Ta’u, a 17-square-mile island and the most populous of the Manu’a Group of atolls, is located more than 4,000 miles from the U.S. West Coast. The island, which has about 785 residents, had been powered by diesel generators and struggled with regular power rationing and outages.
Tesla has recently revealed that it's running the island on a solar energy microgrid that, at 1.4 megawatts, can cover "nearly 100 percent" of electrical needs.
Ta'u previously had to run on diesel generators. That burns 300 gallons of fuel per day, which is neither eco-friendly nor cheap.
Tesla and Solar City are also installing an even bigger solar farm with almost 55,000 solar panels on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
Also Samoa announce renewable energy goals in Hawaii in August 2016, by the American Samoa Energy Action Plan. They adopted a goal of having 50% of American Samoa’s energy come from renewable energy resources by 2025 and 100% by 2040. It would be interesting to see the comparison of cost calculations of solar energy vs. fossil energy, for these islands.