Michael Roberts

A Proposal for Real-Time Pricing Tariffs for Large Electricity Customers August 27, 2024 As Oahu’s electric grid transitions to clean energy, characterized by variable wind, solar, and storage resources, the marginal cost of electricity will become increasingly variable across time and location. Consequently, the value of using locational marginal prices (LMP) for customer billing and compensating distributed generation will increase significantly. This report outlines a proposal to implement… Read More

Optimal transmission expansion minimally reduces decarbonization costs of U.S. electricity February 21, 2024 Solar and wind power are cost-competitive with fossil fuels, yet their intermittent nature presents challenges. Significant temporal and geographic differences in land, wind, and solar resources suggest that long-distance transmission could be particularly beneficial. Using a detailed, open source model, we analyze optimal transmission expansion jointly with storage, generation, and hourly operations across the three… Read More

Embracing TOU: Nudges, Rates, and Renewable Energy August 21, 2023 By Michael Roberts, Nori Tarui and Ethan Hartely Hawaiian Electric Company is about to embark on a significant experiment: a pilot program introducing time-of-use (TOU) pricing. Designed to reduce electricity prices during daylight hours when solar power is abundant and increase them during the evening when the sun sets and demand rises, this initiative could… Read More

Real-Time Pricing and the Cost of Clean Power August 9, 2022 Solar and wind power are now cheaper than fossil fuels but are intermittent. The extra supply-side variability implies growing benefits of using real-time retail pricing (RTP). We evaluate the potential gains of RTP using a model that jointly solves investment, supply, storage, and demand to obtain a chronologically detailed dynamic equilibrium for the island of… Read More

Are We Building Too Much Natural Gas Pipeline? A comparison of actual US expansion of pipeline to an optimized plan of the interstate network April 25, 2022 Interstate natural gas transmission and storage infrastructure is facilitated using regulated, private transactions. Pipeline companies obtain long-term contracts from producers and wholesale purchasers, typically local distribution companies (LDCs). Historically, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) accepted these counterparty contracts as sufficient justification of need. Typically the LDCs are themselves regulated firms, which sometimes possess affiliations… Read More

Using Temperature Sensitivity to Estimate Shiftable Electricity Demand Implications for power system investments and climate change September 2, 2021 Growth of intermittent renewable energy and climate change make it increasingly difficult to manage electricity demand variability. Transmission and centralized storage technologies can help, but are costly. An alternative to centralized storage is to make better use of shiftable demand, but it is unclear how much shiftable demand exists. A significant share of electricity demand… Read More

The Agricultural Economic Landscape in Hawai‘i and the Potential for Future Economic Viability June 11, 2021 By Sarah Rehkamp, Michael J. Roberts, and James M. MacDonald In a recent UHERO policy brief, Reviving Agriculture to Diversify Hawai‘i’s Economy, authors pointed to trends in Hawai‘i agriculture and state policies surrounding agricultural land management (La Croix & Mak, 2021). Hawai‘i’s agricultural history has centered around the pineapple and sugar plantations and these are… Read More

How Will Climate Change Affect Water Demand? Evidence from Hawai‘i Microclimates January 1, 2021 The effect that climate change will have on water resource sustainability is gaining international interest, particularly in regions where stocks are strained due to changing climate and increasing populations. Past studies focus mainly on how water availability will be affected by climate change, with little attention paid to how consumer behavior is likely to react.… Read More

Implications of a “Green Tariff” for the University of Hawai‘i, Hawaiian Electric Company, and other Customers November 17, 2020 In June 2015 the State passed a law setting a goal for the University of Hawai‘i (UH) to produce as much renewable energy as the total energy it consumes; that is, to become net-zero. The great bulk of the University’s energy use occurs on the Mānoa campus, which has the most students and by far… Read More

Rooftop solar is now competitive with utility-scale power in Hawaiʻi October 2, 2020 By Michael Roberts We need to transition away from fossil fuels quickly, and with inexpensive renewables and batteries, we can do so in a cost effective manner, so long as we employ a sensible plan and the right policies. But what are the tradeoffs involved with how we do it? In most places, rooftop solar… Read More

Estimating water demand using price differences of wastewater services July 27, 2020 Many homes in Hawai‘i use cesspools and other on-site disposal systems (OSDS) instead of the municipal sewer system. Because bills combine water and waste-water services, and homes with OSDS do not pay for sewer service, OSDS residences have lower monthly bills compared to those with sewer-connected systems. We use this price difference in conjunction with… Read More

How Will Climate Change Affect Water Demand? Evidence from Hawai‘i Microclimates July 27, 2020 The effect that climate change will have on water resource sustainability is gaining international interest, particularly in regions where stocks are strained due to changing climate and increasing populations. Past studies focus mainly on how water availability will be affected by climate change, with little attention paid to how consumer behavior is likely to react.… Read More

UH News: UHERO fills critical need, especially during crisis April 30, 2020 https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/04/30/uhero-fills-need-during-crisis/ Read More

Herd Immunity or Containment through Test and Trace? March 31, 2020 Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), a viral disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, has arrived and is spreading in Hawai'i.  In an attempt to “flatten the curve,” we have closed schools and many workplaces, while the entire state shelters at home. As a result, the economy is contracting fast.  While sufficiently flattening the curve is the… Read More

Four Alternative Models for Regulating an Investor Owned Utility of the Future April 3, 2019 How do you coerce a monopoly to act as if it were operating in a ruthlessly competitive industry? This is the billion-dollar question of Public Utilities Commissions (PUCs). It’s a tricky thing to do with a mixed history of success. And it’s getting trickier, especially here in Hawaiʻi, where renewable energy and so-called “distributed resources”… Read More