Electricity in Hawaii costs $0.38 per kilowatt hour, almost treble the national average of around $0.13, which incidentally does not factor in the damage to the environment caused by using fossil fuels to generate electricity. Solar power, which can cost $0.30 per KWH, is now actually cheaper than grid electricity. As a result, Oahu, the state’s most populous island, boasts 40,159 solar photovoltaic systems interconnected on the Hawaiian Electric Company’s grids for a total of 300 megawatts. This has exceeded 100% of daytime minimum load, triggering safety measures and/or upgrades before new PV on affected circuits can be interconnected to the grid. In simple terms, the utility business/engineering model is being tested by a new concept: distributed generation in reverse, where power is generated by homes and is then distributed to specific points of heavy industrial/commercial use.

The utility is trying to protect itself, and that’s understandable. The issue here is not that Hawaii’s solar experiment has failed to deliver enough power. Quite the contrary, it has proved that individual homes can and in fact do generate far more energy than they consume. In other words, the utility, the state and the state’s voters have not yet figured out what to do with so much FREE power. Instead, they have decided to curtail their very successful and innovative program so they can continue to pay for costly, imported oil and gas to run the utility’s generators.

Here’s an alternative. Instead of curbing installation of PV systems on rooftops, redouble the efforts to do so but don’t turn them on until every home in Honolulu has one. That will give the utility time to turn the fossil fuel power plants off and to morph into a maintenance provider only, end the monopoly and open the sector to competitors.

The evidence is conclusive and irrefutable: there will be excess daytime energy. Why not use electrolysis to extract hydrogen from the ocean, which is free, abundant and readily accessible, and export it to water-starved states and countries? Ask California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Mexico, China, and India, among others, if they could use the extra water and a non-polluting source of energy.  Hydrogen is unique in that it can be used to generate electricity and to manufacture pure water, two marketable commodities, therefore its price should reflect that fact. For ordinary Hawaiians, it would be a boom; not only would they not have to pay for costly fossil fuels –ever; they could create a cooperative to operate the hydrogen production business; the income would gradually pay for the infrastructure and in time give them a permanent free and clear income stream they do not presently have.

The Hawaiian success should be carefully studied by so many other islands and countries with abundant sun and ocean: the islands and coastlines of the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, the Andean region of South America, particularly those who are net energy importers. Almost overnight, they could become energy exporters.