The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative is closing out the year with nearly 45 percent of its fuel needs being met from renewable sources following 12 months of productivity from a Tesla solar- plus-storage facility.

President and CEO David Bissell said adding more renewables with favorable purchase power agreement pricing has helped stabilize rates.

“When we became a cooperative in 2003, our rates were 78 percent higher than rates on Oahu,” Bissell said. “By the end of 2017 we’d closed that gap to 17 percent. This is a trend that we expect will continue over the next several years as we replace the volatility of diesel pricing with renewables at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour or less.”

KIUC said Thursday that up to 20 percent of evening peak demand can be powered with dispatchable solar, and that renewable generation is reaching close to 99 percent during midday on most sunny days.

The co-op said that by year-end it will be receiving power from a new solar-plus-storage facility in Lawai, operated by AES Distributed Energy, which will boost overall renewable generation capacity to nearly 60 percent, with up to 40 percent of evening peak powered by dispatchable solar.

KIUC said although the April flooding was costly in terms of operations and repairs, its status as a not-for-profit cooperative allows reimbursement of up to 75 percent of eligible costs from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The co-op, recognized by the Smart Electric Power Alliance for having the highest percentage of battery storage per customer in the nation, recently launched a new website featuring a publicly available outage map to keep members better informed during power failures.