Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority

The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) administers the Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park (HOST Park). NELHA also administers a small site 4 acres (0.016 km2) in Puna on the eastern side of the Island of Hawaii for geothermal research. NELHA was founded in 1974. At 870 acres, HOST Park is perhaps the largest single green economic development project in the world solely devoted to growing a green economy. The original mission was for research into the uses of Deep Ocean Water in Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) renewable energy production and in aquaculture. It later added research into sustainable uses of natural energy sources such as solar energy. Its administration offices are located in the HOST Park Keahole Point in the North Kona District. The entrance is on the Hawaii Belt Road at coordinates 19°42′58″N 156°02′01″W / 19.71611°N 156.03361°W / 19.71611; -156.03361Coordinates: 19°42′58″N 156°02′01″W / 19.71611°N 156.03361°W / 19.71611; -156.03361, just south of the Kona International Airport. The main administration office is in the 4 acres (0.016 km2) research campus at the end of the road along the coastline on Keahole Point.

The laboratory was founded in 1974 with 345 acres (1.40 km2), associated with the University of Hawaii. Large pipelines pump cold sea water from a depth of 3,000 feet (910 m). For three months in 1979, a small amount of electricity was generated. A larger plant was constructed in the Almost $250M was spent on Ocean thermal energy conversion, but by 1991, the research shifted to other areas. The adjacent Science and Technology Park was merged into the facility, expanding it to 877 acres (3.55 km2). A neutrino detector was partially constructed in the 1990s called Project DUMAND.

In 2002, 50 acres (200,000 m2) were leased to a commercial company which filters and bottles the water for sale in Japan. The pipelines were broken in the October 15, 2006 earthquake, but one of the three has been repaired over two years later. Makai Ocean Engineering, working with Lockheed Martin, restarted OTEC research. Aquaculture, biofuel from algae, solar thermal energy, solar concentrating and wind power are some of the 40 tenants.

Famous quotes containing the words natural, energy, laboratory, hawaii and/or authority:

    It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.
    Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)

    Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)

    Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist’s work. The meaning of art in our time flows from this function of self-creation. Art is the laboratory for making new men.
    Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)

    Things will not mourn you, people will.
    Hawaiian saying no. 191, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)

    Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny.
    Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)