The state said it has received $1.75 million in grants for increased use of renewable energy that will go along with $350,000 of other funding to study electric vehicle policy issues and undersea transmission cables.

"These grant projects will help study ways to modernize our electrical grids," said state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism director Ted Liu in a press statement.

"This will be the first step in our renewable energy program for supply O'ahu with electrical energy from other islands."

The state said the projects will focus on deploying an undersea transmission line to deliver solar and wind-generated electricity from Lana'i and Moloka'i, upgrading and expanding of O'ahu's transmission lines, evaluating integration of electric vehicle storage and deploying a suite of energy storage systems to study grid stability and bulk power issues.

The state said the grants came from the U.S. Department of Energy, private-sector in-kind funding and the National Governors Association.