Solar industry representatives said Thursday they blame Hawaiian Electric Co. for 400 lost solar jobs in 2014.
The Alliance for Solar Choice, a solar lobbying group, said the slow utility approval for customers looking to get rooftop solar led to the loss of solar-related jobs in Hawaii.
The Solar Foundation, a national nonprofit, said earlier this month there were 2,200 solar workers in Hawaii at the end of 2014, down from 2,600 in 2013.
In September 2013 HECO changed its policy, requiring customers to be approved by the utility before installing rooftop solar. HECO has been slow to approve rooftop photovoltaic systems in neighborhoods where it said solar power has reached 120 percent capacity. In the past, HECO said exceeding 120 percent could be dangerous to homes and the grid.
The utility announced in January that the grid could handle up to 250 percent capacity after a joint study between HECO and San Mateo, Calif.-based SolarCity Corp. showed that the original dangers HECO feared, such as too much power flowing into the grid, were not as much of a concern.
There are approximately 2,500 pending solar applications waiting to be approved by the utility in areas with 120 percent capacity of rooftop solar. The utility said it would approve most of those systems by April and all by the end of 2015.
Even with that promise, HECO is responsible for the job loss, said Robert Harris, spokesman for The Alliance for Solar Choice.
"The blame for this loss rests on HECO. For almost two years now, HECO held up the solar industry on a false premise," Harris said. "The solar industry consistently maintained, and now HECO finally admits, that vastly higher amounts of rooftop solar can be installed on the grid."
The solar industry job loss is due to a lack of foresight and planning from the utility about how to connect high numbers of rooftop solar systems, said Colin Yost, principal at Honolulu-based RevoluSun.
"Our industry has gone through a crazy and unnecessary roller coaster that has caused economic stress and consumer stress," Yost said.
HECO said it is moving ahead with solar in a responsible way.
"We’re looking to more than double the current threshold for neighborhood circuits to accept solar systems, while ensuring we do so in a safe, reliable way so that all customers — with and without rooftop solar — are treated fairly," said Darren Pai, HECO spokesman. "Many responsible members of the solar industry recognize the technical and policy challenges and are collaborating on solutions."
At the same time HECO announced its plan to double rooftop solar capacity, the utility asked the PUC to let it cut the rate it pays new solar customers for power sent to the grid. If approved, the rate the utility pays new solar customers on Oahu who feed excess power into the grid would fall to about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour from the retail rate, which is 29.5 cents as of January.
Harris said HECO is trying to stop rooftop solar in Hawaii, citing the utility pairing its announcement to add more rooftop solar to the grid with the request to lower the rate it would pay solar owners.
"Instead of simply working to allow more of their customers to install cleaner and cheaper sources of electricity, HECO followed the national utility playbook of trying to eliminate net energy metering," Harris said. "It is our hope that the PUC will see HECO’s plan for what it truly is: an effort to stop competition and to eliminate rooftop solar in Hawaii. We need to prevent even larger job losses in 2015."
As of January 2015 the number of solar permits issued on Oahu fell 60 percent from the same month the year before, according to data from Marco Mangelsdorf, president of Hilo-based ProVision Solar.
Mangelsdorf reported 277 PV permits issued in January — the lowest number in four years.
The pushback against HECO trying to end the NEM program is expected, as it makes solar less advantageous for new customers, said Mangelsdorf.
"If this proposal were to be accepted largely intact, a new interconnect agreement would go into effect. … The value proposition to the homeowner making a direct purchase would decrease to some degree; the effect on those residential PV leasing companies that have enjoyed strong success here these past several years will likely be even more negative as the potential savings in going with a lease will not only go down significantly, but also be more difficult to calculate depending on how much of the site-generated PV power is consumed versus exported to the grid."
Unless there is a turnaround in the number of issued permits within the first six months of the year, Hawaii’s solar industry faces a dim future, Mangelsdorf said.
"If the permit numbers stay in this range for the first half of the year, the pain experienced by the islands’ PV contractors will go from being a dull ache to sharply acute if not viability-threatening," he said.
