Hitachi Leads Hawaiian Island Maui, Smart Grid Project

The Hawaiian island of Maui is about to become the site of a major Smart Grid project, to demonstrate the latest in smart grid technology.  The project is will be spearheaded by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) with Hitachi as the lead coordinator and project leader. The project comprises of a mixture of U.S. and Japanese businesses: Cyber Defense Institute, Sharp, Mizuho Bank, Hewlett-Packard Japan, JFE Engineering and Hitachi.

The Project, a joint undertaking by the U.S. and Japan, will be aimed at demonstrating a world-leading smart grid on Maui, a Hawaiian island. The Project is supported by NEDO, in cooperate with the U.S. State of Hawaii, Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc., the University of Hawaii, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, whose involvement is based on the Japan-U.S. Clean Energy Technologies Action Plan, which was agreed to following the Japan-U.S. heads of state summit held in November 2009.

The goal of the Project is to verify cutting-edge technologies in a smart grid under the use of large volumes of renewable energy already in place, contribute to smart grid standards, and implement a low-carbon social infrastructure system that efficiently uses renewable energy on a remote island where electricity costs are relatively high.

On the island of Maui, 15% of the electricity supply is already generated by renewable energy, and there are plans to increase this percentage going forward. The six participating companies will build and test a system that applies the latest technologies that will be utilized include: power distribution control, demand side load control, control-ICT platform, electric vehicles (EVs) operation and charging control, multiple type of rapid chargers, and information and telecommunications technologies.

The part of the demonstration plan includes utilization of the EVs as the stability function for the grid. These technologies will be implemented to eliminate the factors in causing power voltage impacts in the distribution grids and fluctuations in power frequency when large volumes of renewable energy with weather-dependent tendency are added to a power grid.

See also:
Hitachi and Panasonic To Collaborate On Smart Grid Solutions
Korea's Jeju Island To Showcase Smart Grid At G20 Summit