Hawaii
Energy Policy Forum > 2002
Articles
Resorts turn to alternative energy
Jan TenBruggencate
Monday, January 28, 2002
Honolulu Advertiser
Big hotels are taking the alternative-energy and energy-efficiency
lead in a number of areas in Hawai'i. On the Big Island,
the Mauna Lani Resort recently dedicated its fourth solar
photovoltaic system. The latest and largest is a 250-kilowatt
array that tracks the sun as it crosses the sky to get the
best performance out of the power cells. The new system,
a PowerTracker, comes from the California firm PowerLight
Corp., the same firm that manufactured the first three systems.
Mauna
Lani put up its first array, an 80-kilowatt system, on the
hotel roof in 1998, then a 110-kilowatt array on its
golf building. More recently, it launched a fleet of golf
carts, called SunCaddies, with solar panels on the roofs.
The resort figures all its golf carts will be converted to
solar by the end of next year. In all, the resort has half
a megawatt of generating capacity. While solar photovoltaics
remain an expensive source of power to install, dropping
prices are increasingly convincing businesses and homeowners
that there are situations in which such plants make economic
sense. In some cases, tax credits and net metering can make
them the best power alternative.
Over on Maui, the Grand Wailea
Resort & Spa has teamed
up with Maui Electric Co., a Hawaiian Electric subsidiary.
They are developing a system that produces power and captures
the waste heat, which is then used for other purposes at
the resort - removing the need to use fuel or electricity
to make the heat. The demonstration project is called a combined
heat and power, or CHP, system.
It involves the resort having
its own power generation plant. The cooling water, which
absorbs the heat, could be used
to warm swimming pools or laundry water. Grand Wailea General
Manager Johnny So said the resort earlier teamed up with
the utility in installing energy-efficient electrical lighting
and appliances.
"
That resulted in real savings for us," So said. A California
company, Onsite Energy Corp., will help evaluate the CHP
project. Both the solar plant at Mauna Lani and the proposed
CHP plant at Wailea are what the industry calls distributed-generation
projects, an increasingly popular setup in which small power
generation facilities are established near the power demand.
The benefits of this arrangement are described at the Web
site distributed-generation .com: "For some customers
(distributed generation) can lower costs, improve reliability,
reduce emissions, or expand their energy options. (Distributed
generation) may add redundancy that increases grid security
even while powering emergency lighting or other critical
systems."
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