Hawaiian Electric, a U.S. electric utility, said that it submitted eight projects, including 300 MW of renewable energy and nearly 2 GWh of storage capacity for approval to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

The new grid-scale energy and storage projects, including six projects on Oahu Island and two projects on Maui Island, are part of Hawaii’s largest renewable energy procurement.

The projects in Oahu are expected to generate and store enough clean energy to retire the state’s lone 180 MW coal project by September 2022.

The successful execution of Maui’s two renewable energy projects would help facilitate the retirement of the 38 MW oil-fired Kahului project in 2024. The successful completion of the projects is expected to reduce the electricity bill by approximately $1/month on Oahu and Maui.

The capacity of these projects varies between 7 MW and 120 MW, and the Kahana project on Maui Island has the lowest tariff price of $0.089/kWh.

“As planned, these projects will significantly advance our state’s renewable energy transformation and benefit everyone by reducing our exposure to volatile oil prices,” said Jim Alberts, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Planning, Hawaiian Electric.

According to Hawaiian Electric, the company had 902 MW of solar projects on its five island grids, including the capacity of around 684 MW of solar energy from customer-sited rooftop solar systems, as of 2019.

Mercom earlier reported that the United States solar had installed 3.5 GW of new solar photovoltaic capacity in the second quarter of 2020, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA). The installations dropped 6% compared to Q1 installations.

Notably, in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America announced tax relief for taxpayers who have installed renewable energy projects.