like the inertia of turbine generators, being able to maintain frequency more stable than other sources.
Being from and living on Oahu my whole life this is a really cool video. Thanks Practical Engineering!
Yes, Hawaii has snow on Mauna Kea & Loa. Also, occasionally on Haleakalā which I caught in snow storm once. I thought I was in Chicago not Hawaii for that moment.😄
You actually CAN pay extra for more reliability: You can install a local battery bank. The good ones seamlessly take over if the grid fails.
Um. We all know you can pay extra for more reliability. Nobody claimed that you can't.
@@beeble2003 The video did, actually.
@@ParaSpite No, it said that there are diminishing returns when you pay for more reliability. Suppose your system is 80% reliable and spending a million dollars will take it up to 90%. Spending another million dollars won't get you to 100% but only to something like 95%.
@@beeble2003 Did you watch a different video? I commented immediately after he said that the end user cannot pay extra for more reliability than other end users, because the grid as a whole would go down. And sure enough, they can't pay more directly to the utility company, but a battery backup has the same effect so it's not really true. Oh, I get it. You only read the first sentence and then jumped into reply without considering that you might have misunderstood what I meant. Yeah, you're talking about the reliability of the grid as a whole, as if I was addressing the grid operators with my comment, when I was addressing end users.
Another amazingly well done video. Thank you so much Grady! Always looking forward to your next videos.
You can pay for more dependable service. My mother has an automatic standby generator AND a ups. If her power goes out, her UPS immediately takes over while the generator kicks on. Her cpap will not lose power pretty much under any circumstance. Personally, I have solar, a backup generator, and a small UPS for my networking, so even in a power outage I never lose internet. This is also vital to me as I have no cell service at my house, so no internet means no communication. There are ways around a faulty grid, I know I have both
Interesting video! In South Africa 'loadshedding' has become the norm, with selected areas countrywide being switched off 2-4 hours at a time, sometimes up to 12 hours per day. Most, that can afford it, have installed batteries and inverters, others have added solar, some are completely off-grid.
Wow, that sounds terrible. Back to the stone age, except you have to pay.
Thats becauce Eskom maintenance staff are completely incompetent due to BEE. 95% of Eskom boiler tube welds fail international inspection standards.
Presumably it'll only get worse (for the poor) once the rich all have batteries...
I lived on an island in the Caribbean for a time, and that grid was powered entirely on diesel. I'm not sure what they're powered on these days but I sure hope they've diversified. Electricity was expensive back then and I can only imagine it's gotten more-so.
out in the pacific there are lots of islands that still use diesel. Even the island of guam is powered by diesel but surprisingly guam rates are about the same as oahu
Coming from a different discipline, software development, it's fascinating to see parallels when talking about "availability" or "reliability" for a platform or service. Great video!
This video reminded me of one of my favorite games out now, "Power to the People". Highly recommend that game to anyone wanting to simulate some of these challenges. You're put in the shoes of a grid operator having to smooth supply and demand while avoiding blackouts.
One heck of a business trip Grady.
It's just stock footage in this one, isn't it?
Keep up the good work i love your videos
Ty for educating me on my home. I live off grid for the past 2 decades, since i was 15 years old. I found the video very interesting
This reminds me of my home town Adelaide in Australia. Very similar with high penetration of DER and reductions in traditional power plants. We have some cool things like Flexible Exports available for residential solar customers. Main difference to Hawaii is that we are connected to our neighbouring state and will soon have another connection to another state as well.
interesting episode. I would like to hear more about the advanced battery storage systems that electronically provide frequency management and simulate rotational inertia. And there is also the technology related to virtual powerplants composed of lots of smaller battery backup systems at homes and small businesses. I would like to hear more of the technical details related to these systems and the cost trends of battery storage. And by the way, as I listened to this episode, I was struck by the high-quality of the writing. Not that past episodes had poor writing. It just seemed to be that the quality was more noticeable in this episode. Thanks.
Battery storage is inconsequential when it comes to power grid. It's way too expensive, the only way to store power at scale is pumped storage (pumping water up when you have energy surplus and then letting it run down again when you have energy deficits). There are actually a LOT of different ways to store energy, but everything apart from potential energy of water is a meme at national level.
I’m a Hawaii resident and the island of Oahu closed our coal power plant a month before the blackouts, they were planning for renewables to take the load but are way behind schedule and we’re advised to keep the coal plant up until the renewables were online but they shut it down instead. If we had the coal plant we would not have needed the black outs
Super interesting as always! Can't wait for your video on inverters!!
Thanks for mentioning the sensitive ecology as a barrier! It’s so hard to decide what we can do, should do, and what we may sacrifice for efficiency and bettering our conditions
I was in Kauai in January to do a Property (fire protection) assessment of two power plants (one site had two old combustion turbines and a bunch of diesel generators, the other was a simple cycle combustion turbine). I work for an insurance company that insures power plants. The month before I went to these two sites, Kauai had a whole island outage caused by a fault in a large junction box on one of the transformers at the first plant I went to (the one with all the diesel generators). That one little fault took out the entire island for an hour! I suspect that a small grid is more susceptable to going down due to small faults than a larger grid. Hawaii is an interesting place to visit... but I wouldn't want to live there.
I am a lineman for the county And I drive the main road Searchin' in the sun for another overload...("Wichita Lineman") Best version of this iconic Jim Webb song is the Glen Campbell recording. That said, this channel, Practical Engineering, is an important source of technical information that is thoroughly vetted as to being accurate. Many thanks to its creator. I often watch episodes with my grandsons...
Hey my friend, that was quite a history/trivia lesson on Jimmy Webb. Never knew these things so, thanks! @@BanterMaestro2-vh5vn
Great video! I have been very interested in how our power grid works since I was a young lad but never considered the Hawaii is all on its own when it comes to power generation. I thoroughly enjoyed this.
I hope they succeed and I can’t wait for the coming videos on Hawaii in the far far future. Good video as always
As usual, this is excellent, but one oversight near the end. With a solar+battery system, oversized a bit, you CAN buy additional reliability as an individual customer, at a price that keeps coming down. (Probably will remain more expensive than amortizing additional investment in making the whole grid more reliable.)
He's talking about in the context of a customer relationship with the power company. You can't pay a lower rate and get intermittent power any more than you can pay a premium rate and get guaranteed service. There's one grid, and the costs are borne by all.
@@HunterTN Oh yes, I understand it well. He also said around the same time that you can't pay more as an individual and get more reliability just for you. That was my point... nowadays with solar + battery, you actually can buy more reliability on an individual basis.
>- . . . nowadays with solar + battery, you actually can buy more reliability on an individual basis. < Yes you can, and depending on location (solar resource vs electricity cost) you can generate electricity cheaper than the utilities can.
I was on Hawaii island last June, what an amazing place, nothing else like it. I did see a few windmills here and there and solar panels very common. The 8 days I was there, not 1 single disturbance in power at the place I rented. No complaints here
I very much doubt you saw windmills, the west stopped using wind to mill grain a century ago.
8 days and you saw some wind turbines and pv? the video talks the blackout storm January, more in Hawaii, and the state is 75% fossil fuel power, mostly diesel. You think he was joking?
I brought up the rotational inertia issue about fifteen years ago in one of our engineering departmental meetings. Most of the people in the room looked at me as if I was crazy. With almost a dozen other engineers in the room it stunned me that at least a few of them did not get the concept.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and educating all of us
for anyone who might be interested, this also happens to be an excellent representation of how the internet cloud is connected together if you can think of data centers as power plants and data as electricity - the same sort of redundancy issues arise with demand and reliability
14:00 You can pay extra for more reliability by buying a backup generator, but not to the utility unless they were to have some incentive for it
That could actually be an option to add into the mix---some sort of public financing option for point use backup power systems (either battery or generator). Very few electrical users need the same level of reliability for all of their uses. E.g. from my own experience using generators during extended power outages, the most practical solution is to size one to power the most critical systems only. Some things are needed for safety, others wanted for comfort, and the rest are luxuries that can be given up for a few hours or days. There should be a discussion about what level of grid uptime reliability we actually want, and at which point backup or going without makes more sense.
@@xanfsnark The problem with small size home generators is the cost per day to operate is high. Even when the power goes out and I choose to run a small Honda EU2200 for the fridge and a few ad hoc uses it still uses about 1 gal per 8hrs. That is a lot of fuel on an island to provide for each home and a much higher cost per day. I am guessing they are also for more polluting than a large scale solution. Batteries may one day be the answer but those have a shelf life and they also are still unfriendly in terms of rare earth and chemistry.
@@NONO-hz4vo that's absolutely true, but that makes it an optimization question. For example, at 99.9% grid uptime, you'd expect to run the generator less than 9 hours per year (i.e. about one gallon of fuel for your example generator). Whether the costs of upgrading the grid to 99.99% uptime is cheaper depends on the particulars. Many homes and businesses wouldn't even need backup at all at 99.9%
@@NONO-hz4vo I live in Louisiana where hurricanes can knock power out for a week or more at a time. After Hurricane/TS Isaac, my dad bought a generator for the house. It's not the biggest or most powerful thing, but it keeps the important things on plus a few extras. He recently converted it to run on the house's natural gas supply, so it can basically run indefinitely. There is the possibility of gas service going out, but by then no one will be there because they'd all be evacuated or dead. Entergy is working on fortifying the grid, but that is a decade long project. Generator and our gas service ain't going nowhere
@@xanfsnarkThat's actually happening in the UK. At times of peak demand (about a dozen hours a year), energy companies are offering 10 times the normal rate for any energy you export. It's not enough to justify buying a home battery, but it's a nice bonus if you have one. Also, I bet the occasional rolling black out is a big incentive to buy a home battery.
Hi Grady! Something about the inertia of the grid I would like to add is that low inertia itself is not the only issue, the variability of inertia also comes into play! If you have a system with a constant inertia (throughout time) the ROCOF (rate of change of frequency) of the grid is always proportional to the loss of power. (delta F = H* delta P) . Many generators rely on the ROCOF to increase power. In a system where the inertia changes drastically over time simple ROCOF protection has trouble as it is too slow for low H scenarios, or too fast for high H scenario's.
Your videos are always fascinating, thanks for that!
I hope you cover the reconstuction of the bridge that fell in Baltimore
Reconstruction wouldn’t be the top of discussion just yet. As of right now the area is essentially a “crime scene”. It will be better covered on the discussion on failure modes as well as potential provisions on impact mitigation concepts to avoid a repeat of disaster.
Hey, Landis+Gry engineer here. HECO uses exclusively Landis+Gyr meters. They have actually replaced most of their meters with solar meters which allows power to be distributed back to the utilities if generated at the consumer level. This is something already in place and we have a lot more planned for Hawaii!
Why do you have any more of these fancy meters planned for Hawaii when new contracts for net metering were stopped in 2016?
Excellent video on issues that have existed for decades.
Fascinating case study. It'd be interesting to see how other islands around the world deal with these challenges.
I’m just here anticipating on the discussion of the bridge collapse. I’m a mechanical engineer, but this is more in line to civil engineering. Its a tragic event, but definitely looking forward to what you think about it.
It seems like they'd be a great candidate for modular nuclear reactors!
Great video, Grady! My goodness, those island power grids make excellent case studies. They would be great for all manner of college engineering class projects. There would be any number of financial and engineering models and simulations. I am surprised that they have not been able to bridge the gap to some of the smaller, closer islands. Keep up the great work!