As our customers face high electric bills driven by sustained high oil prices, we recognize how important rooftop solar is to help many manage their electricity costs.

The Hawaiian Electric Companies and Kauai Island Utility Co-op lead the nation with the most solar watts installed per customer, according to the national Solar Electric Power Association.

Part of being ahead of other utilities means we’re also among the first to encounter the potential safety and reliability risks that arise on some circuits with rooftop solar levels that are higher than anywhere else in the country.

Our concern, first and foremost, is safety. On circuits with high levels of PV without proper protection measures, excess energy can back-feed into the grid, putting our crews’ safety at risk. Over-voltage from extremely high levels of PV can damage customer electronics and utility equipment and cause a customer safety risk. And it can impact reliability — from flickers to outages.

To be sure, solar energy provides a welcome contribution to a clean energy future. We recently announced changes aimed at helping more customers take advantage of rooftop solar. We changed the threshold so more systems can be installed before a safety and reliability study is needed. And to reduce the number of studies needed, we’ve initiated special planning studies to identify the proper equipment to protect safety and reliability on typical circuits. We’ve set up a cost-sharing model to minimize the financial impact on any one customer.

But remember, Hawaii is ahead of everywhere else in integrating this much intermittent energy into our grids. In Hawaii, more solar was added in 2012 than in all the previous years combined. No other utility in the nation, including in California and Arizona, has a higher percentage of customers with rooftop solar.

It’s true that studies will take time. We know any delay is frustrating for customers, but it would be irresponsible to take shortcuts on ensuring the safety of our customers or to spend money on make-shift solutions that may not be right for our small island grids.

The procedure we are now following on Oahu — ensuring projects have completed safety and reliability reviews before interconnection — has been in place on Maui, Hawaii Island and Kauai for some time.

We know this has resulted in some Oahu customers caught in the transition. In response, we grandfathered some customers with small systems whose interconnection agreements were in place before we publicized the procedure and we are ready to work with the PV industry to determine what’s fair and safe for other cases.

We want to lessen the risks of customers investing in a solar system and then learning after the fact about potential delays and additional costs.

We want Hawaii to continue to be the leader for the rest of the country in integrating solar and other renewable energy sources. With that comes the responsibility to tackle tough issues before everyone else.