HONOLULU — Hawaii has the highest rate of residents using solar panels in the nation, and lawmakers want to extend the state’s leadership role by offering incentives or rebates to those who buy batteries to store their renewable energy.

It’s an issue that’s important to residents of the island state, which has the highest electricity costs in the nation. The state’s largest utility proposed charging different rates for customers at peak times, such as night, when electricity costs are highest.

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The much publicized Telsa Powerwall battery offers a way for homeowners with solar panels to store their energy for use at night as well as help utilities manage the grid.

Yet a decidedly less flashy piece of equipment residing in basements and closets of homeowners holds much greater potential as a residential battery – electric water heaters.

For the past 30 years Great River Energy (GRE) has deployed electric water heaters in homes to manage loads. Today more than 110,000 homes – around 20 percent of its to customer base – have water heaters that collectively, according to the utility, amount to a gigawatt of storage.

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Don’t be a DOUG.

The takeaway from Tuesday morning’s keynote at the Energy Storage Association Conference and Expo in Charlotte, N.C. was spelled D-O-U-G, translated to “Dumb Old Utility Guy.”

And this putdown came from Michael O’Sullivan, a longtime utility veteran himself and senior vice president of development for NextEra Energy. He was referring to coming changes in the power industry and how energy storage can be a viable option and value proposition.

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CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — The quickened pace of global momentum tackling climate change will drive a “virtuous cycle” that benefits renewables and energy storage technologies, a key Obama Administration expert on the environment said Wednesday.

Utilities and consumers embracing wind and solar are helping reduce power emissions in the U.S., Rick Duke said during the keynote address for the final day of the 26th annual Energy Storage Association Conference & Expo in Charlotte. Duke is deputy director for the White House climate change efforts.

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North Carolina has significant opportunity to promote energy storage manufacturing in the state. But, it will likely lag in actually putting storage and its services on the power grid.

A panel of experts at the Energy Storage Association’s Annual Conference and Expo at the Charlotte Convention Center discussed what the state is doing now — and could do in the future — to build on the presence of companies in the industry to expand the energy hub already being developed in the Carolinas to include storage.

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SolarCity (NASDAQ:SCTY) and Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) are natural partners, especially because Elon Musk happens to be the biggest shareholder of both companies. But there’s also another natural tie between the companies: SolarCity’s effort to democratize energy production has a growing need for Tesla Motors’ ability to store energy.

And it was recently uncovered by GTM Research that SolarCity has grand plans for Tesla Motors batteries in 2016.

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