Hawai’i PUC approves plan to bring Hawaiian residents more renewable energy choices

The Hawai‘i Public Utilities Commission approved an agreement between the Hawaiian Electric Companies and Open Access Technology International, Inc. (OATI) to bring customers more renewable energy choices.

The agreement allows OATI to aggregate, forecast, and control private distributed energy resources — like customer-sited rooftop solar systems — to supply grid services to Hawaiian Electric on multiple islands. OATI will create a cloud-based system to aggregate multiple distributed energy resources such as solar PV, battery systems, and grid-enabled water heaters, to help the islands’ grids.

OATI was selected by Hawaiian Electric to provide these services after an extensive competitive bidding process.

With OATI’s webSmartEnergy system and operations center, the supply of grid services will be managed 24×7, in real-time.

“We are excited to work with Hawaiian Electric and our Alliance members to develop a strong, dynamic, and beneficial Grid Services Program,” Sasan Mokhtari, president and CEO of OATI, said. “This momentous project exemplifies the shift to a distribution-centric grid and enables Hawaiian Electric’s customers to interactively power this new system.”

OATI, headquartered in Minneapolis, is a provider of smart grid and grid modernization and distribution management services. OATI also has offices in California, Punjab, Telangana, and Singapore.

“This is the first of what we hope will be many offerings to support our customers and provide opportunities to participate in our clean energy movement,” Shelee Kimura, Hawaiian Electric senior vice president for customer service, said. “We look forward to working with OATI as our first aggregator partner in Hawaii to offer customers these new opportunities to decrease their bills while supporting our 100 percent clean energy goals.”

Hawaiian Electric serves 95 percent of the 1.4 million residents of the state on the islands of O‘ahu, Maui, Hawai‘i Island, Lānaʻi and Moloka‘i.