Author: Sonja Kass

Drive Electric Hawai‘i is a partnership made up of eight key stakeholder organizations that have agreed to collaborate on electrification of ground transportation in Hawai‘i as an essential part of achieving the state’s clean energy goals.  Drive Electric Hawai‘i will seek to accelerate adoption of electric vehicles and expand vehicle-charging infrastructure in a way that brings more renewable energy onto the electric grid KIUC is one of the founding participants who have signed a Memorandum of Understanding.  Other participants are: Blue Planet Foundation Hawai‘i State Department of Transportation Hawai‘i State Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT) Hawai‘i State Division of Consumer Advocacy Hawaiian Electric Companies Rocky Mountain Institute Ulupono Initiative Other agencies and organizations are expected to join as the initiative moves forward.  Read more in the Pacific Business News...

The main reason for us to go solar was to reduce our carbon footprint, and a large portion of the CO2 that we as a family produced was due to driving gas-powered vehicles.  So the easiest solution to that was to size the system so it could charge an electrical vehicle additionally to powering our household. While we were designing our photovoltaic system we already had an electric car in mind – a Nissan Leaf.  The general recommendations based on an average mileage of 12,000 miles per year are to add between 2.5 kW (recommended by Ford and SunPower) and 3.6 kW (BMW) to what the household needs. This number brought us close to 6kW, and the Leaf charges at slowly 3.3kW or fast 6.6 kW, so we decided to fill up the south side of the roof with a 6.8kW array. Sizing it above 6.6kW allows one additional benefit: 100% solar charge. In most areas, with time of use metering and cheaper night-time...