Hawaii-—entirely clean energy? Not gonna happen for a real, really long time. The HQ of Hawaiian Electric would first have to be bombed. Those folks will fight it tooth and other misc. parts.
On Oahu electricity is now 35 cents/kilowatt-hr more or less. All the islands are oil fired and while they encourage solar panels, they are as backward as can be in making them work. If one panels his roof the best he can do is go to zero on the power bill but even at that there is still a minimum charge just for being hooked up. If one over generates they will not pay back for the power that gets dumped to them. Meters won’t run backward either.
About 1968 I sat in on a conference that was chaired by the HECO VP of engineering. At the time they were buying sweet oil for 1.50/barrel. He was asked how high oil would have to go for Nuke power to be economical. He said it would have to double to 3.00/barrel.
That ship came and sailed in the oil embargo of 1973 and, still nuke power was never mentioned again. This, in spite of Pearl Harbor Nuke Division being one of the best sources of Nuke related experience anywhere on the planet. Half of the US Pacific Fleet is nuke powered-——but the Islands-——nnnnoooowwwwaaaayyy. They will fight you to the last dimokrat.
As a side note, at the time, the nuke plant builders were thinking BIG. They only wanted to build plants of 500 megawatts and bigger. The HECO guy claimed they just didn’t need that much power. That was before Sears started selling air conditioners?
As a professional Mechanical Engineer, still registered in Hawaii I’ve done the numbers on these options many times. But the politicians just can’t figger out a way to feed off of nuke power.
:: But the politicians just can’t figger out a way to feed off of nuke power. ::
That’s what is known as “stopping power”.
The No Grifting Zone.
Nuke plants, once in “steady-state” have no good cause for an increase in rates.
Palisades, here in Michigan, received then abandoned it’s 20-year extension and shut down in favor of \subsidies\ for solar and wind.
Generally speaking, the vast majority of nuclear powered generators are around 1100-1300 MW. There’s one plant with 2 units about 6 miles from home, as the crow flies.
But there is no reason that smaller ones can’t be made. Cheaply? No, they won’t be made cheaply. But they are possible.
From the operational standpoint, the downside to nuclear generation is that it takes nearly an act of congress for them to run at reduced power. So when the load falls off, like it does at night in the summer, all the other generators have to reduce output or even come off line. I don’t know what the peak demand and base load is on the islands, but I can see a huge generator being a bit of a problem.