Hawaii has a fascinating history being the first indigenous nation recognized by Western nations (until ofc it was illegally annexed by the US to use as a base during the Spanish War). They went from being one of the most technologically advanced nations to now having 50% of homeless people in Hawaii being native Hawaiians after having their land stolen from them and forced into indentured servitude on plantations
1881: The Birth of Hawaiian Electric
King Kalakaua meets Thomas Edison at his home in New York to see the incandescent light bulb in 1881. Iolani Palace becomes one of the world's first royal residences to be lit by electricity in 1886. Honolulu streets are lit by electricity for the first time in 1888. Hawaiian Electric Company, Ltd. is incorporated on Oct. 13, 1891.
The plantations also pre-date the US taking them over.
The elites promoted the sugar industry. Americans set up plantations after 1850.[44] Few natives were willing to work on them, so recruiters fanned out across Asia and Europe. As a result, between 1850 and 1900, some 200,000 contract laborers from China, Japan, the Philippines, Portugal and elsewhere worked in Hawaiʻi under fixed term contracts (typically for five years). Most returned home on schedule, but many settled there. By 1908 about 180,000 Japanese workers had arrived. No more were allowed in, but 54,000 remained permanently.[45]
For quite awhile, Hawaii was also the only state in the Union I know of with explicitly racist voting laws. It was not until the year ~2000 (Rice v Cayetano) that the rest of the races on the plantations (including again chinese, filipino, etc) could vote for all the public offices (hilariously in that case RBG showed her racist colors and dissented, denying equal voting rights guaranteed under the 15th amendment).
Those interests were the management of lands that were taken during the annexation, and later returned.
The situation is a bit more complicated than you are painting it. It is generally recognized in the civilized world that descendants of people who owned land have a claim to it, and people who aren't descendants generally don't get a say in its management.
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There may be a US-specific legal reason for why that was the 'correct' SCOTUS decision, but there is no universal moral reason for why someone who is not a member of a polity is entitled to vote for the leadership of a polity that they don't belong to, and that has no power over them. In this case, there are two separate, overlapping polities - one is the state, and another is a subset of people in a state. One has power over all state affairs, the other only over the property of the polity. Non-members getting voting rights over the latter is like giving me a say in Zuckerberg's estate planning just because I live in his zip code.
The public owners grace the Hawaiians with a racist policy allowing their exclusive use at the expense of denying persons within the jurisdiction of the state equal protections under the law. But only at the graces of the other races allowing it, and at the grace of all races voting for the office managing these affairs. I think you are thinking of something like a reservation where the Hawaiians would own that land.
I'm of the opinion there is quite the chance, just like their racist voting policies were struck down, that someday someone of the wrong 'blood' applies to use that state land and they will challenge their denial under 14th amendment. So far I don't think anyone has bothered, but it is certainly on my bucket list for when I'm retired and have the time for a pro se case.
I think the ideal grid would switch from DC to AC either at a substation at central location for a community.
Why might someone do this?
One of the hardest problems to work through is a grid cold start. When a grid goes completely down it takes a monumental effort to bring it back up again. There's a delicate balance that has to be struck with load and other generators coming online. It's hard to do. The AC waveform is a finicky thing that gets pulled and mutilated by every motor or vacuum cleaner that starts running.
With a bunch of AC microgrids joined by a DC major grid, you can completely sidestep that problem. It suddenly becomes just a lot easier to ramp up power production because the deformations to the waveform happen in small local regions, not everywhere in the grid. And further, the other plants just have to watch the DC voltage, they don't need a whole bunch of equipment around syncing with the AC waveform of the grid as a whole.
A nice demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zez2r1RPpWY
A more detailed explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQpzwR7wLeo
Nope, HVDC uses the same style of cable as AC. I'm not sure why you'd think they'd be different.
The HVDC cables that can be expensive are meant to be submerged. A feat that only HVDC can do. HVAC can't be submerged due to the capacative effect.
But otherwise I agree. It's more a pipedream for me that HVDC becomes more common place as I believe it'd make grids ultimately more stable and resilient.
The devil is in the details here, AC tri-phase cabling can not easily be re-purposed for HVDC purposes because you only have a pair of conductors rather than three 120 degree out of phase lines. So while technically the cable itself can be the same the carrying capacity of a triple of conductors would be reduced and one of the conductors would be idle, so if this is an in-ground or overhead cable not specifically made for DC that is a lot of wasted carrying capacity.
Not necessarily. Big local consumers will be large relative to the microgrid, which will not have a lot inertia. This is one of the things that you really notice when you go 'off grid', your grid is essentially your house and whatever else you decide to power from it and unless there are a couple of beefy motors already running starting a new one has a high likelihood of tripping the inverter, even a very beefy one. Start-up currents for larger consumers can be really high and you need a lot of inertia in your grid to overcome that.
This is true of an AC grid as well. Big inductive loads will often have to buy special equipment before hooking up to the grid because of their impact. It'd be the same with a DC first grid. To overcome a large startup current they'd likely need to buy a bunch of capacitors. Which, funnily, is exactly what they'd have to do to run on straight AC.
They had growing pains but it was a grid system.