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Law professor Richard Wallsgrove doesn’t seem to understand that when the sun doesn’t shine, no amount of solar panels will prevent the rolling blackouts we experienced recently, due to failures at Hawaiian Electric’s power plants (“Modern renewable energy is more resilient against outages,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Jan. 14). He writes, “To unexpectedly lose 100 megawatts of renewable energy, 10,000 solar-powered homes would have to break down all at once.” Large amounts of solar power do not “break down,” but rainy days can reduce their output to zero. A million solar-powered homes and vast utility solar farms would have the same problem.
Hawaiian Electric tells us battery storage is not a backup, so the backup plan is apparently the aging fossil-fuel generators at Waiau and Kahe Point. Oahu’s reliable generation is 100 megawatts short without the coal plant. Can HECO rebuild its generators and run 100% on green biodiesel someday (with new reliability issues)? What is our weather exposure to solar and wind power? Our legislators urgently need to commission a realistic reassessment of Oahu’s energy future.
Brian Barbata
Kailua
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