Energy

Continued Care for Lahaina

Thursday, March 28th, 2024

On March 8, nearly a dozen Molokai residents headed over to Olowalu to help their Maui neighbors with a solar energy project.

Trained by the Molokai based Ho’ahu Energy Cooperative, the Molokai energy techs constructed a solar energy system from the ground up, explained one of the project coordinators, Todd Yamashita. The solar energy system, complete with panels, batteries and inverters, will go to support four tiny homes intended for displaced kupuna from the devastating Lahaina fires last August.

“This is an outcome of what happens when you empower our local Molokai people,” explained Yamashita.

The “strike mission,” as Yamashita called it, was the result of months of planning with Eddy Garcia, an off-the-grid farmer located near Lahaina in Olowalu.…

More Clean Energy Techs for Molokai

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023

By Jack Kiyonaga, Editor 

“It was the chance of a lifetime,” said Christina Bethke, one of the 12 Molokai residents who are now qualified to work as clean energy technicians. 

“I lived off the grid my whole life,” explained Bethke who was born and raised on a homestead. “Solar was my passion for decades now.”

Bethke and the other Molokai students just finished a four-month, fully-funded intro to photovoltaic training course put on by the Ho’ahu Energy Cooperative Molokai (HECM). The training was a hybrid of curriculum-based and hands-on learning, explained HECM’s training and workforce developer Liliana Napoleon, M.B.A. 

Napoleon explained that the course was intended to educate both in life skills and job opportunities, allowing graduates to transition from a “typical on-grid lifestyle” to an “energy farming lifestyle.” …