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| MAUI NEWS ARTICLE |
| Kaheawa wind turbines top expectations |
| 01/20/2008 |
In its first full calendar year of making electricity, the Kaheawa Wind Farm produced 9.8 percent of the electricity Maui Electric Co. sold.
That was more than 125,000 megawatt-hours, slightly more than forecast at the start of 2007.
Michael Alvarez, executive vice president and chief operating officer of owner UPC Wind, said Thursday that there is a savings to the utility, and to its customers.
“Since it achieved commercial operations (in mid-2006), the project has sold all of its output to Maui Electric Co. at rates that will save the utility over $4 million annually as compared to current avoided cost contracts,” he said.
Most of MECO’s electricity comes from oil, and UPC estimated that 125,000 MW-hours of wind energy displaced more than 236,000 barrels of petroleum.
MECO figures somewhat less, because it has to keep some standby units spinning to take care of fluctuations from the wind farm, especially when winds are gusty and flukey.
MECO spokeswoman Kaui Awai-Dickson said the utility did not have an exact estimate but that the utility would consider the displacement of oil at a lower figure.
Wind (and electricity from burning bagasse that MECO buys from Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co.) helps Maui’s utility toward the state-mandated goal of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020.
UPC says displacing oil also reduced emissions by more than 91,000 tons of carbon dioxide, 440 tons of nitrogen oxides and 377 tons of sulfur dioxide.
The wind energy was enough to supply 11,000 homes.
Even though the wind farm exceeded expectations in 2007, Alvarez said the company is not raising its output goals for 2008. The overage last year was not large, and overall the wind regime was close to predictions. Those were based on studies of wind done in order to obtain permits to build on the slopes above Maalaea.
Some months of 2007 were over predictions, some under, said Alvarez, but overall it was about as expected.
Hurricane Flossie, which brushed Maui in August, gave the equipment a test. It was not a full hurricane when it passed south of the islands, Alvarez said, but the wind farm was able to operate continuously right through it and kept feeding power into MECO’s grid.
Kaheawa is the state’s first and still the largest successful commercial wind farm. It has been so successful that UPC has plans to increase the maximum output from 30 megawatts to 51 MW.
Although it has not yet gotten permits for the expansion or concluded a purchased power agreement with MECO, Alvarez says it has already bought the new machines.
UPC also has wind farm ventures on Molokai, Oahu and Kauai in the works.
Kaheawa also has a Habitat Conservation Plan that requires it to contribute at least $1 million to preserve rare native wildlife and plants.
No rare native animals were discovered in the wind farm area, which is leased from the state, but the plan is precautionary because a number of native birds, including Hawaiian nene geese released in West Maui, are known to fly through the Kaheawa pastures site. Details of the plan and operations can be found online at www.firstwind.com.
As part of the plan, biologists conducting surveys made a surprising and “exciting” discovery of previously unknown nesting sites of the Hawaiian dark-rumped petrel, or uau, an endangered species. They also think they have found more Newell’s shearwaters.
As part of conservation, Kaheawa began replanting the area disturbed by construction with 15,000 aalii plants obtained from Hoolawa Farms in Haiku.
The plants were grown from seeds collected by volunteers before construction began.
Kaheawa also began an experimental planting of pili grass, once common throughout the islands but now scarce.
The grass comes from Molokai, and it has been a challenge to get it up to the rugged and almost roadless area of the wind farm, but Alvarez said results have been promising.
He said he did not want to be “too exuberant” about the outcome yet.
Kaheawa is the first and so far the only wind farm in the United States to implement a long-range Habitat Conservation Plan.
“As Maui’s first utility-scale wind project, Kaheawa Wind Power demonstrates that clean, renewable energy production is a feasible, viable commercial opportunity for Hawaii,” said Paul Gaynor, president and chief operating officer of UPC Wind.
By Harry Eagar of The Maui News.
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