Oahu PV permits decline 40%
The number of photovoltaic building permits issued for Oahu fell 40 percent in September compared with the same month last year.
The City and County of Honolulu issued 379 PV permits last month, down from 631 in September 2015, according to Marco Mangelsdorf, who tracks rooftop solar permits and is president of Hilo-based ProVision Solar.
Year to date, the number of solar permits issued was down 29 percent from the same period last year. There were 3,789 PV permits issued from January to the end of September, compared with 5,312 issued during those eight months last year.
Permits have been generally in decline since the state ended a popular solar energy incentive program a year ago. The solar industry has been struggling as a result.
In October 2015 the state Public Utilities Commission terminated a program that gave solar customers credit equal to the retail rate for the excess energy their systems sent to the grid. The program — net energy metering — helped many of its participants reduce their electric bill to roughly $17 a month.
When NEM ended the PUC replaced it with two options, called grid-supply and self-supply. And now only one of those two incentive programs, self-supply, is available.
All counties served by Hawaiian Electric Co. have met the state’s limit placed on grid-supply. The program lets customers export excess energy to the grid and credits them 15 cents a kilowatt-hour for the extra energy their systems send. That rate is roughly 8 cents less than the retail rate that had been offered through NEM.
Self-supply prohibits solar owners from sending excess energy into HECO’s grid. Most systems need batteries to meet self-supply requirements.
The self-supply program has seen a lackluster adoption rate, Mangelsdorf said.
“The adoption rate of customer self-supply, typically requiring battery storage, has been decidedly underwhelming with less than 60 in the pipelines for all three Hawaiian Electric utilities as of Sept. 27,” Mangelsdorf said.
Last week PUC officials said they would be starting a process in which they might reconsider the rules for grid-supply and self-supply.
“The commission recently formally opened the gate for the development and implementation of so-called phase two,” Mangelsdorf said. “The concern among PV contractors and their customers is that by the time phase two is determined and goes into effect, there may not be much of a local solar electric industry remaining.”
Some 442 solar employees have lost their jobs since the end of NEM, equaling a 42 percent reduction in the solar workforce over the last year.
14 responses to “Oahu PV permits decline 40%”
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Subsidies are only needed if the limit is not reached.
PV is so expensive that it does not really pay for itself.
The industry has been able to cut its costs in half, but it still needs subsidies to sell their product.
There will be some consolidation in the industry as it tries to adapt to the new pricing for rooftop PV.
They need to figure out a new business model. Perhaps that might include other renewable Technologies as well?
NEM paid the roof top solar owners for what they produced. No more, no less. It wasn’t a subsidy. Under NEM, most owners broke even on a $25K system at around the 4-5 year mark.
During the rooftop solar boom, HECO (and their politician supporters) put pressure on the PUC to cut NEM because it was cutting into their bottom line. The HECO claim about the grid not being able to adjust for all the solar was not true then and is still not true now. HECO is still building their own solar farms. They just don’t want you to have solar.
The new solar business model is self-supply. Once the battery technology catches up, solar will be back. And when that happens, we can all be sure that HECO will do its best to find ways to slow and stop those systems too. HECO is not the consumers’ friend.
Well said.
If enough people get solar and battery to go off the grid, the Legislature will enact a tax to keep HECO running, and find ways to makes sure HECO is “necessary” through legislation. Then everyone will pay to keep HECO’s profits up, whether we use HECO’s services or not. I say this based upon decades of living in Hawaii.
Even if you run off PV-charged batteries, most will still need HECO to supply power during extended periods of cloudy weather, unless there is a generator backup.
Only because of Federal and Hawaii state aid was it feasible. They paid $10000 to my system otherwise it would take 20 years to pay me back and not be worth it. Now it is totally useless when you can not even sell the excess electricity at the reduced rate to HECO.
These are the facts… rooftop pv does NOT pay for itself. 3 to 5 year paybacks are really welfare to pv owners.
I agree with some of what you said, but the real problem was that HECO was paying consumers the retail price for PV-generated power, when they should’ve been paying a wholesale rate. They do that, and PV growth is steady and not explosive, and consumers are installing systems fit more to their needs instead of overbuilding, which contributed to the overloading of the grid that HECO alleges
Rail is so expensive that it will never pay for itself.
Rail has been unable to cuts costs, now 300% over budget, will always need ever increasing subsidies from taxpayers.
Rail is unable to do anything to reduce costs other than stopping at Middle Street. Higher prices to ride will be required
Rail needs to figure out a new business model to reduce taxpayer subsidies. As in using non union contractors to run and maintain the system. This way no increase to the pension money pit.
Rail, a massive financial drain on the Nei.
do the freeways pay for themselves?
Great point…
YES. If freeways with add-ons to address known Oahu chokepoints can quickly and efficiently transport tourists, residents, students and the military to get where they need to go for their vacation, private schools and universities, business transactions,…YES, FREEWAYS PAY FOR THEMSELVES AND THEN SOME. When freeways and roadways fails and create huge time wasting traffic jams, like they do now, that means there are losses in the MILLIONS for Oahu.
GREED! Consumers get the short end once again!
“PEAK OIL” was the warning cry. $200 barrel of oil was the prediction. $50 a barrel is the reality.