Energy facility boasts 4,200 solar panels

Government and private-sector officials dedicated Oahu’s first utility-scale solar energy facility Thursday, a 1.2-megawatt project built on a former industrial waste site near Campbell Industrial Park.

The $7 million Kapolei Sustainable Energy Park, developed by Forest City Hawaii and designed by Hoku Solar, features 4,200 solar panels on four acres. The panels will generate enough energy each year to supply the needs of 150 to 250 homes. Forest City negotiated a power purchase agreement with Hawaiian Electric Co. under which it will sell the electricity to the utility at a fixed rate of 23.6 cents a kilowatt-hour over the next 20 years.

The Forest City project was developed before the state Public Utilities Commission’s recent approval of a feed-in tariff system that created a standardized pricing system for developers selling renewable energy to HECO. The rate that HECO will pay Forest City is higher than the 19.7 cents a kilowatt-hour the utility will pay developers of future large-scale solar projects under the FIT program. However, it is well below the record 35.7 cents a kilowatt-hour that HECO’s residential customers are paying in December.

The project site is part of a 12-acre parcel that Forest City has leased from the James Campbell Company LLC. The site was used to store hazardous waste until 1986, when the Environmental Protection Agency ordered it closed. It was capped with a polyethylene liner and an asphalt cap in the mid-1990s.

"This is what otherwise would be called a brownfield. It has been turned into a brightfield," Gov. Neil Abercrombie said at the dedication ceremony.

Because the asphalt cap must not be disturbed, the solar panels are mounted on a racking system sitting atop dozens of 700-pound concrete bases that do not penetrate the ground. Helix Electric Inc. was contracted by Hoku to install the system.

The project began supplying electricity to the HECO grid last week. It is one of several solar projects being planned for West Oahu.

HECO already has signed power purchase agreements for two other photovoltaic projects of 5 megawatts each being developed by two mainland companies.

In addition, Honolulu-based Sopogy Inc. has broken ground on a 5-megawatt project on a state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands site that will generate energy using micro-concentrated solar power technology. Sopogy’s system uses mirrored troughs to concentrate solar energy and create steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity.