If you don’t have solar now and are not in line to get it, the cost for switching just went up.
That was the ruling Tuesday from the state Public Utilities Commission, which decided to reduce the credit that new rooftop solar owners on Oahu, the Big Island and in Maui County will receive for the excess energy their photovoltaic systems send to the grid. Current solar owners and those who applied by Monday will be grandfathered in.
New solar customers on Oahu will be credited 15.07 cents per kilowatt-hour on their monthly bills for excess energy they send to the grid, compared with the net energy metering (NEM) program currently in place offering a full retail rate of 26.8 cents per kilowatt-hour.
“(NEM) is fully subscribed,” PUC Chairman Randy Iwase said. “It did its job, which was to incentivize PV on roofs.”
On Oahu, 48,743 PV systems have been installed on residential homes. Combined, Hawaiian Electric Industries’ utility subsidiaries — including the Maui and Big Island power companies — have approved more than 71,000 rooftop solar systems among a total of 450,000 customers.
The decision was a victory for Hawaiian Electric Co., which asked the PUC in January to allow it to cut the rate it credited customers for rooftop solar power sent to the grid.
“We appreciate the PUC’s thorough review of the complex issues that need to be balanced,” said Jim Alberts, Hawaiian Electric senior vice president of customer service, in a statement.
Solar companies and environmental groups were not so pleased.
“The immediate effect of the order is that it will be harder for lower-income people to benefit from renewable energy,” said Colin Yost, chief operating officer at RevoluSun. “In this time of changing climate, any policy that slows down adoption of renewable energy is a bad policy.”
Robert Harris, director of public policy for Sunrun, said solar customers should be offered more and that the PUC’s change puts the solar industry at risk.
“At least 11 non-utility-funded studies have concluded that solar customers pay more than their cost of service (the fixed costs of the grid),” Harris said. “Without any evidence to the contrary here in Hawaii, the commission took the unprecedented step of imperiling an industry that’s provided approximately 20 percent of the construction jobs in Hawaii over the past four years.”
The Sierra Club of Hawaii said, “Thanks to the PUC’s decision today (Tuesday), Hawaii now has the dubious distinction of being the first state in the U.S. to end net metering.”
“It is not clear why the PUC just threw net metering off the cliff, when it has been so effective at moving people off fossil fuels,” said Marti Townsend, director of Sierra Club of Hawaii. “All of us need to be off fossil fuels by 2045. To get there, we need to be expanding policies that encourage renewable energy use, not ending them.”
New solar customers on neighbor islands also will see a reduction in credits for excess energy their systems send to the grid with the new grid-supply program. Big Island customers will be credited 15.14 cents per kilowatt-hour. Maui customers will be credited 17.16 cents per kilowatt-hour, Molokai customers will be credited 24.07 cents per kilowatt-hour and Lanai customers will be credited 27.88 cents per kilowatt-hour.
In addition to the reduced credit for solar fed into the grid, new residential PV system owners also will pay a minimum monthly bill of $25, up from a minimum monthly bill of $17 for NEM program participants.
The PUC also rolled out two new programs Tuesday known as self-supply and time-of-use.
“There is an evolution here in what we are going to be doing,” Iwase said.
Under the self-supply program, solar customers will not export energy to the grid. Energy storage systems, such as batteries, will consume all of the energy produced by their solar system. If the solar system and the batteries aren’t able to power the home at any time, the customer can draw power from the grid. The PUC ordered that self-supply systems would be approved under an expedited review by HECO.
“(Self-supply) is a benefit to us as a state, as we now must deal with a grid that is becoming near saturation on all islands,” Iwase said. “When you self-supply you are making a contribution to the energy goal.”
The self-supply program is expected to be available to customers by Oct. 21.
The PUC also ordered HECO to develop a time-of-use rate for all customers so a customer can choose to pay less for electricity during the middle of the day and more in the evening. That is to encourage electricity use when solar power is at its peak and cut down on the use of fossil fuels.
The time-of-use rate includes three time periods: peak, midday and off-peak. HECO has 30 days to file a proposal with the PUC for the rates it wants to charge for those three periods.
