ESTAP Webinar: Briefing on Sandia’s Maui Energy Storage Study

The Energy Storage Technology Advancement Partnership project of the Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) and the Department of Energy presented a webinar featuring a case study conducted by Sandia National Laboratory on the Island of Maui and its goals of increasing its renewable energy capacity and the role of energy storage.

The Hawaiian Island of Maui plans to provide upwards of 40% of its system capacity by renewable energy resources by 2015. Maui Electric Company (MECO) plans for three large wind farms and a significant distributed deployment of photovoltaics. This work investigates strategies utilizing energy storage resources in reducing anticipated wind curtailment and mitigating any increases in production costs.

The integration of different energy storage resources into an hourly production cost model of the MECO power system allows for a load balance and economic analysis to value the efficacy of energy storage deployment. This work highlights the immediate value for deploying energy storage on island systems.

Guest Panelists:

• Dan Borneo, Sandia
• James Ellison, Sandia
• Dhruv Bhatnagar, Sandia
• Dean Oshiro, Hawaii Electric Company
• Steven Rymsha, Maui Electric Company