Community-Based Renewable Energy Processes: Moloka’i, HI

Objective:

Understand technical decision-making pathways that lead to the successful acceptance of community solar bids

• Determine what parts of the solar project development process communities can provide input to and understand the ways in which that input is given

• Understand how the community input connects to technical decision making for solar project bids.

Main Impact:

• By studying and documenting the co-design process and various methods by which the Moloka’i community was engaged throughout the development of the solar bid, other community renewable energy projects in the future can employ similar methods in order to design with communities and ensure their needs and desires are met by upcoming energy projects.

• This work will help detail how traditionally “non-technical” stakeholders (general community members) can have influence over technical decisions in energy projects, especially since community members are often excluded from the technical details of energy projects being developed in their communities.

Lead EMBERlab Researcher: Siddhant Makkar

Collaborator: Ali Andrews, Shake Energy Collaborative

Acknowledgements: Reegan Ketzenberger