Unique Renewable Goals
Steve Mitnick is President of Lines Up, Inc., Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly, and author of “Lines Down: How We Pay, Use, Value Grid Electricity Amid the Storm.”
Perhaps the highest of the high points of visiting Hawaiian Electric and Hawaii's Public Utilities Commission was when Commission chair Jay Griffin announced during the pre-hearing conference we attended that "the Mitnicks" of Public Utilities Fortnightly were sitting in, as welcome guests of the Commission. (One Mitnick had flown in from Washington, D.C., the other from Tokyo.) Or perhaps when we watched the moving Hawaiian blessing of the West Loch Solar Project of Hawaiian Electric and the U.S. Navy. Or it could have been when we were given a tour of the volcano eruption's devastation of a whole housing development and the geothermal plant that provided a major proportion of the big island's power and the recovery work by Hawaiian Electric and the plant owner, Ormat.
One more possibility, when we interviewed the super-smart engineers from the PUC and the utility, Dave Parsons and Colton Ching respectively, about how the Aloha State can innovate to the state's hundred percent renewable by 2045 goal.
During our visit, we interviewed seventeen folks at the PUC and the utility. That's a lot. And then we interviewed the state's consumer advocate and a state legislator too, on the phone, not being able to shoehorn them in while we were situated on Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii islands.
In these interviews you're certain to learn what's up in Hawaii and with this unique renewable goal. Even though you missed walking the beautiful beaches, seeing the clear night skies, and feeling the spray from the remote waterfalls of the islands.
Hawaii-themed suite of interviews:
- Jay Griffin, Chair
- Leo Asuncion, Commissioner
- Jennifer Potter, Commissioner
- Caroline Ishida, chief counsel
- Dave Parsons, chief for policy and research
- Jodi Endo Chai, Executive Officer
- Gina Yi, Interim Chief Engineer
- Jayson Kauwenaole, Head of Compliance and Consumer Affairs
- Alan Oshima, CEO
- Colton Ching, SVP for planning and technology
- Scott Seu, SVP for public affairs
- Rebecca Dayhuff Matsushima, director for renewable acquisition
- Jack Shriver, director for generation project development
- Christian Whitney, director for pole infrastructure enterprise
- Yoh Kawanami, co-director for customer energy resources
- Leland Cockcroft and Rob Kaneshiro, Hawaii Electric Light subsidiary
