LIHUE — Hawaii’s largest solar facility — a $40 million, 12-megawatt array in Koloa — is now online. A community open house will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday for the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative solar farm,
LIHUE — Hawaii’s largest solar facility — a $40 million, 12-megawatt array in Koloa — is now online.
A community open house will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday for the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative solar farm, which is adjacent to the old Koloa Mill off the Poipu Bypass Road to show off the project.
Signs will be posted. Reservations are not required.
With the Koloa array now running, KIUC is using the sun to meet nearly half of the island’s daytime energy demand.
During the event, KIUC staff engineers will guide members on tours and explain how the facility’s 45,360 panels provide electricity to the grid and enable KIUC to reduce its annual fuel oil consumption by 1.7 million gallons, according to a release.
The array became operational in July and went into full commercial operation earlier this month. The project was built by SolarCity on 67 acres of former sugar cane fields leased from Grove Farm.
It will generate 5.5 percent of the electricity used on Kauai annually and produces enough electricity to power about 4,000 homes.
The net cost of electricity generated by the array will be between 10 cents and 13.5 cents a kilowatt hour, far below the present cost of oil, which is about 23 cents per kilowatt hour.
An private dedication ceremony for the Koloa facility is scheduled for today.
In June, KIUC broke ground on what will be the state’s second-largest solar array, a 12-megawatt, $54 million facility in Anahola. The Anahola facility is expected to be complete in early 2015.
