Hawaiian electric companies' resource procurements
On behalf of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, Bates White served as Independent Observer for two noteworthy procurements. The first was executed to obtain renewable energy and energy storage to replace the largest generator in the Hawaiian Islands, a 180-MW coal-fired plant owned by AES Corporation. The AES plant will be replaced by a 185-MW battery storage project developed by Plus Power, LLC. The second procurement was executed to obtain "grid services" from customer-sited distributed energy resources—such as residential rooftop solar and energy storage—to compete against utility-scale projects. Bates White was involved in all aspects of the process from procurement and evaluation methodology design to conducting and monitoring the evaluation process and overseeing contract negotiations with winning bidders.