How the Hawaiian Power Grid Works

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I can honestly say this is the first time I've ever stopped and considered how Hawaii generates enough power when it is all by itself. Thanks for the thought-provoking video this morning

As a resident on Oahu I appreciate your video. I remember the bad weather you were mentioning, luckily rolling blackouts didn't affect us in Ewa Beach. Our home solar system was able to charge up to 50% during this time. For the past 2 months February and March we've been 100% off grid thanks to great weather.

Engineer from Hawaii here. Thank you so much for doing this video and keeping it well-informed within our context! So many of our problems arise from our unique geography and isolation, and many of them are really engineering problems. You've made my day here. Will be sharing it with local people who ask me questions about this kinda stuff. Mahalo! Oh, side note for future reference, since you brought up your efforts to being correct and respectful (thank you so much!). The word "Hawaiian" is used for Hawaiian "Kanaka Maoli" ethnic people, not residents of the State. State residents are simply "locals". I know, it's a little confusing, but it's sorta like calling all people living in Japan "Japanese" even if they are not ethnically Japanese; the term is reserved for ethnicity, not residency.

Super interesting video.

0:55 for those wondering the building at the top of those stairs is the ha'iku radio station historically before it was retired from that use it was used by the us navy to send signals to navy ships operating all over the pacific

Excellent video! Retired power engineer here - worked on a study for the US DOE back in the early 80's that highlighted most of the same points you mention. While it might seem that the industry has been dragging its feet on addressing the problems, the fact is that solutions rely on technology that simply didn't exist and that had to be developed, and that takes time. And there's more to be done - which is why power engineering may seem to be boring and mundane, but in fact is one of the most dynamic fields to be in. And by the way - the situation is Texas is actually quite similar to Hawaii - slightly larger in scale, but still an isolated grid with some of the same issues.

I did some design work on a simple cycle combustion turbine generator install near Kapolei about 15 years ago. Besides the high wind, high seismic, and unfriendly volcanic geology and a high salty water table, there were other atypical costs. It had to be a 'black start' unit, so it had its own batteries and diesel generators to fire up the CTG w/o off-site power, not cheap. Additionally, the unit was credited for providing power to emergency facilities, hospitals, fire stations, etc. therefore increasing its IBC importance category from the normal III to IV, a considerable expense and an increase to the design loads. Lastly, shout out to Palo Verde generating station at 5:05. My favorite plant and an absolute beast. Nice video.

Technology Connections was the first channel I saw to bring up the difficulties of distributed electricity generation. I'd definitely be interested in a video that goes into this in more detail

That rotating physical mass's inertia stabilizing the frequency was a very informative.

I grew up on Oahu and one thing we used very little of was electricity. No AC or heat didn't need much lighting, Washer and dryer were outside and often didn't use the dryer. I'm glad you brought up all the issues with piling solar onto a small grid as there are many complaining about no longer being able to put power back on the grid now. It's a much more complicated issue than it looks on the surface. Also looking forward to your next video. There is a big difference between a rotating mass making electricity and a digital inverter and then a transformer based inverter as well. But I did see on google street view that the house we lived in went from a flat tar and gravel roof to a conventional pitched roof with solar panels and it looks like they have replaced the jalousie windows with regular windows and added air conditioning. My only complaint about living there was the constant ear infections from not having a dry place to sleep at night so AC is a very good thing.

When I was in Iceland I was amazed by how much infrastructure has been built out for geothermal power generation. It seems like a no-brainer for Hawaii that they should go all in on geothermal on the Big Island, and drop a DC interconnect cable to the rest of the islands to share the power. Iceland did this in the late '90s, and as a result their citizens get electricity for basically free. They have so much extra power that it's cheaper for companies to mine bauxite in Australia, ship it to Iceland, and smelt it using the excess power in Iceland than it is to smelt it in Australia.

Never realized how complex Hawaii's power situation is! 😮 Great deep dive into the challenges and uniqueness of island grids. 🌴✨

As a retired power engineer this is an excellent review of the power system, generation and system control.

9:42 old man yelling at cloud, but the old man works on Hawaii's grid and is completely justified

So refreshing to see an evaluation from someone who sees this as an engineering challenge with no horse in the game.

Fantastic! This is the first time I've heard anyone outside of power systems electrical engineers bring up inertia on the grid! Part of the value of building out pumped hydro storage is increasing the spinning mass connected to the grid to stabilize frequency. It's great that someone is finally discussing these more complex issues!

In the UK it is common for power inertia to be added into the grid, either via especially built projects that basically spin large weights to keep inertia in the system, or by converting generation plant into "large spinny things" when the power station is decommissioned. It seem that there is an opportunity to do that on Hawi'i

it never occurred to me before, but it is pretty wild that places like Kiribati and Tuvalu have electricity and internet and all the other utilities we take for granted too.

“Reliability comes from redundancy“ is powerfully meaningful and poetic.