HONOLULU - Toddi Nakagawa, who lives in a suburb of Honolulu, has spent years battling her family's high electricity bills, which once topped US$500 a month, by gradually buying more solar panels. After accumulating more than 70 panels and three stacks of batteries, she has gotten her family's monthly bill down to just US$26.
While Hawaii faces unique challenges, the state's reliance on solar carries lessons for other states and countries looking to fight climate change and bring down energy costs. The state has increased the use of renewable energy in large part by getting electric utilities to accept rooftop solar rather than fight it, as energy companies in California, Florida and other states have been doing.
Recognising that reality, state officials in recent years have gone back to encouraging the use of small-scale energy systems. To manage the supply and demand of electricity, for example, Hawaii offers up to US$4,250 to homeowners on Oahu, home to about 70 per cent of the state's population and Honolulu, to install home batteries with their solar systems, defraying as much as one-third of the cost of doing so.
Power plants fuelled by oil supplied nearly two-thirds of Hawaii's electricity last year, down from nearly three-quarters a decade earlier, according to the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency. Rooftop solar, by comparison, supplied about 14 per cent, up from 6 per cent in 2014, the earliest year for which the agency has that data.
This was not the first time Hawaii struggled with energy inflation. In 2008, oil prices jumped above US$140, from about US$90, in part because of tensions in the Middle East. That forced the state, in collaboration with the federal Department of Energy, to start an initiative to reduce its heavy dependence on fossil fuels. Then, in 2015, Hawaii enacted a law mandating that all its electricity come from renewable sources by 2045.
"These big projects, representing hundreds of megawatts, were being pushed out, pushed out, pushed out," Dr Mangelsdorf said."The writing was on the wall." "We try to conserve," Ms Nakagawa said."We open up a window and use a fan." But she added that sometimes it got so hot and humid that she and her family needed the air conditioner.
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