The Lahaina community is getting the opportunity to help determine how their town will be powered in the future.
The new Lahaina Energy Partnership is composed of local organizations and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL. They'll be holding a community workshop Thursday to gather input.
HPR talked with Lahaina Strong’s Paele Kiakona, Hā Sustainability’s Alex de Roode and NREL’s Robin Burton about Lahaina’s energy future.
"What we've heard so far in our process is really an emphasis on resiliency, on safety and on affordability," de Roode said.
"With the support of NREL, we'll be providing technical assistance as we move through this process and digging deeper into the technologies, what they can offer and how they might be implemented within the community," he said.
In other areas that have recovered from wildfire disasters, there's a big emphasis on fire safety and rebuilding the grid to minimize the risk from downed power lines, de Roode said. Backup power is also a key point for places prone to disasters.
"Concepts like microgrids, neighborhood-scale microgrids, for example, are options that many communities are exploring, where you're not having to rely on as big of a centralized system, at least not solely, but you're able to also have some local resilience and reliance on your own localized systems," de Roode said.
Kiakona of Lahaina Strong said that community members want more options to be self-sufficient, such as through solar power and hydropower. He's been looking into possibly using recycled water, R-1, to generate power.
"We can't consistently and continuously rely on everything coming from out of state. We have to be able to supply and sustain ourselves at some points," he said.
NREL’s Burton said the national laboratory is in listening mode during this phase of the project.
"We're sitting back, looking to the partners to do their work, and really look forward to receiving kind of a synthesis of what our partners have heard from the community to have that guide the technical analysis that the lab does, to help answer the community's questions about possible futures for Lahaina," she said.
The workshop on Lahaina’s energy future will be held Thursday at Lahainaluna High School from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. For more information, click here.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Oct. 22, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
