Hawaiian Electric Company goes green with a new biodiesel energy plant.
Company officials say it can also get power back faster during an island-wide blackout.
Hawaiian Electric showed off the first power plant in Hawaii that runs on 100 percent biodiesel, a liquid oil that burns much cleaner than petroleum, which is used at other power plants.
Turbine generators allow the plant at Campbell Industrial Park to use cooking oil and animal fat mixed with water to produce electricity. But this technology will mainly be used in the evening, during peak times, because it uses up too much oil.
"You do not want to have that on all the time. It is just not the most efficient for base loaded units but it moves quick, it picks up quick," said Robbie Alm of HECO.
That quick pick up is something Oahu residents will likely appreciate if there is another islandwide blackout like the one we had two years ago.
Many will remember that it took several hours for the power to be restored. Hawaiian Electric says this plant has a generator that can essentially be jump started with batteries, which can then help re-start the main power plants.
"This will be the unit that re-starts Oahu and because of how fast it starts, it should take an hour or two at least off the recovery time," said Alm.
The company says this plant is also trying to jump start local farmers to grow more crops that can be used for bio-energy. The two storage tanks can hold nearly two million gallons each of biofuel. But right now that's being provided by a company in Iowa. The goal is to be able to get it locally.
"Create the market and the ability to use it in other plants and then say to the ag community, if you can grow it we'll burn it. That's the contracts we have out right now," said Alm.
With an output of 110 megawatts, the plant would need up to seven million gallons a year.
