Sonar tests
Sonar tests
Find another site
I was quite distressed to read the article regarding the Navy’s sonar blasts and how these tests could harm our marine animals.
Are there no alternative sites where it can conduct its tests?
If the waters off of Hawaii and California are the home or breeding ground for these sea creatures, wouldn’t it make more sense for the Navy to do its tests elsewhere?
We have a huge sea, so I’m sure if the Navy put its minds to it, it will be able to find an alternative area.
Colleen Wallis
Kailua-Kona
Legislature
Commendable vote
I would like to commend the Legislature and the House and Senate Agriculture chairpersons for their continued leadership in moving key legislative bills that will make a most positive impact on Hawaii agriculture.
I also applaud them for not passing bills like HB 2703 that do little to expand our agriculture industry. House Bill 2703 sounded good, but did not give the state any specifics on how it was going to achieve sustainability.
The bill also separates food and nonfood production incentives though the entire agriculture industry has common issues such as water, pest and disease, research and development, marketing and promotion, and transportation, to name a few.
We don’t need any more planning documents; we need legislation that addresses real agriculture business issues that will help increase production and revenues and thus reach everyone’s goal of sustainability.
Let us support all agriculture sectors in Hawaii.
Loren Mochida
Keaau
HELCO approval
Photovoltaic woes
Several months ago, in February, I signed a contract with a local supplier of photovoltaic systems with the intention of converting my home to be largely independent of HELCO and its extortionate power rates. Despite the fact the Big Island has a significant component of renewable energy sources (PV, geothermal and hydroelectric), this renewable energy has not yielded a significant reduction of power costs.
My cost per kilowatt hour for my May bill is 42.3 cents, higher than in Oahu or Maui.
I have since received two letters from HELCO’s Engineering Department. The first, dated March 14, required a “single line drawing” at a cost to me of $500.
Then, on May 2, I received another letter which stated “From our initial review, the generation exceeds 15 percent of feeder load in this area, and will require an installation of a grounding transformer bank on the distribution circuit. HELCO proposed to share the cost of this installation among the customers installing PV. The cost of this installation is $60,000 for an additional 500 KW, which yields a shared cost of $120 per KW of installed DG.” It goes on to calculate I owe HELCO an additional $618.12. All this is before I have to pay over $30,000 for the PV system
What the letter does not say is what the timing of this “grounding bank transformer” will be, nor why HELCO is not spending the $60,000 to install the transformer itself.
In the meanwhile, I continue to send it large checks, averaging $354 monthly for the last 12 months. It seems to me the profits in the last year, over $130 million for HEI, HELCO’s parent, should allow it to upgrade its system in light of its professed goal of renewable energy.
The final issue is where did the 15 percent feeder load come from? And what is the engineering basis for this figure? It seems to me that HELCO is diligent only in placing impediments to Big Island PV installations.
Bob Sterne
North Kohala