“In addition to having plenty of sun, you know plenty of wind, which are intermittent resources we do have geothermal resources,” said Chief Energy Officer Mark Glick. “For me, it’s a real priority for this office to better understand how far we can go with geothermal.”
Three locations in Maui are already being considered for drilling, although the State Office has not disclosed further details yet. Glick assured that Maui has promising signs, “We’re looking at very seriously at Maui island [for that], there certainly are locations along the rift zone that may be very applicable for that.”
The State of Hawaii currently has an operating geothermal power plant – the Puna Geothermal Power Plant, located in the Island of Hawai’i. In 2018, the eruption of Kilauea Volcano damaged the power plant which had to be taken offline until eventually resuming operations in 2020.
Plans are now underway to expand the capacity of Puna from the current 38 MW to 46 MW, with further plans to increase to 60 MW. Ormat Technologies has very recently been awarded an amended PPA for the expanded generation capacity of the Puna geothermal power plant.
