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Oceania & Pacific / Commercial & demonstration

Moloka‘i Secure Renewable Microgrid Project

Current status, energy mix, organizations, suppliers, equipment, controls, reported specifications, and project updates—with source-level citations.

CoverageDetailed public record
Named organizations9
System facts19
Sources reviewed9
Evidence reviewed2026-07-20

The Molokaʻi Secure Renewable Microgrid Project is HNEI's fast-response utility BESS demonstration on the isolated Maui Electric island grid, not a generic label for every Molokaʻi renewable project. Its core asset is a 2 MW Altairnano lithium-titanate battery with a Parker-Hannifin PCS, variously reported as 330/333 kWh usable or 397 kWh nominal. It was built to supply sub-second reserve and frequency/fault response as rooftop PV displaced roughly 2 MW of the island's approximately 5 MW daytime generation.

Research status
Commissioned in February 2016 and transferred to Maui Electric. HNEI's updated 2022 project page says the Molokaʻi BESS was operating, and later HNEI research continued to use it with a programmable load bank. No asset-specific public source after 2022 was found confirming state of health, cell replacement, availability, or continued dispatch in July 2026; classify it as operational through the latest direct confirmation, with current condition unverified.
Historical classification
Island
Reported capacity
See component specifications
Coordinates
21.14439, -157.02263
Evidence note: “Every company” cannot be proven from public material alone. This page lists every organization found in the recovered record and reviewed sources, preserves unknown roles, and explicitly marks undisclosed controller or equipment details.
Report missing evidenceResearch methodology

Project delivery

Who was involved in Moloka‘i Secure Renewable Microgrid Project?

9 publicly identified organizations. Where a recovered source named a participant without explaining its work, the role remains explicitly unspecified.

Organization

Altairnano

Supplied lithium-titanate cells/modules and BESS integration/installation support. [3][5]

Organization

Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute (HNEI), University of Hawaiʻi

Project lead, technical integrator, test/analysis organization, and performance researcher. [3][5][6]

Organization

HNEI

Publicly named participant; role not specified in the recovered record [1]

Organization

Integrated Dynamics

Developed control algorithms, communications, and simulation work. [5]

Organization

Maui Electric Company / Hawaiian Electric

Island utility; supplied grid integration, communications, safety/metering/installation support and became BESS owner after commissioning. [3][5]

Organization

Northern Plains Power Technologies

Performed grid modeling and algorithm development. [5]

Organization

Office of Naval Research

Principal federal sponsor of the APRISES/secure-grid demonstration. [4][5]

Organization

Parker-Hannifin

Supplied the bidirectional inverter/power-conversion system. [3][5]

Organization

SunEdison

Site-construction contractor for the BESS installation. [5]

System evidence

Energy mix, capacity, and specifications

Values can describe different project phases, generation sources, storage systems, or other components. Source citations are attached to each figure so discrepancies remain visible.

KW Solar
2400 [1]
Storage
2MW/333KWh [1]
Power rating
2 MW charge/discharge capability for fast reserve, fault response, and frequency support. [3][4]
Energy rating
HNEI's 2020 annual report gives 397 kWh, while an ONR/HNEI technical deck gives 330 kWh (commonly repeated as 333 kWh). These likely reflect nominal versus usable/revised rating; preserve both rather than selecting one silently. [3][4]
Duration
Approximately 10–12 minutes at full 2 MW, depending on whether 330 or 397 kWh is used; this is a power-quality/reserve battery, not multi-hour energy shifting. [3][4]
Grid context
Approximately 5–5.5 MW island system; around 2 MW of daytime conventional generation had been displaced by roughly 400 rooftop-PV systems when the project was documented. [3][4]
Commissioning
February 2016. [4]
Control latency result
The initial utility communications path required about 350 ms and was modeled as destabilizing for the intended response. Direct PCS measurements reduced typical end-to-end response to about 58 ms, near the modeled approximately 50 ms requirement. [3]

Controls and hardware

Equipment and controller details

Manufacturer and model are shown only when a source names them. Generic descriptions are not converted into guessed product assignments.

01

Battery cells/modules

Altairnano — GEN2 60 Ah lithium-titanate

Technical deck describes 416 series cell groups in a 1S7P module arrangement; system marketed in Altairnano's large-format BESS family. [4][5]

02

Power conversion system

Parker-Hannifin

2 MW-class bidirectional inverter/PCS; exact product model was not disclosed in the sources reviewed. [3][5]

03

Grid controller

Integrated Dynamics / HNEI

Fast-response control and communications architecture for contingency reserve and frequency response. [5][3]

04

Dynamic load bank

Model not publicly disclosed

750 kW programmable resistive load bank installed in 2019 to coordinate with the 2 MW BESS, absorb excess PV, and support frequency/down-reserve experiments. [7]

Technical record

Architecture, performance, and project updates

Concise technical facts, milestones, operating results, and later developments. Dated notes distinguish historical design claims from current evidence.

  • Storage

    Altairnano 2MW/333KWh lithium-ion titinate battery [1]

  • Generation

    Approximately 400 hundred rooftop PV systems on Moloka‘i totaling 2.4 MW are enough to provide [1]

  • Generation

    Diesel Generators [1]

  • Primary function

    The battery supplies rapid reserve and transient response after generation trips or high-PV disturbances; its short duration means its key value is stability, not replacing diesel energy over hours. By 2019, HNEI reported about 2.3 MW rooftop PV against daytime demand as low as 3.3 MW and paired the BESS with a 750 kW controllable load bank. [4][3][7]

  • Control validation

    Modeling showed that using the original slow utility data path could worsen instability. Direct measurement/control at the PCS enabled the necessary fast action; live contingency tests were deliberately bounded for grid safety. [3]

  • Identity boundary

    Do not merge this 2 MW fast-response BESS with the later Molokaʻi New Energy Partners proposal (4.88 MW PV plus 3 MW/15 MWh storage) or other community-solar projects; they are separate projects and phases. [6]

  • Energy mix limitation

    The BESS produces no net energy. HNEI documents high rooftop-PV penetration and continued diesel generation, but no project-specific annual Molokaʻi solar/diesel percentage was found. Maui County-wide RPS values are not a substitute for island data. [3]

Provenance

9 sources

Primary owner, government, university, supplier, and engineering sources are preferred. Archived references preserve claims whose original pages moved or disappeared.

  1. [1]
    Recovered Microgrid Projects record

    Internet Archive · Archived source · captured 2020-07-06

  2. [2]
    Moloka‘i Secure Renewable Microgrid Project

    hnei.hawaii.edu · Archived source · captured 2020-07-06

  3. [3]
    2020 HNEI Annual Report

    Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute · Primary source

  4. [4]
    Batteries for Grid Management

    Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute / Office of Naval Research · Primary source

  5. [5]
  6. [6]
    Utility-Scale BESS Demonstration Project

    Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute · Primary source

  7. [7]
    HNEI Installs Dynamic Load Bank on Molokai

    Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute · Primary source

  8. [8]
    APRISES 2011 Final Technical Report

    Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute · Primary source

  9. [9]
    Molokai Secure Renewable Microgrid Project (archived project page)

    MicrogridProjects.com via Internet Archive · Archived source

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