Randall Hee stepped up as Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative’s acting chief executive when Dutch Achenbach retired last month. The former McBryde Sugar mechanical engineer got his start working with the plantation’s Wainiha hydroelectric plant, a facility that turned 100 earlier
Randall Hee stepped up as Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative’s acting chief executive when Dutch Achenbach retired last month.
The former McBryde Sugar mechanical engineer got his start working with the plantation’s Wainiha hydroelectric plant, a facility that turned 100 earlier this year and still produces power for the island.
Hee completed stints with KIUC predecessors Kaua‘i Electric and Kaua‘i Power Partners working as the operations superintendent at the Port Allen generation facility and helping establish the KPP facility.
He sat on the KIUC board in 2003, resigning from KPP when the cooperative began to negotiate the company’s purchase. When that deal closed he resigned from the board and worked to finish course work that led to a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Hawai‘i’s distance learning program in 2004.
In February 2005 he became manager of safety at KIUC and quickly moved into the position of chief of operations.
He would like to see the “acting” part of his current title go away, he said, and will put his application in for the official title, which should be assigned by March.
“You add up all the experience, and it’s a comfortable thing for me,” he said. “It’s a complex business — that’s what makes it fun.”
He identified two clear-cut goals for the cooperative: increased efficiency and decreased costs.
Last Thursday Hee talked about the history of the industry, where things stand today and what the future might hold.
On sugar roots
RH: Each of the plantations had some electrical generation. The primary uses in those days were irrigation and processing cane. Up until 1964 all of the generation was supplied by the sugar companies.
We still run the first utility generation unit that went in in 1964. In 1968 they added more units and from there it just started growing
With the decline of sugar as a viable industry, sugar companies went away. So did generation sources that were tied to those companies.
The largest impact on us was when Lihu‘e Plantation shut down. We had a firm power contract with them for up to 14 megawatts.
We had to come up with a financial arrangement to keep that power company running until the (former KPP) plant came on line.
On population growth, energy
RH: We saw a lot of growth on the island that wasn’t agriculturally based. You had those plantations supplying, but they maxed out so you started putting in oil burning units. In those days they were economical.
Over the years we see more people with overall energy requirements coming up and a decline in energy from sugar companies, because sugar companies are closing down.
That results in the earlier need for added capacity. With the increase in oil costs, it forces us to look at putting in higher efficiency units and ultimately units that don’t rely on oil.
We’re very interested in bio-diesel because we could probably burn it in most of our units.
On the potential of sugar
RH: Gay & Robinson is still in the sugar business. They generate electricity in their factory and they also have a hydroelectric power plant. They supply themselves and sell us some of their surplus.
Ethanol production for them would be a new venture. They would still continue to grow and produce sugar, but use the molasses to make ethanol. They are looking at increasing the amount of their generation because they’ll probably need some additional steam or power for that process. We’re talking to them about these kinds of things, but at this point I’m not at liberty to say a lot.
On aging infrastructure
RH: In all likelihood we’ll install higher efficiency units. We’ve done a lot of work on our older units to increase operational efficiency, but there comes a point where it doesn’t make sense, and you have to retire a unit.
The key to that is looking at fuel diversity, reliability and cost of operation, as well as capital cost that is needed to install these new generators.
We’re looking maybe at multi-fuel. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we go to a renewable energy right away, because those sources haven’t been developed yet. There aren’t enough biofuels. But we’re looking at units that could convert to a renewable energy source.
On coal and
multi-fuel units
RH: We’re looking at coal. People say, ‘Wow, that’s a fossil fuel,’ but the fact is that it could be a cheaper alternative that we need to run until we develop other alternate renewable sources. When we target coal we’re looking at units that could burn coal and are multi-fuel, so they could probably do waste-to-energy (or) biomass.
On waste-to-energy plants
RH: That technology is growing every day. I think there are roughly six megawatts of garbage that we produce daily that could be converted to electrical power. I hope it doesn’t grow because that means we’re throwing more away.
We could accept the power and work up some kind of agreement. We could operate a plant as well, but we operate power plants. We’re open to several solutions including someone else building it and supplying us with power that we could purchase.
On harvesting methane from Kekaha
RH: There is less than a megawatt (in Kekaha once it closes). The usage of that methane is probably an engine that’s burning the methane, producing electrical energy and producing heat that the Pacific Missile Range Facility would use. Somebody’s got to be close to use the heat. That’s not something you could transfer. There’s a limited life, but certainly it’s worth getting.
On projecting growth
RH: We run load growth studies. Essentially it tells us what our next increment (of capacity) needs to be. The plan says that probably we’re OK until 2014, but intuitively I think many of us feel that we’re not going to wait that long.
Basically the (plan) says that in 2014 we can’t meet our peak with our largest unit out, but the reality is that we could have our largest unit out and another unit down for maintenance.
On the cost of energy
RH: In the past few years we’ve seen oil prices more than double. There are no short term solutions. We operate the system as efficiently as we can.
The solution lies in installing higher efficiency units, alternative fuels where we can if they’re cheaper or alternative sources period.
When we install new units, we increase the capital cost. We hope that we could do it in a way that doesn’t increase cost to the customers, but the reality is that eventually it may.
Since 1997 Kaua‘i Electric and then KIUC haven’t increased rates.
Because fuel prices have increased, customers pay a higher cost. But we haven’t raised our (base) rates.
On communication during outages
RH: We realize that we’re a bunch of engineers who love technology and feel comfortable with the complexities. But there’s a whole other element out there that sees things differently.
When we have an outage, our first priority is to fix that outage. We have a whole bunch of people focused on that, but we’re finding that it’s crucial to take those same people and get information from them and feed it to our members.
• Charlotte Woolard, business writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) or cwoolard@kauaipubco.com.
