Lets Talk Energy

    Hawaii is in a very unique situation when it comes to the issue of energy.  Energy prices in Hawaii can be from 3 to 6 times more expensive than those in the mainland US, these high prices have several causes.  One of the main reasons Hawaii has higher energy prices is because of the states dependence on oil, a very high percentage of the energy ( 77 %) created in Hawaii is done so using oil.  Oil has to be imported into Hawaii and is also more expensive initially than other resources, like coal, which is greatly used in mainland US production of energy (45 %).  Another big difference between Hawaii and the mainland US is that Hawaii has several small power grids it runs off of, while the mainland US has one huge supergrid that deals with all the power supply.  Having one large connected grid allows more flexibility than having smaller unconnected grids.
     While having more expensive energy sounds like a bad deal, which it is, there is also a silver lining to this issue.  Hawaii is lucky enough to have access to a plethora of different kinds of renewable energy resources including wind, geothermal, solar, biofuel etc. and because Hawaii is so dependent on oil when oil prices rise, the cost of oil dependent energy rises along with it.  So how could this be a good thing?  Renewable energy is expensive, and while the price of renewable energy remains greater than the price of other non renewable energy sources we will continue using these non renewable resources.  Because the prices of oil produced energy in Hawaii will continue to rise rapidly into the future and because Hawaii has access to a multitude of renewable energy resources Hawaii is bound to find itself in a situation where renewables will become cheaper than imported oil produced energy, and this transition will happen before most every place in the world.  This earlier transition along with support from local government puts Hawaii in a unique situation to get rid of its oil dependencies and also serve as a model for the mainland US, and world wide, on how to transition to renewable energy.  This is also advantageous economically because Hawaii may develop new service exports dealing with these issues.
    This is a software engineering log so lets talk software.  This transition into renewable energy resources here in Hawaii has already begun, and it has funding.  Along with the new technologies that are being developed and the studies being conducted there is a demand for software that can deal with these complex issues.  As the movement towards green energy gains momentum there will be a lot of new opportunities for developing these new systems.  This puts us future and current developers and researchers in a great situation in which we are looking at a potentially explosive field, not just in Hawaii but throughout the US, and one ground zero may in fact be Hawaii.  Hawaii will be one of the first places to adopt renewable energies on a large scale and the associated software that supports these new systems,  these new systems can potentially serve as a model for the rest of the US and other places in the world, which puts us in a very interesting and exciting situation.
    While this is very exciting, it is also very difficult.  There are many new and interesting challenges that have to be addressed and overcome and there are people that support the movement to renewable energy and those who also oppose it.  Along with the development of new software and technologies that will make this transition possible, there are also political challenges such as local opposition to building windmills and geothermal plants on the islands especially when its to support the energy consumption of another island which is the issue of the very centralized use of power on Oahu compared to the other islands and how that can be dealt with.
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