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A local company that planned to convert construction debris and other waste into electricity on Oahu has filed for bankruptcy after trying for roughly a decade to develop a renewable-energy power plant.
Honua Power LLC filed a petition for Chapter 7 liquidation Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Honolulu.
The company listed assets of less than $50,000 and debt between $1 million and $10 million.
Company representatives could not be reached for comment Friday.
Honua was founded by
officers of a local dental group, Tim Mobley and Kevin Kondo of Hawaii Family Dental Centers, along with a partner in 2005 and appears to have faltered two years ago after producing agreements with a private landfill operator, Hawaiian Electric Co. and the state Public Utilities Commission.
Losing the project represents a modest setback to progress for the state achieving its goal of obtaining 40 percent of electrical power from renewable resources by 2030.
Honua’s $30 million-to-
$40 million plan called for diverting construction and demolition debris, used tires, nonrecyclable plastic and paper, green waste and other materials from a landfill in Nanakuli operated by PVT Land Co.
The waste was to be turned into a synthetic gas through a process using extreme heat, and the gas would fuel a steam turbine to generate electricity at Campbell Industrial Park near the city’s 90-megawatt HPOWER plant, which burns garbage to generate electricity.
About 400 tons of waste would have been diverted from the landfill daily at Honua’s plant, which would have been able to produce 12 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 12,000 homes, according to the company’s plan.
Hawaiian Electric signed an agreement in 2009 to purchase power from Honua at roughly the same price reached for a wind farm in Kahuku, and the PUC approved that arrangement in 2011.
PVT in September 2014 held a blessing for a reclamation and recycling system to divert waste for use by Honua’s gasification plant, and the landfill operator said at the time that Honua was seeking construction permits.
“Hawaii is rich in renewable energy alternatives,” Steve Joseph, vice president of PVT, said in a statement at the time. “We have wind, ocean, geothermal, solar — and we have trash, which we can turn into synthetic natural gas that can be combusted to produce electricity.”
Joseph said that once Honua’s plant began running, PVT planned to start excavating the landfill to reclaim buried materials that could be turned into feedstock for the power plant. PVT estimated that as much as 80 percent of what is in the landfill could be converted to fuel.
Meanwhile, though, Honua was facing serious financial difficulties, according to documents filed with the PUC.
Hawaiian Electric notified Honua in April 2014 that it had failed to pay $1.8 million that was due in 2013 for covering the cost of connecting the plant with the utility’s grid. As a result, the utility terminated its power purchase agreement with Honua in September 2014. Two months later the landlord for Honua’s proposed power plant site terminated the company’s lease for unpaid rent.
In the Chapter 7 filing, Honua said it owed 17 companies or individuals a total of $1.7 million. The biggest debt was $681,255 for unpaid rent to A Pacific Island Properties LLC. The next two biggest debts are owed to members of Honua: $315,462 to Honua Technologies Inc. led by Mobley and Kondo, and $249,787 to Unitek Solvent Services Inc., which is affiliated with Unitek Energy Technologies LLC that is part owner of Honua.
Honua also listed $45,355 owed to Hawaii Dental Group Inc., which operates Hawaii Family Dental Centers.
Mobley is no longer president of the dental group. Kondo is the dental group’s attorney.
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