Power FROM the People!
It’s an economic fact-of-life here in the islands that almost everything costs more. And those higher costs are usually attributable to the cost of shipping. That’s primarily what’s behind the high cost of electricity. We are, after all, some 2300 miles from the West Coast and all the fuel to power our generators, be it coal or oil, has to be shipped in.
The residential rate for electricity here on Maui is now about 41 cents per kilowatt hour. (By contrast, my brother in central Illinois is paying eleven cents per kwh.) Over the past year or so, the monthly electric bill for our household of two adults was averaging about $250 … and we have neither heat nor air conditioning.
A month or so ago, I wrote about the two solar-power systems we had just installed on our house. The first, involving the two large solar panels, is to provide hot water. The second, the 13-panel photovoltaic system, is to generate electricity. During sunny days, it provides power for us with any surplus electricity being sent back into the grid for Maui Electric to sell to someone else. When that happens, our electric meter literally spins backwards … in effect, it’s Maui Electric buying electricity from us. At night and on cloudy days, we seamlessly draw from their grid and, of course, pay MECO for the electricity we use. Our monthly bill reflects whatever difference they may have been between what they charged us and what they paid us.
We just got our first full-month’s electric bill since the system was installed: $26.44!
