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Hawaiian utilities poised to seek bids for biggest renewable push ever

Three utility subsidiaries of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. — known collectively as the Hawaiian Electric Companies, or HECO — will solicit proposals Aug. 22 from developers interested in building up to 932 MW of renewable energy projects along with storage to make that capacity available into peak use hours.

The requests for proposals, or RFP, will be issued to provide generation for the islands of Oahu, Hawaii and Maui, HECO spokesperson Jim Kelly said.

According to Kelly, the solicitations will offer opportunities for all types of renewables, including solar, wind, geothermal and biomass. As for storage, the different islands will have different requirements, and storage is not required in tandem with all projects. "We are trying to replace baseload units on Oahu and Maui," Kelly said. "We need storage so we can use the resource in evening peak."

The biggest solicitation will be for 594 MW to provide for the power needs of Oahu, the state's most populous island. Under that RFP, storage is optional for inclusion with renewable projects, but the utility also is accepting stand-alone storage projects, Kelly said.

The generation must be online by September 2022, when a contract between one of the subsidiaries, Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc., and AES Corp. for the 180-MW AES Hawaii coal-fired plant expires. Because the coal plant can run nearly all the time while renewable production varies, Hawaiian Electric will need to procure renewable generation capacity far in excess of that provided by the AES Hawaii facility it seeks to supplant.

"This RFP aims to substitute renewables in whatever form we can get online to replace what we are getting from the coal-fired plant, so we won't generate with coal any more in Hawaii," Kelly said.

As for solicitations for Hawaiian Electric Industries subsidiary Hawaii Electric Light Co. Inc., which serves the island of Hawaii, that utility will need capacity that could widely range from 32 MW to 203 MW. The amount will depend on whether the Puna Geothermal Venture I geothermal plant, which was damaged when the Kilauea volcano erupted, will be brought back into operation and whether the Hu Honua (Bioenergy) Pepeekeo Energy Facility biomass plant that now is in a regulatory approval process will be built, Kelly said. On Hawaii, solar projects, but not other technologies, must include storage, Kelly said.

Hawaiian Electric Industries subsidiary Maui Electric Co. Ltd., serving the island of Maui, will need 135 MW of renewable capacity plus storage because an oil-fired plant will be closed at the end of 2024, Kelly said. On that island, renewable projects must be paired with storage, but the utility also is accepting stand-alone storage projects.

Nevertheless, Kelly said, "The urgency is mainly on Oahu with the closure of the AES coal plant."

The plant capacity figures were produced by the company for previous public announcements, but the RFPs will solicit projects based on energy needs in terms of megawatt-hours, Kelly said. As for storage, the solicitations will call for batteries or other equipment that can produce the equivalent of a plant's output for set amounts of time.

The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission approved the final RFPs on Aug. 15 and ordered them to be issued Aug. 22.

Multiple developers probably will be selected in response to the RFPs, given the constraints on land use that exist on all the islands, Kelly said. The projects must come online over the next two to four years, so offshore wind projects would be unlikely to qualify because environmental reviews and approvals for such facilities generally take longer to secure, Kelly said.

The solicitations will be for the second phase of HECO's biggest renewables push in Hawaii's history. Most of the projects for the first phase already have been chosen and contracted. In late March, the PUC approved six solar plus storage contracts totaling 247 MW of solar capacity and 988 MW of storage for Oahu, Hawaii and Maui that resulted from the first phase. Developers are getting permits and preparing for construction so those projects can be put into service in 2022, Kelly said.

The PUC has yet to approve two remaining projects from the first phase, which would add 27.5 MW of renewable energy generation and 110 MWh of storage, according to Kelly. One of those projects is on Maui, and the other on Oahu.

In addition to the two-phase renewables initiative for Hawaii, Maui and Oahu — the three largest Hawaiian islands — Maui Electric recently asked the PUC to approve draft requests for proposals for smaller renewable energy projects backed by storage at preselected sites on the islands of Molokai and Lanai.