Upgrading grid should be normal business cost

Hawaiian Electric Co. (HECO) recently trumpeted the news that it will no longer require customers to pay for expensive studies before allowing them to switch to solar in certain areas.

Sounds great, right?

But there’s a catch.

Hawaiian Electric will instead require potential solar customers to pay for whatever upgrades it thinks it needs or wants for its circuits.

It’s HECO’s job to modernize its own grid for the 21st century, not shove that kuleana on working families who are already doing their part to invest in a clean energy future.

HECO’s rates have increased nearly 6 percent every year in recent decades, and its CEO just got a $3 million-a-year salary increase.

How about using some of that money to serve its customers?

Over the years, HECO has continually thrown up roadblocks to rooftop solar.

In 2010, it tried and failed to ban installations on the neighbor islands.

Then it fell back on requiring customers to pay to study HECO’s circuits. Hundreds of customers waited in line and paid thousands of dollars each for repetitive reports saying essentially the same thing.

HECO is finally retiring those studies because it’s obvious its outdated grid needs fixing.

But guess who will foot the bill? Not HECO.

And how do we know solar customers won’t be overcharged for duplicative, inefficient and unnecessary utility equipment?

The problem is we don’t. All we can see is HECO’s pattern of abuse.

The company pays lips service to clean energy, but makes solar customers pay in extra fees, red tape and delay.

While HECO reaps record profits by running its big power plants on imported fossil fuels, more and more customers are joining the solar wave.

Solar will continue to become more affordable and accessible to all kinds of households, including renters.

It should be clear even to HECO that we need to build a 21st-century grid — one capable of managing power from all kinds of localized sources, including rooftop solar, windmills, mini-turbines in our gravity-fed water mains, and electric car batteries.

Such a system would not only be cheaper, especially over the long term, but cleaner, more sustainable and resilient — and ultimately focused on the customer, instead of the utility.

The state Public Utilities Commission needs to step in and ensure that HECO takes responsibility for modernizing and maintaining its own grid, rather than "passing the buck" to solar customers.

Solar customers should pay their fair share, but they shouldn’t be obstructed and penalized for helping to bring Hawaii into the 21st century.

HECO should embrace the future and pay the costs of needed grid improvements as a normal, basic cost of doing business and serving its customers.

For more information on HECO’s proposed changes, I invite people to take a look at HawaiiSolarVoices.org.

The site also provides details on the changes needed to make Hawaii a clear leader on clean energy.