Hawaii Electric Light subsidiary
Robert Kaneshiro is Operations Superintendent at Hawaii Electric Light.
Leland Cockcroft is System Planning Engineer at Hawaii Electric Light.
We interviewed nine of the leaders at Hawaiian Electric including Leland Cockcroft and Rob Kaneshiro of subsidiary Hawaii Electric Light.
PUF: Robert you were taking us through the operation center for the Big Island of Hawaii. Give an overview of the generators and the transmission.
Robert Kaneshiro: Our transmission system is sixty-nine kilovolts. Our evening peak comes in at about a hundred and eighty-five or a hundred and ninety megawatts. We should be seeing the annual peak shortly, because normally, during the winter months when families come back to visit, that's when we see our highest load for the year. It should be coming in, about a hundred and ninety-one megawatts.
Then our daytime peak usually comes in at about 7:30 a.m., at about a hundred and forty or a hundred and forty-five megawatts. We have about ninety-seven megawatts of connected rooftop solar, so we see the daytime loads go down to as low as the high seventies, for the daytime minimum, occurring right around noon, as expected, when the sun is at its highest point.
Lately we've been seeing it only get down to maybe about a hundred and twenty megawatts or so. That could be because more people are installing air conditioners. Usually that occurs when we've got really nice, cool weather, clear skies, and perfect trade winds where nobody runs their air conditioners.