Electricity on Oahu is poised to get a little bit cheaper by the end of the year as the result of 80,760 photovoltaic panels being readied for installation on Navy land next to Pearl Harbor.
Hawaiian Electric Co., in partnership with the Navy, plans to kick off construction with a ground blessing Monday for a 20-megawatt solar farm that will pump electricity into Oahu’s grid at the lowest cost yet for a utility-scale power plant in Hawaii fueled by the sun.
HECO estimates that its customers will save at least $109 million over the facility’s expected 25-year life span, or $4.4 million a year on average.
The utility is spending
$50 million to build the project on 102 acres of Navy land. In return for using the property, HECO will upgrade Navy-owned electrical infrastructure at a value of about $5 million.
The property, just outside the perimeter of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, is in the West Loch area between some Ewa by Gentry subdivisions, farmland and Navy base facilities.
Capt. Jeff Bernard, Pearl Harbor-Hickam commander, and Alan Oshima, HECO president and CEO, said in statements that the deal improves the base’s energy resilience and helps HECO improve its grid supply while benefiting all customers.
The cost of electricity produced by the plant, to be built by contractor REC Solar, will be less than
8 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to HECO. That compares with the current low of 11 cents from two 3-megawatt solar farms on Maui, Kuia Solar and South Maui Renewable Resources. Three solar farm projects being built by NRG Energy in Mililani, Waipio and Kawailoa will produce
energy for roughly 10 to
11 cents.
The West Loch solar farm also will benefit the environment. HECO said the facility, with a capacity to power the equivalent of about 8,000 homes, will eliminate the need to use 76,000 barrels of imported oil annually for energy production and will continue a shift from fossil fuel-based energy production to renewable energy sources that include the sun and wind. Last year 27 percent of electricity made by HECO was from renewable sources.
“Replacing fossil fuels with grid-scale solar will help slow the effects of climate change and benefit all customers with low-priced energy for decades to come,” Oshima said.
