Perspective Pivot: Mapping a Landscape of Voices in Oahu Changes Energy Planning

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On the Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory (NREL), researchers typically function guides who assist communities navigate the world of renewable power options. However in community-based technical help tasks, the guiding function goes each methods: Researchers want native views to fill contextual data gaps and create extra significant power options.

“Energy problems are people problems. We prioritize the interests of people and develop tools to serve them,” mentioned Katy Waechter, an NREL researcher whose people-focused lens helped her staff make vital changes throughout an power resilience undertaking for the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

Over the course of six weeks, Waechter—together with representatives from the Hawaiian Electrical utility and Hawaii Pure Vitality Institute, affiliated with the College of Hawaii—traveled the 600-square-mile island to listen to how people perceived independently owned hybrid microgrids. No quantity of preliminary analysis may put together the staff for what they found: candid issues, recent views, and beforehand uncharted priorities that in the end pivoted the staff’s analysis route to raised inform Oahu-wide power planning.

Oahu was among the many first 11 communities in america to affix the U.S. Division of Vitality’s Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP)a technical help program for community-driven power resilience tasks that mixes the native data of regional organizations with the experience of nationwide laboratory researchers. Every ETIPP undertaking is formed by a neighborhood’s priorities and nuances, together with components equivalent to power assets, cultural heritage, socioeconomic elements, and resilience objectives. The technical help in Oahu illustrated how when researchers comply with residents’ leads as a substitute of taking commonplace approaches, they can assist facilitate power planning that may greatest serve native wants within the long-term.

Exploring Hybrid Microgrids as a Resolution to Oahu’s Energy Outages

Residing in an remoted neighborhood with restricted electrical infrastructure, some Oahu residents wait weeks for energy to be restored after extreme climate occasions. The native utility, Hawaiian Electrical utilized to ETIPP with a imaginative and prescient to convey hybrid microgrids to the island to assist alleviate lengthy outages.

Hawaiian Electrical hoped microgrid siting discussions would inform the Oahu-wide power planning dialog about reaching 100% renewable power by 2045—particularly, methods to equitably distribute the advantages and burdens related to the transition.

“Making sure that a renewable energy transition is done in an equitable manner is something that a lot of utilities and partners are acknowledging that needs to be done, and ETIPP is designed in a way to encourage that cocreation process with the community,” mentioned Kurt Tsue, Hawaiian Electrical’s director of neighborhood affairs, who collaborated on the ETIPP undertaking.

With the assist of ETIPP researchers at NREL and Sandia Nationwide Laboratories, Hawaiian Electrical deliberate to judge optimum hybrid microgrid areas to enhance the resilience of Oahu’s electrical infrastructure. In contrast to conventional microgrids, that are put in and operated by utilities, hybrid microgrids in Hawaii are developed and operated independently, which suggests residents should provoke the request to develop them. However hybrid microgrids are a brand new service in Oahu, so many residents usually are not but conscious they’re an possibility. The ETIPP staff meant to “help communities learn about hybrid microgrids, how they work, and decide if it’s a solution for them,” Waechter mentioned.

“We were purely working towards designing something with the community and not coming in with any preconceived notions of wanting to build something,” Tsue mentioned.

Nevertheless, in one of many first conferences the ETIPP analysis staff held with a gaggle of Oahu residents to debate microgrid choices, they found many residents’ questions wanted to be addressed earlier than they may focus on potential hybrid microgrid areas or contributors.

“It became apparent pretty immediately that the concerns of the communities weren’t necessarily being addressed with what we were trying to talk to them about,” Waechter mentioned. “So, we needed to pivot the dialog to deal with how hybrid microgrids may gain advantage and deal with their issues about power reliability and safety.

Neighborhood members additionally talked about a want to see extra various illustration of the 5 completely different Oahu ship (districts)—’Ewa, O’ahu, Ko’olauloa, Ko’olaopoko, and Wai’anae—in island-wide power planning conversations.

“We have our highest native Hawaiian population on the western side, which has been experiencing more of the renewable transition because the resource potential and land availability is much greater there,” Tsue mentioned. “People in the west ask why everything has to be sited there. They feel that (the renewable energy transition) is being carried on their back.”

Yielding the Ground: Listening to What Issues Most to Residents Throughout Oahu

NREL researchers labored with Hawaiian Electrical in addition to Hawaii Pure Vitality Institute and the Hawaii Emergency Administration Company to create a neighborhood engagement technique that addressed these issues. The ETIPP staff hosted 5 conferences, one for every of the areas in Oahu, to allow better participation. Reside broadcasts of the conferences included suggestions choices through Zoom and social media channels. The staff additionally posted recordings of the conferences to Hawaiian Electrical’s web site, giving residents the possibility to submit feedback on their very own time.

Although the analysis staff knew what varieties of services would sometimes be prioritized for inclusion in microgrid protection—like hospitals and emergency companies—they as a substitute requested every regional neighborhood to establish what they felt have been the precedence buildings and companies.

“That was my favorite part: learning about the places that matter to these communities,” Waechter mentioned. “That knowledge changed what we mapped and changed what these hybrid microgrid opportunities could potentially cover.”

Among the precedence areas included veteran facilities, industrial kitchens, sewer pumps, and a distant dam that serves as a neighborhood rallying level throughout main climate occasions like tsunamis and hurricanes. Tsue mentioned it was “extremely valuable” to doc suggestions from neighborhood members about locations that have been vital to them.

“Asking about things like resilience hubs or gathering places that are meaningful for communities—those we didn’t have any previous insight on,” Tsue mentioned.

To deal with logistical challenges to participation, seize a wider viewers, and share assets, ETIPP researchers mixed their hybrid microgrid data classes with Hawaiian Electrical’s built-in grid planning conferences and different neighborhood group conferences.

“Pairing these microgrid discussions with some of the other renewable energy planning that we were already doing made it even more valuable. It led to really meaningful community discussions,” Tsue mentioned.

All the neighborhood enter knowledgeable the information assortment course of that ETIPP researchers used to construct a map sequence exhibiting several types of hybrid microgrid alternatives in every neighborhood, in addition to island-wide. Whether or not a hybrid microgrid was thought of appropriate for a given space was based mostly on present electrical energy distribution and neighborhood wants and whether or not it will present improved assist for vital companies and lifelines, improved service reliability for weak grid infrastructure, and equitable entry to microgrid companies.

Hawaiian Electrical plans to make use of these supplies to conduct additional neighborhood outreach and lengthen its microgrid evaluation to the opposite Hawaiian islands in its service territory.

One of many neighborhood leaders who participated in Hawaiian Electrical’s ETIPP undertaking was impressed to use to ETIPP the next yr to obtain assist for a particular resilience hub. Hui o Hau’ula, a neighborhood group on the east coast of Oahu, was accepted to ETIPP in 2022 and is coordinating the planning and improvement of a neighborhood resilience hub, which can generate and retailer energy earlier than, throughout, and after a catastrophe or energy outage for the encompassing Koʻolauloa district.

“ETIPP is a really unique opportunity to empower communities to make decisions for themselves,” Tsue mentioned.

Waechter agreed.

“The work is ultimately to serve communities by giving them a data-driven foundation to make decisions,” she mentioned. “Everything comes down to what people value. The different types of analysis that we do to help people answer questions about their own energy autonomy—it’s really heartening to get to do that.”

ETIPP is managed by NREL and funded and supported by the U.S. Division of Vitality’s Workplace of Vitality Effectivity and Renewable Vitality.

EL and funded and supported by the U.S. Division of Vitality’s Workplace of Vitality Effectivity and Renewable Vitality

By Brooke Van Zandt | Courtesy of NREL.