User:Lpp816

Background
The Hawi Wind Farm is a wind farm located on the northern tip, Upolu Point, of Hawaii's largest island, Hawai'i. Hawi wind farm opened in 2006 and has been in successful operation since. The farm is comprised of sixteen 660 kW turbines manufactured by Vestas, specifically the Vestas V47 turbine. At max capacity the farm is able to produce 10.56 mW of power.

On May 14th 2004 the Hawaii Electric Light Company bought the farm from enXco or EDF Renewable Energy. . Since then the farm has been operated by Hawi Renewable Development LLC, but continues to provide power HELCO. The Hawi wind farm was the first utility scaled wind farm built in Hawaii, quickly followed by the Kaheawa Wind Farm built later in 2006.

Advancements and Shortcomings
In 2011, the Hawi Wind Farm added a 1 megawatt back-up battery system to their wind farm. The Hawaii Natural Energy Institute approved this 1.8 million dollar project which allowed Altair Nanotechnologies to make this installation. This addition has proved advantageous as it allows the wind farm to store up to one megawatt in energy that can be fed into the grid if the wind farm were to shut down due to safety reasons.

However as recently as 2013 the farm has also had it's setbacks. On January 7th, 2013 the farm was forced to shut down due to high sustained winds and gusts up to 50 miles-per-hour. This shut down directly impacted over 6,000 customers. Similarly, a week later the farm went off line again, this time affecting about 4,500 customers.