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Tesla's New Solar Energy Station On Kauai Will Power Hawaii At Night (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the the-future-is-bright dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The Kapaia project is a combination 13MW SolarCity solar farm and 53MWh Tesla Powerpack station on the island of Kauai. In partnership with the KIUC (Kauai Island Utility Cooperative) the project will store the sun's energy during the day and release it at night. The station (along with Kauai's other renewable resource solutions including wind and biomass) won't completely keep the island from using fossil fuels but it will temper the need. In addition to using Tesla's station to battle the island's incredibly high electric bills, it's also part of a long-term Hawaii-state plan to be completely powered by renewable energy sources by 2045. Kauai has its own goal of using 70 percent renewable energy by 2030. With this project the island is getting closer to that goal and can now produce 100 percent of the energy it needs during high usage mid days and low loads via renewables during a brief period of time. The island state doesn't have the benefit of a massive grid like the mainland to pull electricity from sources hundreds of miles away. Instead each island has to take care of its own energy solutions. According to Tesla and the KIUC, the 45 acre Kapaia project will reduce the use of fossil fuels by 1.6 million gallons a year. You can view Tesla's Powerpack and solar farm on Kauai here.

3 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. It'll never work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hawaii doesn't get enough sun!

    They should just burn dead dinosaurs like Good Americans.

    Sadly, they would rather be a foreign country. Notice how they faked Obama's birth certificate.

  2. Re:Just wondering... by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Informative

    The big island has one, but the other islands aren't (actively) volcanic anymore.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Re:Wonderful, they are buying less fuel by dbIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    BUT, they still need the full complement of diesel generators for those times when the sun doesn't shine enough to keep the batteries charged.

    I'm not sure that you've got much of a grasp on the idea of what a tropical island is. Even 70% cloud cover during a day of tropical sunlight would probably deliver far more power than the same panels where you are. Plus, monocultures suck - even those diesel generators currently used have other diesel generators to fall back on - maybe it's better for you if you think of the solar as the backup for the diesel since that is vunerable to anything that holds up fuel shipping to the islands no matter how many backups it has.

    Of course, if you don't mind going back to the stone age from time to time

    A bit of Freudian slip there I think - opposing the advance of technology just because "The Party" says Komrades like you should strive against the dread spirit of innovation.
    It's really funny, in the 1970s conservatives would have been right behind this sort of thing as a shining example of American greatness - but now you just want to drag everything down only because it looks like it could match the policy of another party.
    It's shit like that which is on the trajectory to the stone age.