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Comment by soperj | Hacker News Reader

> when it is dark and calm.

When is that in Hawaii?

There is almost always wind in Hawaii.

In late winter/early spring sometimes the trade winds get "funky" and there will be days where there is absolutely no wind at all and it is a little eerie.

It's been years since I lived on Oahu but the trade winds have been active on fewer and fewer days thanks to climate change. IIRC they used to be active something like 320+ days a year but now it's more like the upper 200s.

Problem is much easier to solve if you accept that some people won't get any power when it is dark and calm. How many days of no power would people accept?

I'm reminded of the arguments AT&T made pre-breakup, that customers wouldn't stand for anything less than five-nines reliability, therefore they should keep their gold-plated monopoly.

As it turns out, customers are quite willing to trade reliability of a service vs. lower costs.

It doesn't matter what you accept. What matters is what they accept... the people you want to make decisions for.

What's the geothermal power potential in Hawaii? Seems like it would be a good source for it to me.

The only island with active geothermal activity is an island without many people (compared to Oahu).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puna_Geothermal_Venture

But to use geothermal power one does not need pre-existent geothermal activity, at least in principle. If the magma is close, you can get to a hot are by drilling, and then pump the cold water in and get the hot steam out.

Now, I don't know how difficult and expensive it is in practice. But as a "baseload" geothermal looks very good. Does not depend on weather at al...

One could install transmission lines between the islands if Hawaii's politics wasn't so broken.

Equally important: how much would said geothermal cost?

The Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant, which is the largest geothermal power plant in Iceland cost approximately €380 million to build.

However a smaller geothermal plant such as the Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant cost only around €100 million to build

We'll see if it survives, since there's a large magma intrusion occurring just about under it. The recent eruption there (east of the plant) fortunately flowed away, and they've built a berm to deflect nearer eruptions, but an eruption directly under the plant, inside the berm, would destroy it.

yeah that is interesting. but then that issue is universal for places like iceland and Hawaii isnt it?

Not sure about calm (I feel like there's pretty much always some wind), but the rainy season brings lots of clouds. And even outside the rainy season there are days cloudy enough to impact solar generation.

Which is why I asked if the weather conditions changed the calculus in Hawaii. Great for Hawaii, but doesn't help in other locations.

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