Aloha Brian,

I guess I'm a little behind on this string!

Yes, I'm still here.

You are right - we have not been active for a while.

Another wind farm in the works, in Ulupalakua. Some solar gains. I've hit obstacles as I try to talk our community into putting panels up for our school. What we've got is a tiny start - a 1kw demo panel is going up on our school later this year. But I find that woefully inadequate and I've been trying to figure out how to up it to a reasonable size. It is funded by voluntary donations on utility bills - not much of a funding source. I'd like to see a large showcase project go in as a seed to new thinking. I pushed for solar water heaters for our pools, but so far the fellow who is in the county office is more interested in bio-generation and tapping the landfill for methane.

The utility is looking into the purchase of palm oil for generation, which scares the heck out of me. As far as I can tell, that's just making a problem worse somewhere else so we can keep consuming here. So at each community planning meeting I can get to I push to raise support for decentralized generation. People seem to like the idea when they hear about it.

Meanwhile, I do think we have a little interest in the community - enough to try to fire up the group again. So I'll see what I can make happen in the next couple of months.

Aloha,
Ben