Castle & Cooke Hawaii, Inc. (Castle & Cooke), a subsidiary of Castle & Cooke, Inc. and SunPower Corporation (SunPower) are dedicating the 1.2 megawatt (MW) La Ola Solar Farm on Lana'i in Hawai'i. La Ola is located on a 10 acre site in south Lanai. The system is expected to generate around 3 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The solar farm is expected to produce enough clean, renewable solar power to supply up to 30% of the island's peak electric demand.
The power is being purchased by Maui Electric Company (MECO), and transmitted to Lanai’s homes and businesses through MECO’s electric power grid. This will help reduce more than 2300 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in Lana’i each year, which is around the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted from the consumption of almost 5000 barrels of oil or more than 237,000 gallons of gasoline.
Castle & Cooke is committed to helping the state of Hawai’i achieve energy independence. With the dedication of Hawai’i’s largest solar farm, we are delivering on our commitment by bringing clean solar energy to the people of Lana’i, stated David H. Murdock, chairman and owner of Castle & Cooke. This state-of-the-art solar farm helps pave the way for Hawai’i to become a leader in the production of renewable energy. La Ola is just the first step of Castle & Cooke’s plans for renewable, sustainable energy.
At the La Ola site, SunPower installed a single-axis SunPower tracker system. The Tracker tilts toward the sun as it moves across the sky, increasing energy capture by up to 25% over fixed systems while reducing land-use requirements.
Clean, reliable solar power will become a core energy investment over the next decade, driven in large part by visionary leaders such as Castle & Cooke, MECO and the State of Hawai, said Tom Werner, chief executive officer of SunPower. Having installed the first commercially-financed solar power system in the US on the Big Island of Hawaii in 1998, followed by more than six megawatts of solar power systems across the Hawaiian islands since that time, we are pleased to dedicate this very significant project on the island of Lana’i.