Regulatory Wayfinding

Deck: 

Hawaii PUC's Decade-Long Journey

Fortnightly Magazine - October 2018
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Hawaii is a state born of explorers and visionary navigators. It was populated initially by Polynesian explorers crossing the vast Pacific Ocean in small double-hulled canoes, who charted their location using the stars for navigation, and returned to tell their stories so others could follow.

The story of Polynesian explorers' intrepid wayfinding and determination is an appropriate analogy for the state's electricity regulators, who are forging new regulatory paths as the reality of PV solar costs on par with grid-supplied electricity emerges. Their continuing saga is a bellwether that energy regulators should not ignore, as solar grid-cost parity is something an increasing number of states will be dealing with in the not-so-distant future.

Hawaii is blessed by abundant solar and other renewable energy resources but challenged by the volatility of the cost of imported fossil fuels. As a result, Hawaii's high cost oil and diesel-fueled electricity industry is the first to experience extremely high levels of distributed-energy resource adoption and associated economic, technical, and regulatory challenges.

But it will not be the last. This account of Hawaii's journey to electric industry regulatory reform is shared so that other energy regulators might benefit from Hawaii's experiences, just as early Hawaiian inhabitants of the islands benefitted from their ancestors' explorations.

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