Government and private-sector officials dedicated Friday the largest solar energy project to date on Oahu: a 5-megawatt facility in Kalaeloa that is generating enough power to supply about 1,000 homes.
The Kalaeloa Solar Farm, developed by California-based SunPower Corp., has been feeding electricity into the Hawaiian Electric Co. grid since December. The facility is the first of four 5-megawatt solar projects planned for West Oahu over the next several years, according to the state Energy Office website.
The projects will give a significant boost to the state’s effort to generate 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, said Gov. Neil Abercrombie. The Kalaeloa Solar Farm also will generate lease rent for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which owns the site. The project occupies 25 acres of a 36-acre parcel leased from DHHL.
"Kalaeloa Solar Farm — yes, it’s clean; yes, it’s renewable; yes, it will be generating critical revenue," Abercrombie said. "But at the same time it also indicates we are setting in motion a process whereby we’re not going to rest here. We’re going to keep moving forward."
HECO will buy the power produced by the solar farm under a fixed-price contract for 20 years. The utility will pay an average of 21.8 cents a kilowatt-hour over the life of the contract.
That price is about 10 percent less than what it costs HECO to generate electricity from fuel oil at the current price of about $120 a barrel, said Riley Saito, SunPower’s senior manager for Hawaii projects.
Energy generated over 20 years will be the equivalent to eliminating the consumption of about 400,000 barrels of oil that otherwise would be burned to generate electricity, Saito said. The project is expected to generate 11.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, he said.
Kalaeloa Solar Farm is the largest solar energy facility on Oahu. The largest solar energy project in the state is a 6-kilowatt facility developed by Alexander & Baldwin on Kauai.
The Kalaeloa facility includes 18,000 high-efficiency solar panels that are mounted on a racking system with GPS software that automatically tilts the panels to track the path of the sun during the day.
The combination of the high-efficiency panels and the tracking system allows the facility to generate 25 percent more power than a conventional PV system, said SunPower CEO Tom Werner.
