Fellows mentioned in this story: Shelee Kimura, Cohort V

From The New York Times:

Toddi Nakagawa, who lives in a suburb of Honolulu, has spent years battling her family’s high electricity bills, which once topped $500 a month, by gradually buying more solar panels. After accumulating more than 70 panels and three stacks of batteries, she has gotten her family’s monthly bill down to just $26.

Ms. Nakagawa is not alone. Nearly a third of Hawai‘i’s single-family houses have rooftop solar panels — more than twice the percentage in California — and officials expect many more homes to add panels and batteries in the coming years.

Even before energy prices surged globally this year, homeowners, elected leaders and energy executives in Hawai‘i had decided that rooftop solar panels were one of the best ways to meet demand for energy and tame the state’s high power costs. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only strengthened the state’s embrace of renewable energy. Electricity rates in Hawai‘i jumped 34 percent in April from a year earlier because many of its power plants burn oil, about a third of which came from Russia last year.

Continue reading at nytimes.com and cleantechnica.com.