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After a six-year wait, the developer seeking to build a solar farm in Kalaeloa was rejected by the state agency responsible for managing the land.
Seven of the nine voting members of the Kalaeloa Authority within the Hawaii Community Development Authority voted Wednesday that their executive director may not enter into lease negotiations with SunStrong II LLC because a formal request for information was never sent out about the land. The developer was seeking to build a 5-megawatt photovoltaic farm on roughly 19 acres of land in Kalaeloa, north of the Kalaeloa Heritage Park.
“I was not planning on getting the decision we got today, but now that we have it, we have to work with it,” said Brian Hayashida, manager of SunStrong II.
HCDA Chairman John Whalen said the discussion leading up to the rejection was not based on the merits of the project but the process. The issue raised by the board members during discussion was that the board never sent out a formal request for information (RFI) to the public about that parcel. An RFI is designed to collect written information during the project planning phase.
“I think doing a (request for information) is best practice,” HCDA Vice Chairwoman Mary Pat Waterhouse said before voting against the lease negotiations for the SunStrong II project.
HCDA board member Wei Fang said releasing a request for information would allow for a more transparent process.
“We show transparency and the opportunity to vet as a community,” Fang said.
Hayashida said the company began pursuing a solar facility after the former executive director of HCDA, Anthony Ching, asked the company to submit a proposal in 2011.
“We were actually asked by the executive director to submit a proposal,” Hayashida said, noting his company was the fifth in line until three others dropped out of the queue over time. “Aloha Solar (Energy Fund II) got their deal. We got moved up in the queue. We were the only two left.”
Aloha Solar Energy Fund II’s project is leasing HCDA land south of the parcel where SunStrong II was seeking to negotiate a lease.
HCDA approved Aloha Solar, a subsidiary of Burlingame, Calif.-based ECC Energy Solutions, to enter into lease negotiations with the agency’s director in March. Aloha Solar is planning to build a 5-megawatt solar farm on roughly 24 acres near Kalaeloa Airport.
The SunStrong II project would have helped move Kalaeloa closer to its goal of developing reliable electrical power in the district, according to an HCDA staff report submitted by Tesha Malama, Kalaeloa director of planning and development.
The Kalaeloa district is currently powered by an energy system owned by the U.S. Navy that does not meet current utility standards. The Navy energy system has an average of 40 hours of power outages a year while the maximum allowed to meet electric utility standards is only eight hours, according to a Sandia National Laboratories report released in February.
“The lease would generate revenue for the Kalaeloa Revolving Fund and the revenue would be used on future infrastructure and preservation efforts in the district,” according to the staff report.
The 12-kilovolt line extension that SunStrong II was seeking to build to connect its solar project to Hawaiian Electric Co.’s grid could have provided opportunities for the different landowners in the Kalaeloa district to request service from HECO, and allow for the transition of the current Navy-owned electrical
grid, according to the staff report.
SunStrong II secured
$50 million in special-purpose revenue bonds from the state Legislature in 2016 to develop renewable energy projects in the state.
Hayashida said receiving the funds is not dependent on SunStrong II securing a lease in Kalaeloa.
“As long as the projects are installed in the Hawaiian Islands, we’ll be able to use the bond proceeds,” he said.
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