It’s difficult to imagine a home off the grid creating all the electricity it needs. But imagine an entire company doing just that -- creating electricity for manufacturing.
A vast landscape at Barbers Point includes some 250 containers.
Francis Martin converts them to storage units, office complexes, even homes.
And he does it without electricity - at least none that he has to buy.
"There were several levels of authorities I had to go through to get it hooked up with Hawaiian Electric, so I decided the heck with it. Let's just go ahead and make my own electricity,” said Martin of Containers Hawaii.
Using photovoltaic and solar panels across this array of containers and buildings, Martin has managed to create enough electricity to power his office.
"Everything in an office, including refrigerators, freezers, pool pump, we have a little swimming pool because we're in the container business so we modify containers into housing. Or into offices and we also offer a pool, a swimming pool, so we also have that as a display,” he said.
But that's not all.
Martin employs 15 people who work on modifying the containers and solar power runs their equipment.
"All the fabrication equipment, welding, grinders, cutters, sheet metal benders. Anything you can imagine in a machine shop is run by solar,” he said.
A contractor will come to Martin and tell him what a buyer is looking for.
"We want to get this and this with this many doors and this many openings, can you put a glass sliding window and insulate it and put electrical and wifi and all this other kind of stuff in it, so we do that,” he said.
We wanted to know about Martin's long term plan for his business.
"Retirement? No, no I just enjoy doing this work so it's not a question of having to do it or so much want to do it I just like doing it and living sustainably,” he said.
