Solar endeavor starts to heat up

A plan being advanced by Hawaiian Electric Co. to cover roughly 1,200 acres of open space on Oahu — more than double the size of Waikiki — with solar photovoltaic panels is taking shape, with several of the participating renewable energy developers beginning to share their proposals with community leaders and politicians.

The 240 megawatts being proposed would provide enough power to serve the energy needs of about 60,000 households. It also would more than double the 221 megawatts of solar power capacity that has been installed on Oahu since the first photovoltaic panels began appearing on rooftops a decade ago.

HECO views the initiative as a critical piece of its legal mandate to generate 40 percent of the electricity it sells from renewable sources by 2030.

The solar projects would be built by nine different developers on various sites around the island, and HECO is asking the state Public Utilities Commission for the authority to waive competitive bidding requirements so it can speed up negotiations with the developers. The PUC has yet to rule on the request, although commission officials say they expect to issue a decision "shortly."

HECO officials would not name the developers or the locations of the proposed projects, saying they wanted to give the renewable energy companies time to do community outreach before the details of the projects became widely known.

Representatives from two of the developers, Cali­for­nia-based Eurus Energy America Corp. and Florida-based NextEra Energy, met with Wai­anae Neighborhood Board Chairwoman Johnnie-Mae Perry in December to brief her on their companies’ plans for PV projects in the area.

Eurus Energy is scheduled to make a presentation on its planned 200-acre project to the full neighborhood board in March, according to Perry. NextEra is slated to do the same for its 75-acre project in April. Perry said she met with each representative for about an hour.

The amount of land needed for utility-scale PV projects varies depending on the efficiency of the panels and the amount of sunshine the area receives. The average for several recently completed projects on Oahu and Kauai is about 5 acres for every megawatt of generating capacity. For 240 megawatts of PV, that works out to about 1,200 acres of land.

HECO officials said preliminary discussions with the developers showed that the utility would be able to purchase power from the PV projects at an average cost of 15.8 cents a kilowatt-hour, significantly less than the approximately 23 cents a kilowatt-hour it costs HECO to generate electricity from burning fuel oil at current prices.

Perry said one of her concerns is whether the developers will need to put up utility poles or be able to use underground conduits to hook their projects into HECO’s transmission line that runs through Wai­anae. She also said she wants to make sure the developers have a plan to dismantle the PV panels at the end of their lifetime.

"It’s the community that’s going to have to live with the solar farms. So we want to know how is it going to affect the community, and in the long run how do you properly dispose of the panels," Perry said.

Representatives from both NextEra and Eurus Energy would not comment on the details of their projects until they are formally presented to the community.

HECO in February announced it was seeking companies to develop renewable energy projects on Oahu of 5 megawatts or larger with an eye toward having them operational by the end of 2016 when federal tax credits for such projects are due to expire. After receiving proposals from more than two dozen developers, HECO in June selected the top five and asked the PUC for permission to put them on the fast track. In November two of the five developers dropped out. But HECO added six more developers to the list to bring the total to nine projects, all of which use PV panels as the energy source.

"Our whole goal when we started the process was to get these in before the expiration of the federal tax credit at the end of 2016," said Scott Seu, HECO vice president for energy resources and operations.

"We’re still going through the process, but we still think we have a decent shot of getting the projects on board," Seu said. "I think everybody would like to see us get that particular renewable energy as soon as we can."

Officials from the Blue Planet Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the use of fossil fuel in Hawaii, urged the PUC to approve HECO’s request to waive competitive bidding on the solar projects.

There have been no requests from outside parties to intervene in the waiver case, which is what typically slows down the PUC’s review process, said Jeff Miku­lina, Blue Planet Foundation executive director.

"We’re asking, What’s the holdup? This represents a significant amount of clean energy at a very affordable price," he said.

Hermina Morita, chairwoman of the PUC, said a ruling on HECO’s waiver request has taken longer than expected because the commission’s short-staffed legal department has been working on several other high-priority cases, including two proposed biofuel facilities on Hawaii island, HECO’s 20-year road map for meeting its energy needs, and a plan to increase the use of renewable energy in Hawaii without compromising the reliability of electrical grids.

"We hope to have a decision out shortly, as this docket has moved to the priority list," Morita said of the HECO waiver request.

However, the delay "should not preclude" HECO from moving forward with negotiations with the developers, Morita added.

The proposed projects will not crowd out the amount of solar energy HECO is able to absorb from residential rooftop PV systems, according to utility spokes­man Peter Rosegg. Because of the size of the projects, they will be connected directly to one of HECO’s 46-kilovolt transmission lines.

"This stuff will not be operating on the same circuits with rooftop solar. The power is fed one way into the grid, so it won’t be competing with rooftop solar," he said.