Hawaiian Electric filed a draft Request for Proposals with state regulators to acquire up to 206 GWh of energy annually and up to 95 MW of capacity to meet energy reserve margin needs for the eastern portion of Hawaii Island.
The company said it is seeking a variety of sources including new renewable dispatchable generation projects (with or without energy storage systems), extensions of existing resources, standalone energy storage projects, and aggregated customer-sited distributed energy resources projects.
Projects will need to be at least 2.5 MW in size, the threshold for a waiver from competitive bidding rules. Storage paired with solar must be sized to support the net nameplate capacity for a minimum of four hours and support at least 365 full charge/discharge cycles each year. Wind-paired storage must provide either two or four hours of continuous support.
Hawaiian Electric said it will evaluate the proposals to determine if other services ancillary to the energy target can be acquired, including regulating reserve.
Multiple phases
In 2019, Hawaiian Electric began a procurement effort for renewable energy resources to end the use of coal and reduce reliance on imported oil for power generation. The company sought approximately 900 MW – up to 203 MW on Hawaii Island – of new renewables or renewables paired with storage.
In the first two phases, three solar-plus-storage projects and one standalone storage project totaling approximately 132 MW of generation and 492 MWh of storage were selected.
If approved by state regulators, this third phase will be opened to bids with the first projects expected to come online no later than 2030.
