Startup Giraffe Financial aims to unravel tax credit complexities for businesses Giraffe received a $1.5 million pre-seed round of funding and plans to help underserved small- and medium-sized businesses access IRA tax credits.

CATL, Gotion deny U.S. accusations of forced labor U.S. lawmakers have urged for Chinese battery heavyweights CATL and Gotion High-Tech to be immediately added to an import ban list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Both manufacturers have adamantly denied the allegations.

Bitech Technologies sells 2.4 GW of solar to focus on energy storage Bitech completed the sale of 2.425 GW of its greenfield solar projects to “a third party purchaser”. The company plans to turn its focus to its battery storage business, which it believes, could ensure better investment returns.

Hawaii’s largest solar-plus-storage facility now operational The 60 MW Kūihelani solar-plus-storage facility will generate enough electricity for 27,000 homes, with a 240 MWh battery energy storage system.

Solar represents over 80% of U.S. electric capacity additions in 2024 Combined with wind, the two technologies represent 99% of all capacity additions, according to data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Maxeon reveals minimized risk of hotspots in IBC solar panels Maxeon’s Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) solar panels were found to disperse heat evenly, leading to lower operating temperatures in the shade and reduced degradation.

Swift Solar closes $27 million in funding, plans perovskite solar factory Swift Solar, a specialist in perovskite tandem photovoltaics, plans to build a factory in the U.S. in the next two to three years to manufacture thin-film solar.

Hawaii has the highest average electricity price of any state at 43.93 cents per kWh, nearly triple the U.S. average, yet this project will cut that cost for many residents. Developer AES Hawaii projects that the Kūihelani Solar-plus-Storage facility will generate enough electricity for 15% of Maui’s needs at just 8 cents per kWh.

“Maui residents will soon be seeing the benefit of Kuihelani in their electric bills and the reassurance of knowing they will have reliable electrical power for their homes and businesses,” said former Maui Mayor Victorino.

Islands that are not covering their energy needs with renewables are beholden to imported fossil fuels. The energy generated by this facility will offset the need to import an estimated 2 million barrels of oil.

Situated on 450 acres in central Maui, between Kūihelani Highway and Maui Veterans Highway, the project supports the state’s goal of 100% renewable energy and decarbonization targets by 2045. AES Hawaii broke ground for construction less than two years ago, and as with most large-scale solar projects, the company sought input from the community prior to construction. As a result, AES Hawaii modified its plans.

“We reduced the size of the project site by 35%, minimizing the project’s environmental footprint, while maximizing the usage of the available land in a responsible manner,” said Sandra Larsen, Hawaii market business leader for AES.

Hawaiian Electric is the offtaker of the electricity, having signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with AES Hawaii.

Nearly 300 jobs were supported during construction of Kūihelani Solar-plus-Storage and and generated approximately $68 million for Maui’s economy, according to AES Hawaii. In addition, project area is also designed for agricultural use.

AES Hawaii more than 300 MW of renewable energy in construction or operational, enough to power 120,000 homes statewide. The company estimates that this is the equivalent of eliminating more than 175,000 metric tons of carbon emissions and more than 15 million barrels of oil consumption over the course of project lifecycles.

Hawaii is the most mature rooftop solar market in the United States, with nearly a third of homes having on-site solar, and over 90% of new installations opting to pair with on-site battery energy storage. This makes for a dynamic, flexible, and resilient grid and helps the island fight its high electricity rates for the long term.

Hawaii’s solar-batteries market was partially buoyed by a program called Battery Bonus (BB), which reached its enrollment cap in Oahu and closed in December 2023. Hawaiian Electric customers on Maui still have 7.2 MW of capacity remaining at the time of publication.

The program offers upfront incentives and pays customers a monthly rate based on battery capacity for agreeing to dispatch power during times of peak electricity demand. It also helped encourage coordinated distributed energy resource use, which has community-wide cost benefits versus a disconnected off-grid model.

Battery Bonus was replaced by a new program called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), which Rocky Mould, executive director of Hawaii Solar Energy Association (HSEA) said is a far less lucrative program for customers, placing Hawaii’s rooftop solar market at risk.

“[BYOD] undoes years of progress to enable customers to lead the way on adopting clean energy to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and reduce costs for everyone,” said Mould. “We’re hoping the PUC quickly corrects course to avoid a catastrophe for local industry and a massive momentum killer for clean energy in Hawai‘i.”

Mould called the now-closed BB program “a distributed energy success story” in which over 46 MW of rooftop solar and battery systems were rapidly enrolled to help support the grid when delays in utility-scale renewables project development led to a grid reliability crisis and bill spikes from sharpened oil demand.

A key BB’s success was lowering the upfront cost of battery energy storage. Under Battery Bonus, customers were offered a single upfront payment of $850 per kWh of battery capacity enrolled. That means a common battery like a Tesla Powerwall would be offered $4,250 up front for enrolling and installing. Under the new BYOD, that figure is capped at $500 total. Both programs also pay $5 per kW of battery capacity enrolled per month.

In return, customers export power to the grid to be used by their neighbors. But a key difference between BB and BYOD is that BB required customers to dispatch power for two hours to neighbors on their local distribution network, while the new BYOD program forces customers to route their electricity as utility-dispatched power, for two-hour periods, up to 365 days a year.

Mould said the new BYOD program forces customers to perform “reverse arbitrage” for the utility, worsening electricity prices for everyone on-grid.

Though net metering has been closed in Hawaii since 2015, the BB program allowed customers to add additional net-metered solar capacity to existing systems and export to their neighbors during peak demand events.

Furthermore, non-net metered customers were incentivized to join the Battery Bonus program. Customers would receive a monthly export bill credit amount for energy exported to the grid for 3 years. The credit is an amount equivalent to the respective retail rate for electricity exported during the two–hour period. The credit rate was updated to the retail rates at the beginning of each calendar quarter. Any unused portion of the credit will be zeroed out at the end of every year.

However, the BYOD program slashes this retail rate, paying customers far less for exporting stored solar production when it is valued most.

“Therefore, participating customers are making kWhs via rooftop solar and selling low (i.e., below retail) per the program rules, and then needing to buy these same kWhs back in order to operate their home loads at the higher retail rate. This mandatory ‘reverse arbitrage’ is a fatal flaw.”

HSEA said when the PUC closed net metering abruptly in 2015, the industry downsized by 60%, triggering approximately 2,000 job losses. It warned that the transition to BYOD may cause immediate and lasting impacts as severe or worse than the fallout from eight years ago.

“In my 15 years working with this Commission, this decision is the most drastic misstep I have seen—up there with slamming the curtain on net metering eight years ago, but with potentially more disastrous results,” said Isaac Moriwake, an attorney with advocacy group Earthjustice who has represented HSEA at the PUC since 2009.

Fixing incentives

Legislators have now in February 2024 introduced HB 1687, which seeks to undo some of the value damage caused by the transition to BYOD.

Mould said HB 1687 eliminates the mandatory reverse arbitrage obligation that “serves as the Achilles heel” of the program designed by utility Hawaiian Electric Company by requiring that exports be compensated at the full retail rate.

“If customers are compensated at the retail rate for their energy exports, they are indifferent between supplying the energy in their batteries to the grid or consuming it themselves. Thus the barrier to participation has been eliminated,” said Mould.

Under the Commission’s new program, customers will have to choose between self-consumption and the BYOD programs. Mould said given current incentives, customers will rationally choose the self-consumption program, which leads to a customer-specific load offset, which he said could instead be used to help the entire grid under a supportive program like BB.

By eliminating the perverse incentives at hand and instead encouraging broader grid participation, HB 1687 is expected to make the islands’ grid more stable and reduce blackouts.

“Grid instability and blackouts hurt all ratepayers but they hit LMI ratepayers even harder,” Mould told pv magazine USA. “These grid service programs are a necessary service to stabilize the whole grid for the benefit of all ratepayers.”

Follow the bill’s movement through Hawaii’s legislature here.

From pv magazine 12/23-01/24

Water, power, and shelter. Whether earthquakes, extreme weather, or sudden refugee crises occur, all three are crucial when disaster strikes. Solar is playing an increasing role in providing all three for first responders.

While a mature technology, solar is a relative newcomer to emergency response. PV’s technological advances and affordable price mean non-profits and private companies are taking solar to places in desperate need of power.

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria struck the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico causing destruction and almost 3,000 deaths. Energy infrastructure was wrecked and more than 90% of the island’s residents lost power. US-based non-profit Empowered by Light was one of the first groups on the ground.

Founded in 2011, Empowered by Light began as a charity providing solar to remote schools in Zambia. It has completed more than 80 solar and energy storage projects in nine countries. Developmental work still makes up the core of the non-profit’s activity but executive director and co-founder Moira Hanes told pv magazine that when Hurricane Maria hit, Empowered by Light had the chance to show how quickly solar can be deployed.

“We’re not normally an emergency response disaster relief organization,” she said. “But after the hurricane, we immediately went out to the island. We started putting solar energy [with] storage on fire stations so that they could continue to operate, or be operating again because a lot of them had been on these generators which had broken down. They couldn’t even receive 911 calls or effectively dispatch their personnel.”

Why solar?

Reliability was a main benefit of solar on Puerto Rico, Hanes said. Not only were some diesel backup generators failing, it was occurring at the worst possible time regarding replacement parts.

“Diesel generators break down and you can’t get the part in a timely manner because your supply chain and supply routes have been constrained because of the disaster,” said Hanes, “PV is reliable and renewable and it’s not polluting.”

Empowered by Light has installed solar arrays on 11 Puerto Rican fire stations, in partnership with other charitable groups and businesses. The charity has also provided PV support to communities on Maui, Hawaii, following the outbreak of wildfires on the U.S. island in early August 2023. In Maui, innovative approaches to disaster PV included the use of what Hanes described as “powerfield buckets,” made up of rows of solar modules connected to donated Tesla Powerwall batteries.

“That was immediately deployed to power the aid distribution site,” said Hanes. “It’s powering refrigeration, lighting. They’re cooking three meals a day there.”

Empowered by Light is not a manufacturer or installer. The charity works with local PV companies where possible, ensuring relief efforts provide new opportunities for a community’s solar industry.

“We will use a local [engineering, procurement and construction company] that is as close to that community as possible,” said Hanes. “That way, we’re helping build local capacity. We have advisers, our engineers can weigh in on the design but we’re trying to make certain everything is done on as local a level as possible. We’re also trying to procure hardware in the country, wherever possible. So you’re not shipping modules from the US, for example, to Africa, which is cost prohibitive.”

Cost is the other factor that comes up when discussing PV in a disaster context. A can of diesel is a lot cheaper than a PV module and cash is a precious resource in communities facing the cost of rebuilding. Empowered by Light has a diverse group of backers providing financial assistance. OpenSolar in particular has made a significant contribution to Empowered by Light, with the solar design software company pledging to donate 1% of its annual revenue to the charity’s projects.

Duck curve financing

Footprint Project is another charity supporting solar relief efforts on Maui. The organization has partnered with Empowered by Light in the past and the pair expect to collaborate on longer-term solar projects on the island.

When it comes to disaster funding, Footprint Project operations director and co-founder Will Heegaard said he would like to see greater investment ahead of time – although that can be a challenge for relief organizations. Much as with solar generation and grid capacity, there is a gap between the peak funding period for disaster relief and demand for finance. Most donations come in the wake of a disaster. The money is obviously welcome but a cash injection in the weeks and months before incidents occur could arguably go further. That way, more resources and infrastructure would be in place to react.

“We need to solve the duck curve of disaster financing,” said Heegaard. “If we’re going to be successful in expanding adoption of renewable technologies in disaster affected communities, we need the industry to pony up and invest in our work ahead of time. Otherwise, we will not be as successful as we could be.”

The resources deployed can vary at Footprint Project. Jamie Swezey, the organization’s program director, described his employer as technology agnostic.

Broadly, the non-profit seeks to replace the 2 kW to 10 kW diesel generator. Its microgrids, therefore, operate in and around that range. That can mean a 2 kW or smaller set-up handy for charging cell phones in a crisis or a converted shipping container fitted with 10 kW to 20 kW solar arrays and 100 kW of battery storage. Footprint Project’s biggest microgrid to date, with a capacity of around 80 kW, can be found in Napili Park, on Maui.

Those PV installations don’t just supply power for relief work, they improve quality of life for first responders, according to Footprint Project. Swezey said that the non-profit has considered finding a way to record decibel levels, as one of the most frequent benefits cited by first responders when PV is installed is the reduction in noise level.

Sound isn’t the only thing that can make diesel generators a pain. First responders working around generators often complain of headaches, which Heegaard described as a symptom of low-grade carbon monoxide poisoning. Things can get much worse depending on where and how fossil fuel generators are used.

“After Hurricane Laura hit the gulf [of Mexico], more people died from carbon monoxide poisoning from running their gas generators in their garage, to power their house, than died from the hurricane itself,” said Heegaard. “It’s a huge health risk for a number of reasons.”

Business case

Using solar in disaster response is more than a charitable endeavor. At Michigan-based start-up Sesame Solar, the potential to use mobile “nanogrids” in a crisis serves as the foundation of a business – one that’s been steadily expanding. Founded in 2017, the nanogrid manufacturer has picked up a diverse range of clients with an interest in disaster response.

US communications giant Comcast has used Sesame Solar nanogrids in the aftermath of hurricanes in both Louisiana and Florida. The U.S. Air Force makes use of the company’s nanogrids as a mobile medical base and for command and security. In Santa Barbara County, California, the local government has invested in Sesame Solar nanogrids that are towed to locations using all-electric Ford-150 trucks.

Now with financial backing from institutional investors such as Morgan Stanley, VSC Ventures, PAX Momentum, and Belle Capital, as well as endorsements from the likes of President Bill Clinton’s non-profit Clinton Foundation and “Time” magazine, Sesame Solar is well positioned to make the shift to a global business, as co-founder and chief executive officer Lauren Flanagan explained.

“We’re already international,” she said. “I would like to be global through our partnerships. We have a subsidiary in India already but we still make everything in the United States. But it’s a global set of problems with a global marketplace.”

At Sesame Solar, the focus has been on creating a turnkey solution that requires no installation and is simple to use. Flanagan said the company’s trailer-mounted nanogrids can be operated with a small amount of training. Once up and running, she said, Sesame Solar offers a continuous energy loop that allows for consistent power, from 5 kW to 20 kW, depending on system specification. The trailer which houses the nanogrid also provides shelter from the elements.

Consistency is key. The intermittent nature of solar is not ideal in a disaster relief context, if left unaddressed. Sesame Solar solves this problem through a combination of battery storage and hydrogen electrolyzing capability.

It is a straightforward concept. Solar power is generated during daylight hours and can be used to power disaster response and charge the nanogrid’s battery storage. Stored power can then be deployed and any excess can be used to power hydrogen generation on board. Nanogrids fitted with a green hydrogen system for backup power include a large tank of deionized water. When the tank gets low, there is an integrated atmospheric water generator that generates distilled water, which is then deionized for use in hydrogen production. The hydrogen itself is stored as a solid, at low pressure, which means transportation does not trigger permit requirements.

“We make the deionized water we need to make the hydrogen gas we need, and you don’t do it all at once,” said Flanagan. “It’s in a sequence. You start out with full tanks of hydrogen and water and then you’re topping them up as needed because you’re not running the fuel cell full time. The whole point is that it’s a continuous green energy loop that allows for consistent, continuous power draw.”

Potable water is also on the menu, thanks to a partnership between Sesame Solar and Watergen Ltd. The Israeli company manufactures atmospheric drinking water devices that create potable water from the air.

It’s a total solution, according to Flanagan, with further scope for innovation in areas such as electric vehicle charging.

“That’s the idea,” she added. “Trying to eliminate the supply chain of having to bring hydrogen or fossil fuel or water into an emergency zone.”

Solar workers furloughed days after unionizing  EmPower Solar executives have furloughed 21 workers citing a market slowdown. Furloughed team members say that these firings are retaliation for a pro-union vote taken just one week earlier by 49 workers.

First Solar opens manufacturing plant in India  India’s first fully vertically integrated solar manufacturing plant will produce First Solar’s Series 7 solar PV modules developed at the company’s research centers in the U.S. The facility employs 1,000 workers.

Acculon launches production of sodium-ion battery modules, packs  U.S.-based Acculon Energy has announced series production of its sodium-ion battery modules and packs for mobility and stationary energy storage applications. Scaled production of 2 GWh is scheduled to start in mid-2024.

Hawaiian utility to balance grid with 565 MWh battery  Curtailment, or deliberate reduction in output, will be reduced in Hawaii by a large grid-scale energy storage project comprised of Tesla Megapacks.

Commercial solar lender Sunstone Credit acquires Orka Finance The company offers financing for small to medium-sized businesses investing in solar. 

Plus Power announced it has begun operations for its Kapolei Energy Storage (KES) facility on Oahu, Hawaii, helping the state in its transition from fossil fuels to solar and wind. 

The KES project adds 135 MW / 540 MWh to the Hawaiian Electric grid, with an additional 50 MW / 25 MWh of additional “fast frequency response” to support grid stability.

The advanced battery has “virtual inertia” to replicate the power-smoothing function of a conventional spinning turbine. It has “black start” capabilities, which supports grid recovery in the event of a blackout. 

“It’s the first time a battery has been used by a major utility to balance the grid: providing fast frequency response, synthetic inertia, and black start,” said Brandon Keefe, executive chairman, Plus Power. This project is a postcard from the future — batteries will soon be providing these services, at scale, on the mainland.”   

Located on 8 acres of industrial land on the southwest side of Oahu, the project is comprised of 158 Tesla Megapack 2 XL lithium-ferro-phosphate batteries, each about the size of a shipping container. 

The battery can serve as a grid “shock absorber,” serving a role normally performed by combustion-powered plants. It can respond to grid signals in 250 milliseconds, far faster than the several minutes that conventional power plants take to fire up. 

“Energy storage technology that responds quickly to constantly changing conditions is an essential tool for us to use to manage the grid and operate it as efficiently as possible,” said Jim Alberts, senior vice president and chief operations officer, Hawaiian Electric. 

Solar power has become abundant, leading Hawaiian Electric to have to curtail, or turn off, large volumes of utility-scale solar and wind to keep the system in balance. The new energy storage capacity is expected to allow the utility to reduce renewable energy curtailments by 69%. It is also expected to enable 10% more new utility-scale renewables on the grid than previous models allowed. 

Hawaiian Electric said it expects the battery to save its customers on electricity bills. The utility estimates the battery will reduce electric bills by $0.28 per month over its 20-year contract life. 

The KES battery plant is interconnected near three of Hawaiian Electric’s critical power generation facilities, enabling a rapid reboot of those power plants in the event of an island-wide emergency. This is known as “black start” capability. 

The batteries will help replace grid capacity formerly provided by an AES coal-fired power plant less than a mile away. The plant used to provide about 20% of Oahu’s electricity, home to nearly one million residents. The plant closed in September 2022. 

Project developer, owner, and operator Plus Power has a development portfolio of over 10 GW of projects in transmission queues across 28 states and Canada. It has over $1.8 billion in project financings announced as of October 2023. The company expects to be operating seven additional large-scale energy storage plants across Arizona and Texas, adding 1325 MW / 3500 MWh of storage by June 2024. 

“Our projects, like KES, help our customers provide affordable, reliable, clean electricity on hot summer afternoons and cold winter nights, while enabling the decarbonization of the electric grid,” said Keefe.

From pv magazine global

Hawaii-based startup Wavr LLC has developed a wave energy converter (WEC) that could be used for low-power marine applications.

Wavr developed its first prototypes for consumers, such as boat owners. The company claims that the system is particularly suitable for water surfaces with weak waves, as its modular design is able to increase the required power output by integrating more systems in an array configuration.

The technology can be used in low-power marine data buoys and internet of things (IoT) devices, according to the company, which claims its technology has no intermittency issues found in some other renewable energy technologies.

“The system is also designed to be scaled up and integrated with other renewable energy technologies,” the company said, noting that future prototypes may also be combined with photovoltaic panels installed on top of the floaters, small wind turbines, mini-hydropower systems or other tidal energy technologies.

“We feel the hybrid unit with solar panels is the next most important prototype for us. We are currently developing it with a group called Infrgy,” the company’s founder, Clyde Igarashi, told pv magazine. “We’re using conventional PV panels rated at IP68 to handle conditions out at sea. The panels are placed directly on top of the WEC modules and cables are protected by rubber seals. Micro inverters under the panels are used to synchronize with the frequency and amplitude of our wave energy converter.”

The standalone system is made of 3D-printed plastic and has a weight of 4.5 kg. It embeds an internal battery to store energy and is linkable to external batteries, the manufacturer said. It features a power output of 3 W per square foot (0.09 m2).

“After we perfect the hybrid Wavr with solar panels, the next step would be to link arrays together,” Igarashi said. “Currently we are targeting a price of around $2,300, which would include five 40 W solar panels. The 200 W solar system with inverter accounts for approximately $800 of the cost.”

He also stated that the price should decrease significantly with scale. “We haven’t yet done an LCOE calculation for any specific location,” he added.

Wavr is based in Mililani, Honolulu County, Hawaii.

Hawaii is the eighth smallest state by land area, but with 1.4 million residents, it ranks 13th in the country by population density. The 50^th U.S. state has just 10,931 square miles of land mass, with sloped volcano ridges not ideal for sprawling utility solar development. However, Hawaii, or the Aloha State, has embraced the small-scale adoption of community solar, and in the 10 months since the Inflation Reduction Act has passed, the lush island state shows huge potential for new community projects.

Hawaii has the highest electric rate in the United States with the average price of 44.24 cents/kWh in early 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration. For the past century, Hawaii has relied on expensive imports of motor fuel, distillates, jet fuel and various other petroleum products for its power generation. But in 2018, the island state became the first in the U.S. to set a carbon neutral goal of becoming fully renewable powered by 2045.

With 1.72 GW of installed solar, Hawaii catapulted to 17^th in the U.S. for solar generation from 27^th in 2022, with 162 MW brought online for the year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Solar represents 17.25% of the island state’s power mix and the state has made strides to deploy about 150 MW per year in new installations. At year end 2022, utility Hawaiian Electric (HECO) had achieved 32% of its renewable procurement standard goal of becoming fully renewable powered by 2045.

In 2022, the utility ended the use of coal plants, allowing the expiration of a last remaining power plant, while the state’s regulators committed to add 1 GW of new renewable energy projects, including 50,000 rooftop solar projects across the islands and expanding geothermal power development.

Incentives

Prior to 2015, Hawaii had a net metering framework but it lapsed in the regulator’s hands despite 60,000 residents signing up. In its place the state now has two distributed generation tariffs: the Customer Grid Supply Plus (CGS Plus) and the Smart Export tariff. The CGS Plus is available for residential and commercial customers, and Smart Export is for customers who own renewable energy plus energy storage systems.

HECO customers under the CGS Plus program receive a monthly bill credit for energy delivered to the grid based on an island-specific rate. The export credit rate was fixed through October 2022, with the islands of Hawaii (10.55 cents/kWh), Oahu (10.08 cents/kWh) and Maui (12.17 cents/kWh) seeing the lowest rates of the islands, while the lesser-populated Molokai (16.77 cents/kWh) and Lanai (20.80/kWh) enjoy the highest export rates to the utility, according to HECO’s website.

For solar-plus-storage users, ratepayers under the Smart Export framework receive an export credit of 11 to 20.79 cents/kWh depending on the island, while no export credit is available during daily peak times from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., as this is the time ratepayers are to charge their home battery systems.

Like all solar installations in the U.S., Hawaiian solar projects are eligible for the federal Investment Tax Credit. The credit covers 30% of installed system costs, and can be rolled over year to year if the customer lacks the tax liability to take advantage of the credit in one tax year.

At year end 2022, HECO ratepayers contributed 542.7 MW of solar and storage power resources into the Hawaiian grid, as the investor-owned utility saw residents contribute to a sustained compounded annual growth rate from rooftop solar of 7% per year since 2016, the first year under the state’s current tariff framework.

Community solar

Building on the successes of its rooftop solar penetration rate, Act 100 of the Hawaii State Legislature was initiated in 2015 allowing for community solar. The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (PUC) established a “community-based renewable energy” tariff, Sec. 269-27.4. The details of the tariffs and programs have been and continue to be developed under PUC docket #2015-0389.

Even though Hawaiian Electric refers to community solar as a “shared solar” program across its jurisdiction, the state’s utility allows community members to participate in local solar generation projects in nearby solar fields or rooftops without preclusions.

The inaugural phase of HECO’s community based renewable energy (CBRE) program has seen just shy of 6.02 MW of community solar projects enter operations or advanced-stage construction.

In November 2022, HECO selected its first seven community solar projects on the islands of Oahu, Hawaii and Maui, providing 27 MW of clean power to low- and moderate-income subscribers, as part of Phase 2 of the utility’s CBRE program.

Boston-based project developer Nexamp is currently completing the approval steps for the projects, and other projects across the island state, with a goal of commercial operations in 2025. The developer is building projects on the Hawaii (9 MW / 36 MWh storage), Maui (8 MW / 32 MWh storage) and Oahu (6 MW solar) islands.  On Oahu, home of capitol city Honolulu, the developer partnered with MeLink Solar to develop that project.

Our commitment to accessibility shapes everything we do, Chris Clark, chief development officer of Nexamp, tells pv magazine USA, so we are proud to be bringing our expertise to Hawaii and addressing the needs of these communities. Dedicated to low- and moderate-income residents, each of these shared solar projects will ensure equal access and lower electricity costs for participants while reducing the state’s fossil fuel dependence as it works toward 100% renewable energy by 2045. This work will help to ensure that Hawaii, with its unique ecology and island geography, builds a clean and sustainable future for the next generation.

Other CBRE developments are going on across the isles.

The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC), the utility that manages the grid on the western Kauai Island, does not have any community projects under development, according to the state’s CBRE website.

Further information as well as CBRE enrollment details can be found on the state’s interactive energy project directory.

Notable project

Located north of the village of Haleiwa on Oahu, Kawailoa Solar is a 49 MW utility solar project  developed by Clearway Energy Group in 2019. The project produces enough electricity to power 16,808 homes and ranks as the largest Hawaiian solar facilities.

Kawailoa Solar was built on 300 acres of land owned by the Kamehameha Schools within the Kawailoa Plantation, a historic sugar cane plantation that also features a 69 MW wind farm built in 2018 by First Wind. Kawailoa Solar shares existing roads, substation, and transmission lines with the wind project.

The $7 million capital cost solar project was constructed by local construction subcontractor Goodfellow Brothers for developer Clearway Energy, using close to 500,000 solar panels.

Since becoming operational, Clearway Energy has utilized local ranchers to allow them to graze sheep for vegetation management on the Kawailoa site.

Aloha readers. This is the last and final stop off on the pv magazine USA tour of 50 states of solar incentives. The team last stopped in Alaska and our first stop on the tour was the great state of Maine in February 2022. Click here for the full 50 states of solar incentives.

Just two months after the receivership and takeover of Silicon Valley Bank by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, now under the ownership of First Citizens Bank, SVB has reemerged as a lender to the solar development market.

The lender closed a $203 million debt financing to support construction of a 100 MW multi-state distributed generation solar portfolio of Pivot Energy, a Denver-based community, commercial and industrial solar development company.

Tax investor Foss & Company is committing an initial tax equity round in the portfolio, which comprises 35 community solar and C&I projects planned to reach commercial operation (COD) between mid-2023 and mid-2024.

Community solar subscribers in the portfolio include municipalities, healthcare facilities, food service, and retail companies, as well as 8,000 low-to-moderate income (LMI) residential households.

With community solar projects in Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Hawaii, Maryland, and California, the portfolio represents what the company said is one of the most extensive LMI solar portfolios developed to date in terms of diversity and geographic reach.

SunCentral, a community solar subscriber management and acquisition platform, will manage the community solar portfolio through operations.

The debt transaction led by SVB includes a construction loan, tax equity bridge loan, and term loan. SVB led the financing as coordinating lead arranger (CLA) and sole bookrunner.  Other lenders committed to the DG solar portfolio include J.P. Morgan, National Bank of Canada, Bank United, Cadence and Comerica. The debt facility also represents J.P. Morgan’s first debt issuance to the community solar market.

The SVB financing represents Pivot’s second debt syndication closed with the SVB-led lender group. In 2022, the developer raised $190 million in credit to finance a 90 MW community solar portfolio in New York, Illinois, Colorado, Minnesota, California, and New Jersey.

Bret Labadie, chief financial officer for Pivot Energy, told pv magazine USA that for the new financing, Pivot had been in the market since Q4 2022 and were set to close the second debt facility with Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023, but the federal takeover of the commercial bank put the financing process on hold.

“Each of the banks in this syndicate worked with Pivot and we were able to navigate the temporary uncertainty to retain the initial terms of the deal,” Labadie said.  “It’s a testament to the leadership from each of the parties that we were able to stay the course and see this loan through.”

“We are pleased to have led and structured this portfolio of solar projects across 35 sites in 7 key markets,” said Bret Turner, head of project finance, Silicon Valley Bank. “We appreciate the confidence and trust placed in the team at SVB to continue moving this asset class forward.”

When combined with the Foss tax equity contribution, the total financing package enables Pivot to construct, operate, and own the multi-year and multi-state portfolio.

“This initiative will expand access to clean, affordable energy for small businesses and low-income households, reinforcing our commitment to invest in tax equity within under-served market segments,” said Bryen Alperin, managing director at Foss & Company.

CohnReznick Capital was Pivot’s financial advisor on the transaction. Stoel Rives was counsel to the company. Milbank represented SVB while Winthrop & Weinstine represented Foss.

The financing is Pivot’s second project development portfolio to be built, owned, and operated since the company’s June 2021 acquisition by Energy Capital Partners (ECP).

Safe asset class

Silicon Valley Bank, the 16^th largest U.S. commercial bank, was shuttered on March 9, 2023 and placed into receivership by the FDIC. After parent company SVB Financial filed for bankruptcy on March 17, First Citizens Bank entered an agreement on March 27 to acquire Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, effectively resuming the corporate debt financing platform of the bank.

SVB extended $56 billion of venture capital financing to climate-technology focused companies in 2021. Several solar development executives told pv magazine USA for the April print edition of pv magazine that the bank’s demise was not expected to create widespread challenges to development clients in the community and commercial and industrial (C&I) solar market, as well as utility scale solar companies.

“The biggest threat to the pace of project development is definitely not available capital, it’s the significant and ever-increasing pushback on project siting and land use at the local level,” said Mark Richardson, chief executive officer of U.S. Light Energy, a community solar developer in upstate New York, told pv magazine USA. “We are not even close to operating at full speed, because of local opposition, not because of a lack of financing,” he said.

(Read more: “Solar and the SVB banking crisis“)

Hawaiian solar-plus-storage facility offers jobs, educational opportunities  Clearway Energy’s second solar farm on Kamehameha Schools’ land will expand 10-year internship program and clean energy education opportunities for Hawaii students.  

50 states of solar incentives: North Dakota  Solar hasn’t yet taken hold in North Dakota, a state that relies more on wind power when it comes to renewable energy adoption.

U.S. scientists improve photoresponsivity in solar perovskite by 250% Researchers led by the University of Rochester claim to have increased the photoresponsivity of a lead-halide perovskite for solar cell applications by 250%. They created a perovskite film with a plasmonic substrate made of hyperbolic metamaterial and characterized it with transition dipole orientation.

Isolated cell battery technology project unveiled at N.Y. Power Authority office Cadenza’s SuperCell is produced with funding assistance from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. The battery technology prevents a ‘thermal runaway,’ or an incident creating overheating or fire when a singular cell consumes the whole battery.

Over 25 GW of solar is actively being constructed in the U.S.  The capacity joins the existing 107 GW of solar on the U.S. grid, signaling that the energy transition is well underway.

The outstanding success of solar on new homes in California  Even before the new home solar mandate, California had achieved groundbreaking levels of solar adoption, largely due to policy and incentives, said report by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

Energy storage as a transmission system asset  At a grid-scale energy storage panel at Intersolar North America, industry leaders pointed to international storage project case studies that could be replicated in the U.S.

Intersolar North America takeaways: Residential Storage and utility solar O&M improvements  The event, which is dedicated to advancing the clean energy transition, featured four keynote addresses, 300+ exhibiting companies, the third annual Solar Games installer competition, and valuable distributed energy panel sessions and networking opportunities.

Nextracker to go public  Flex announced that its subsidiary, Nextracker, has publicly filed a registration statement for an initial public offering.

Tigo Energy raises $50 million from L1 Energy  Tigo’s new capital is from L1 Energy, an investment fund of LetterOne (L1), which manages $6 billion in energy investments worldwide.

Utilities move ahead with Hawaii’s first two community solar and storage projects on Moloka’i  The Moloka’i Island projects have combined output of 2.45 MW community solar and 11.1 MWh storage systems.

LG Energy Solution and Hanwha Group partner on battery development  The South Korean partners will invest in ESS-exclusive battery production lines in the U.S. and develop technologies for ESS battery solutions.

FREYR Battery signs 10 GWh plus battery agreement  The non-binding agreement with Impact Clean Power covers batteries produced through 2030 and may be worth $1.8 billion.

Fossil fuels already peaked, growth in renewables exponential  The Rocky Mountain Institute said global demand for fossil fuels peaked in 2019, and renewables are occupying that demand due to low costs and shifts in global capital.

Catalyzing solar in the US: a manufacturer’s perspective  The Inflation Reduction Act, if signed into law, will provide important incentives that we expect will catalyze significant investment in US solar manufacturing, facilitate the creation of a stable domestic solar supply chain, and allow the US to aggressively pursue the decarbonization of its economy with less reliance on imported solar products.

People on the Move: Vertech, Fluence, Nikola and more  Job moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities, and energy transition finance.

FranklinWH announces additional financing for its home energy storage solution Mosaic and GoodLeap add FranklinWH to their approved battery vendor lists.

Quanex releases solar panel sealant for improved durability  The sealant helps delay power loss over a module’s lifetime and extends useful life by locking out moisture.

Generac AC Coupling for PWRcell solar plus battery storage systems  With a new firmware update, Generac PWRcell battery storage products can accept up to 7.6 kW of AC power generated by third-party PV inverters.

Designing for 100% renewables with real-time retail pricing could yield benefits of 9% or more  Including real-time pricing of retail electricity in the design of a high-renewables system would “markedly” lower the system’s cost, researchers found, in an analysis for the island of Oahu, Hawaii. For continent-scale systems as well, they said the resulting demand-side flexibility is likely substantial.

Designing a 100% renewable grid for the island of Oahu, Hawaii with real-time pricing of retail electricity would yield combined consumer and producer benefits of 9% or more than the same grid with flat rates, says a white paper by researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.

California is now pursuing demand flexibility through real-time pricing, also known as dynamic pricing, in a regulatory proceeding.

The Oahu study modeled scenarios in which the optimized system is built at one point in time, while allowing pre-existing assets to be retained. The results showed how much renewable capacity would be selected in an optimized system designed with flat prices versus one with real-time pricing.

The study jointly solved for investment and real-time operations with reserves, either with or without real-time pricing, using the open-source Switch optimization model. “To our knowledge,” the authors say, “such dynamic equilibrium models have not been solved in the economics or engineering literature.”

The study assumed that electricity consumption would change by 0.1% with each 1% change in the real-time retail price. As electricity prices fell, consumption would increase, and as prices rose, consumption would decrease. They modeled the overall 0.1% “elasticity” value by assuming higher elasticities for commercial air conditioning using ice storage, commercial smart water heating, and municipal water pumping, and elasticities of zero for other uses.

The authors compared scenario outputs to calculate the increase in social benefits from using real-time pricing, defining social benefits as the sum of “consumer surplus” and “producer surplus”—two concepts from economics.

For two scenarios based on a Hawaiian Electric Company forecast of 2045 costs for renewables and storage, the increase in social benefits from real-time pricing in a 100% renewable system was higher (14%) when assuming commercial customers widely participated in real-time pricing, deploying thermal storage and automated demand-response systems, with zero participation by residential customers. When assuming less participation by commercial customers, the social benefit increase from real-time pricing was lower (9%). Commercial customers comprise over 70% of Oahu’s demand, the authors said.

“By some estimates,” the authors said, current renewable energy and battery technology costs already rival the Hawaiian Electric Company cost projections for 2045 that they used in the analysis.

“Conservative” estimates

“We believe the assumptions underlying these estimates are fairly conservative,” the authors said. The benefits of real-time pricing would be “much higher,” they found in a sensitivity analysis, “if we optimistically assume” a high overall demand elasticity of 2, “which is not observed in history but might arise in a future that is more automated, has more price variability, and prevalent free or near-free electricity.”

The authors did not explicitly account for the capital cost of equipment, such as ice or hot water storage and smart controllers, that could enable demand response. They stated that some measure of these costs is implicit in the elasticities, and the estimated gains to customers from real-time pricing provide an upper bound for customer capital costs that would be economic.

While the paper did not disclose the generator investments selected by the model for various scenarios, the authors said that real-time pricing provides efficiency gains by curbing peak demand and thereby reducing investment in rarely used peaking power plants, “and also reducing market power.”

Real-time retail pricing that reflects the “incremental cost and marginal willingness to pay” for electricity represents a “well-known but rarely implemented solution” to efficiently mobilize demand-side resources, said the co-authors, citing research dating back to 2005. Automated smart devices acting on customers’ behalf are already available, “but remain rare, because incentives are limited,” perhaps because “few utilities and regulators are aware of the potential.”

While real-time pricing benefits flexible demand types more than inflexible demand types, the authors said, they concluded after running multiple scenarios that “even inflexible demand types normally benefit from real-time pricing, and in some cases, nearly as much as flexible demand types.” They added that “many if not most customers” probably have both flexible and inflexible demands, and that flexibility will also depend on adoption of smart devices that enable automated response.

Continent-scale implications

Regarding the applicability of their findings beyond island grids like Oahu’s, the authors point to recent research suggesting that shifting of heating and cooling loads with thermal storage “might do more than transmission” as a mechanism for “flattening existing demand variability” across the continental United States.

To facilitate similar studies of additional locations, the authors said they are making their input data and model code publicly available.

The white paper is titled “Real-time pricing and the cost of clean power.”

BayWa r.e. announced it will construct the Waikoloa Solar + Storage Project, an integrated solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage system owned and operated by The AES Corporation (AES) on Hawaiʻi Island. Local utility, Hawaii Electric Company signed a 25-year power purchase agreement for the energy produced from the project.

The 30 MW (AC)/43 MW (DC) solar and 30 MW/120 MWh storage project will be built on approximately 300 acres of leased land near Waikoloa Village in the South Kohala district of the island. The solar installation will feature single-axis trackers equipped with bifacial solar modules. The associated lithium-ion battery system will safely store energy for use at peak demand periods, and will also provide grid and ancillary services and enable the grid to accommodate more renewable sources while displacing conventional generation.

“We have completed several successful solar and storage projects in Hawai’i,” said Todd Lindstrom, chief operating officer at BayWa r.e. Power Solutions LLC. “We’re excited to support Hawaiʻi’s renewable energy leadership in the U.S. and about the growing relationships we have with the local community. We look forward to bringing more renewable energy solutions to the island as we grow.”

The project is expected to be completed late in 2022. Once complete it will produce enough electricity to power 13,600 households, contributing more than 7% of Hawaiʻi Island’s annual energy needs and result in the equivalent of total avoided fuel consumption of more than 511,000 barrels of oil over its 25-year lifetime.

Over the course of the project, 200 jobs will be created, and the project is expected to generate a total economic output of an estimated $47 million toward Hawaiʻi’s economy.

The State of Hawaii has a goal of producing 100% renewable energy by 2045, an effort to reduce reliance on expensive, imported fossil fuels. The state is rapidly increasing its solar energy installations, as it has gone from a ranking of 31^st in the country last year to 16^th this year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Hawaii is currently receiving 17.68% of its electricity from solar with 1,477 MW installed as of Q1 of this year.

States that require smart inverters for new rooftop solar can enable more rooftop installations, because smart inverters can stabilize voltage on a distribution circuit. And because smart inverters can receive communications, an aggregation of distributed storage can serve as a virtual power plant, injecting power to the grid when needed.

A handful of states already require new distributed resource installations to use smart inverters that meet a standard known as IEEE 1547-2018, once devices meeting the standard become available, and more are evaluating such a requirement. The SunSpec Alliance expects that more than 30 states will set smart inverter requirements by April 2023, based on an examination of state regulatory dockets from the past year, said SunSpec Alliance Chair Tom Tansy in an email.

Most smart inverter manufacturers will be able to provide smart inverters to project developers and distributors sometime between March and August 2023, according to an analysis from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) authored by IREC Chief Regulatory Engineer Brian Lydic.

That’s of special interest in states where a smart inverter requirement is expected to take effect once smart inverters meeting the IEEE 1547-2018 standard become commercially available, such as Maryland, Washington, D.C., New York and Massachusetts, as noted in IREC’s analysis. (Hawaii and California already require smart inverters that meet earlier state standards, and are shifting to the IEEE 1547-2018 standard.)

IREC developed the timeline largely based on the time required to test all manufacturers’ inverters and certify them as meeting Underwriters Laboratories standard UL 1741 SB, to verify compliance with the IEEE 1547-2018 standard.

IREC considered 155 representative smart inverter models to be tested, across 30 inverter manufacturers, with each representative model representing a “family” consisting of multiple models with different power outputs.

Based on survey responses from manufacturers and nationally recognized testing laboratories, IREC determined that the likely duration of each test for a single inverter family could range from 9-12 weeks. At a 9-week average test duration, testing labs could test 85% of inverter families within 54 weeks, while a 12-week average test duration would mean testing would take 72 weeks.

After testing, 16 more weeks would be needed for a manufacturer to produce and ship the first inverters to project developers and distributors, IREC estimated.

IREC assumed that testing began in November 2021, or about a month after the latest UL 1741 SB standard was issued. Based on that testing start date, IREC estimated that 85% of manufacturers would be delivering smart inverters by the timeframe of March through August, 2023.

IREC’s analysis used industry surveys and a database of smart inverters available from the California Energy Commission (CEC). IREC expects that the database, which can be downloaded to show a data column for UL 1741 SB certification, “should provide good data on the number of certified models” as the CEC updates the list based on information provided by manufacturers.

Wärtsilä has come to terms with Clearway Energy Group on a contract that will see it supply Clearway with a 500 MW/2 GWh portfolio of energy storage systems.

The storage systems will be used across a series of solar and storage projects that Cearway is developing in California and Hawaii. The five-project portfolio includes 75 MWac/300 MWh located in Hawaii and 415 MW/1.7 GW in California.

In Hawaii, Clearway is developing the Mililani I Solar and Waiawa Solar Power facilities on the Island of Oahu and represent Wärtsilä’s first large-scale energy storage systems in the state. The addition of energy storage will help Clearway Energy Group ensure reliable delivery of sustainable energy and contribute to Hawaii’s goal of reaching 100% renewable energy generation by 2045. The orders for Mililani I Solar and Waiawa Solar Power were booked to Wärtsilä order intake in the first quarter of 2021, and construction is expected to finalize in 2022.

In California, 482 MW of solar and 275 MW/1.1 GWh of energy storage are being split across the Daggett 2 and Daggett 3 projects, which are being developed in San Bernardino, California, adjacent to the site of a retired coal and natural gas plant. The storage systems will deliver renewable energy during increasingly volatile peak periods and help the state reach its goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045. The order for Daggett 3 was booked to Wärtsilä order intake in third quarter of 2021, and the order for Daggett 2 was booked in fourth quarter of 2021. Construction has commenced on both projects with expected completion dates in 2023.

In addition to the Daggett projects, Wärtsilä is also supplying a 147 MW/588 MWh energy storage system that will be connected to the operating 192 MWac Rosamond Central solar facility in Kern County, California. The energy storage system will increase the effectiveness of the solar facility by performing ancillary services, primarily solar shifting, for the California Independent System Operator. The order was booked to Wärtsilä order intake in July 2022 and construction is expected to be completed in December 2023.

Each facility will include Wärtsilä’s GridSolv Quantum, a fully integrated, modular and compact energy storage system, as well as the GEMS Digital Energy Platform, Wärtsilä’s energy management platform for power system optimisation. All five projects will also include long-term service agreements with Wärtsilä, which includes capacity guarantees and maintenance for the lifecycle of the energy storage systems.

After a suppressed first quarter, the US solar market is buoyed by tariff suspension The Wood Mackenzie/SEIA US Solar Market Insight Q1 report finds that the two-year suspension on new solar tariffs is just a start. Passage of further clean energy legislation could boost US solar installations 66% in the next decade.

New US-made residential LFP battery, inverter, and monitoring system  Briggs & Stratton launched the SimpliPHI energy storage system with lithium-ferro-phosphate chemistry.

Holistic solar modeling predicts even lower future pricing  Government researchers have refined their learning curve calculations and quantified how focusing on CAPEX alone can underestimate declines in project costs.

ACORE outlines reduction in solar investment and development if tariffs persist  The US attracted $228.3 billion in renewable energy, grid-enabling technology and transmission for renewable integration investment since the launch of ACORE’s $1 Trillion campaign in 2018.

Westbridge Energy announces 250 MW solar and storage project in Alberta  The project’s announcement now brings Westbridge’s total solar development pipeline to 985 MW, with an additional 300 MW of battery storage capacity alongside.

Enphase has shipped 43.4 TWh of solar microinverters to date  The company highlighted its accomplishments in its 2021 environmental, social, and governance report. Plus, financial analysis from ROTH Capital Partners.

Enervenue to supply 420 MWh of metal-hydrogen batteries to Puerto Rico  The batteries will be used to add resiliency to the island’s industrial sector, which has suffered outages and inconsistencies in the years since Hurricane Maria.

As the nation’s power grid electricity generation project queues continue to grow, its composition is evolving. Solar and batteries are beginning to dominate the nation’s energy future.

The US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Electricity Markets and Policy group (EMP) has released their annual power grid queue update. The nation’s queue holds over 1 TWac of generation capacity. The new capacity added to the queue this year exceeds 600 GWac and comes from more than 3,000 unique projects.

Solar photovoltaics in the queue totals 676 GWac/~845 GWdc of capacity at the end of 2021. 85% of the new capacity came from solar plus energy storage facilities. Solar coupled with energy storage now totals more than 285 GWac of capacity in the queue.

Essentially, the utility scale California solar power market is now a solar-plus-storage market. In total, there is more than 400 GW of energy storage capacity in the queue.

The EMP team notes that the number of hours of energy storage is not available. This author estimates that the average battery has at least two and a half hours of storage capacity, which would put the total hours of capacity beyond one terawatt hour.

80% of the total solar capacity is scheduled to come online before the end of 2024; however, only 13% of all solar projects have a signed interconnection agreement. The report points out that in some markets, interconnection is secured before a project finds an off taker. In these markets, some projects that get approved for interconnection do not get built.

This point is brought home when the full sample is shared and we see that almost three times as many projects are withdrawn than are operational:

• 8,133 “active” projects
• 12,585 “withdrawn” projects
• 3,439 “operational” projects
• 229 “suspended” projects

The completion rate of solar, across all regions, is 16% — lower than the national average.

And if we’re doing analogies, the proof is in PJM’s pudding — the grid management group states that they are overwhelmed with solar power and wind applications, and that they propose to shut down all new interconnection applications for the next two years as they reassess their processes.

From 2015 through 2021, the report sees that the time it takes to get from from submission, to interconnection, to approval for interconnecting has increased sharply to greater then 3 years — except in Texas’ ERCOT territory.

Among all of these challenges, one statistic shines a light. Last year, pv magazine USA reported that the current queue already meets 85% of the estimated 1.1 TWac of capacity needed to clean our power grid. EMP’s report, released this year, confirms that number.

Additionally, the volume of capacity covered in this document only includes utility scale projects from 85% of national utilities. For instance, the hundreds of megawatts of capacity being deployed in Hawaii, the gigawatts of New York Community distributed solar, and the Massachusetts’ behind the meter market, are not counted.

At a minimum, 6.6 GW of the capacity deployed in 2021 would not have made the list.

Pono Power Coalition, a community group opposed to the Paeahu Solar plant, was recently told by Hawaii’s Supreme Court that it upheld Public Utilities Commission’s approval of a power purchase agreement (PPA) between Maui Electric Co. and Paeahu Solar.

The Coalition opposed Maui Electric’s plans to locate a utility-scale solar power plant near a residential neighborhood and near the massive volcano, Haleakala.

The Coalition hired lawyers for a case that was heard before the Hawaii PUC, and when they lost that case, it was elevated to the state’s Supreme Court. The Supreme Court recently found that the Coalition did not show how the project would exacerbate water runoff or damage native plants and ultimately found that the PUC had properly evaluated allegations of harm and had  “lawfully approved” the utility’s agreement to purchase energy from the Paeahu solar plant.

The 1.5MW Paeahu Solar Project, owned by the Canadian firm Innergex, will consist of multiple zones of ground‐mounted solar PV arrays, a substation, and a 60MWh battery energy storage system. The project will be situated on approximately 200 acres of Ulupalakua Ranch land, in South Maui and is expected to power about 7,300 Maui households with clean, renewable energy.

Just three months ago, another Hawaiian solar project by Innergex was challenged by a community group, but that dispute ended in the group withdrawing its complaint after completion of mediator-led negotiation.

Hawaii has the highest electric prices in the country, and Hawaiian Electricity recently warned that prices may rise 10% in the coming months due to the Ukraine crisis and inflation. The state hopes to turn to renewable energy for relief, and while it is currently receiving just over 17% of its electricity from solar, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, and it has set the ambitious goal of receiving 100% from renewables by 2045.

Enphase Energy, a global leader in microinverters for solar and battery systems, announced it entered an agreement to participate in Swell Energy’s virtual power plant (VPP) program in Hawaii, New York, and California.

Swell’s VPPs aggregate solar and energy storage systems provide savings to customers for sending excess stored solar energy to the grid to be used by their neighbors. Customers in the three states that have Enphase’s IQ Batteries will be able to participate in the program. VPPs offer a variety of services to utilities, including a reduced dependence on fossil fuels and increased grid reliability and stability. By aggregating distributed energy resources, Swell is able to participate in the wholesale market, connecting homeowners to the advantages of the transactive energy market.

“Our partnership with Enphase enables homeowners to interact with the power grid in new ways and maximize the value delivered by their home batteries,” said Suleman Khan, CEO of Swell Energy. “The combined offer puts participating customers in control of their electrons with greater functionality, automation, and value within the transactive grid of the future.”

Enphase’s IQ batteries are lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which the company said provide a long lifecycle and smooth operation due to their thermal stability. The Enphase Power Start technology is integrated with the battery, allowing for a seamless power-on of air conditioners and well-pumps during outages. A single unit of the IQ Battery 10 system comes with integrated microinverters, three 3.36 kWh base battery units, and a battery case. The total capacity is 10.5 kWh, with a round trip of efficiency of 96%.

The battery measures (42.13 in x 26.14 in x 12.56 in), weighs nearly 350 lbs. in total, and can be mounted on a wall. Through an Enphase app, homeowners can monitor charge levels, and the IQ batteries can perform remote software upgrades. The batteries are equipped with a 10 year/ 4000 cycles limited warranty.

Enphase also builds the IQ8 inverter, which has the ability to form a microgrid in the case of an outage, even if no home energy storage is attached.

(Read: “Enphase going Einstein with IQ8 solar power inverters”)

“Together with Swell we share a mission to provide a world-class customer experience and cutting edge, smart technology,” said Dave Ranhoff, chief commercial officer at Enphase Energy. “Swell’s programs make it even more compelling for homeowners to choose Enphase Energy Systems, so they can reliably and efficiently run their lives on clean energy, protect against grid outages, and better manage costs.”

A common obstacle in the siting and construction of solar projects is concern around land use. Certain regions, especially islands, which are limited in land area, can’t afford to trade-off prime agricultural land for solar facilities.

This issue has come to a head in Hawaii’s Oahu, an island particularly constrained in land use with declared goals to double local food production by 2030 and produce 100% of the its electricity with renewable energy by 2045.

In an attempt to create an optimal pathway for achieving both of those goals, Dr. Matthias Fripp, associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, released a white paper outlining what different land use scenarios would mean for the island in terms of land availability, total electric generation costs, and the overall design of the electric system on Oahu.

Fripp’s models are founded on an electricity system planning model called Solar and Wind Energy Integrated with Transmission and Conventional Sources (SWITCH).

The land-use assumptions modeled by SWITCH include more restrictive use of the Land Study Bureau Class B and Class C agricultural lands, and higher slope limits for potential solar PV project sites. Class B and C lands are determined based on the findings of an inventory and evaluation of the state’s land between 1965 and 1972, undertaken by the Land Study Bureau of the University of Hawai‘i. Land is graded anywhere from A to E, with A representing the highest class of productivity and E the lowest, based on a variety of factors.

The analysis revealed that the use of some agricultural lands for solar results in lower costs for Hawaiian Electric Company and its customers, with a couple of scenarios achieving the protection of O‘ahu’s most productive agricultural lands with negligible impact to customers’ electricity costs.

Potentially the most important variable outlined in the different scenarios regards the slope of land that PV can reasonably be constructed on.

When all Class B and C lands with <15% slope are made available for solar development, SWITCH estimates roughly 51% of Class B agricultural lands would likely be selected, while around 16% of Class C agricultural lands would likely be selected, though this scenario would likely face pushback from farmers and agricultural advocates.

Upping the slope to <20% while still keeping all Class B and C lands open for development would likely result in 49% of Class B agricultural selected and roughly 15% of Class C agricultural chosen.

The study found that if developers are willing to construct projects on higher-sloped lands, regardless of the agricultural land-class limit, the result is a lower-cost resource plan for both utility and consumer. This is true despite potential increases in individual solar project development costs.

The model shows these increases in development costs as manageable, with the average cost per kWh rising just 0.6 cents when the slope of lands considered rises from <15% to <20%.

The total lowest-cost energy resource plan is achieved when there is no limitation on the use of Class B and C agricultural lands, and solar developers are willing to build on sites with up to 20% slope, while restrictive limits of the use of Class B and C agricultural lands would require the island to quickly transition to other renewable resources, like offshore wind and biofuels, all of which are currently more expensive to develop than PV.

Innergex’s Kahana Solar has gained Hawaiian Public Utility Commission approval after the West Maui Preservation Association withdrew its complaint, seemingly ending a year with thousands of pages of filings and local complaints. A mediator led negotiation defined the financial benefits for the community.

Kahana Solar has agreed to deliver a legally enforceable, fixed commitment fund to benefit the local community totaling $1,375,000 over 25 years. The agreement states that Kahana cannot review which organizations receive money for the first five years. After that period, it  can give feedback and verify aligned missions.

The groups also agreed that Kahana would give preference to hiring qualified laborers from West Maui, Maui County, and the State of Hawaii, in that order, for construction and operations/maintenance employment, before hiring non-resident laborers. Additionally, at least 80% of non-supervisory construction and operations workers’ hours must be paid at prevailing wages.

Innergex said in its filings it is common for it to offer 1% of a project’s revenue to the local community.

The solar power facility signed a 25-year fixed price agreement to sell its electricity at roughly 8.9¢/kWh. The retail price of electricity on the Hawaiian Island is around 35¢/kWh. The facility will export an estimated 74,621 MWh in its first year of operation. The Public Utility Commission said the maximum revenue paid to the facility will be $6,677,000 per year.

The 20 MWac site will contain around 90,000 solar modules at 400 watts of greater, – totaling 36 MWdc, according to a 2019 site plan. The module count could fall as module wattage has increased in the past two years.

As is now required for all utility solar power plants in Hawaii, the facility will also contain an energy storage facility equal to the peak solar power grid output, plus four hours of storage, equal to 20 MW/80 MWh.

With an annual output of 74,000 MWh and a solar module volume of 36 MWdc, the facility will have a power production ratio of just over 2.0 and a DC to AC, solar panel to inverter capacity, ratio of 1.8 to 1.

Energy storage developer Plus Power said it closed a credit facility for its 185 MW/565 MWh Kapolei Energy Storage (KES) project, which is under contract with Hawaiian Electric.

Financing includes $188 million in non-recourse construction debt and $31 million in letters of credit. Mizuho Securities USA LLC and KeyBank led the financing, and were joined by Silicon Valley Bank and CoBank.

Plus Power said the financing serves as a “strong signal” of capital market support for standalone energy storage projects.

KES received approval from the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission in May, and construction is slated to start later this year.

The lithium-ion battery project will be located on eight acres in an industrial area, where it will interconnect with a Hawaiian Electric substation. The project will provide load shifting and fast-frequency response services to Hawaiian Electric, enhancing grid reliability and accelerating the integration of renewable energy. The project is planned to enter service in June 2022 in advance of the closing three months later of the island’s last coal-fired power plant, which is owned by AES.

The KES project is intended to have a lifespan of at least 20 years. The original battery systems are anticipated to operate for at least 15 years. As the original system degrades over time, plans call for KES to be augmented with supplemental battery storage units. At the end of the project’s operating life, KES is required to remove the battery system and restore the land to pre-existing conditions. Plans call for the system to be shipped off-island for recycling and salvage.

Utility regulators last spring backed off of several conditions they earlier had imposed on the energy storage project. Regulators had imposed operational and financial conditions that drew objections from Hawaiian Electric, which said that without changes it would have been “nearly impossible” for the project to move forward.

In their modified decision, regulators said they had voiced concerns about the BESS on several occasions, particularly when it came to the utility’s plans to charge the battery with fossil-fueled generation in both the short- and long-term, as well as the utility’s ability to deliver benefits to its customers.

Black & Veatch won a contract from AES Clean Energy to serve as owner’s engineer for the pumped storage and hydropower portion of the West Kaua‘i Energy Project, which will serve more than 70,000 residents on the Hawaiian island.

The West Kaua‘i Energy Project (WKEP) is an integrated renewable energy and irrigation project that includes energy production with pumped storage hydropower, conventional hydropower, solar photovoltaic generation and battery energy storage. WKEP is part of the state’s decarbonization plans as it is intended to move Kaua‘i to more than 80% renewable generation and meet up to 25% of the island’s energy needs.

When operational, the solar array will contribute up to 35 MW to the grid and store up to 240 MWh for dispatch during evening peak demand. The hydro resources are expected to produce 24 MW on average daily, which includes 12 hours of storage for overnight use.

Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative has completed two solar-plus-storage renewable projects in partnership with AES: a 20 MW facility in Lāwa‘i and a 14 MW facility at the Pacific Missile Range Facility. AES has more than 200 MW of solar, solar + storage, and wind resources in operation or under development across Hawaii.

The latest storage project will pump water from the lower Mānā Reservoir to the upper Pu‘u ‘Ōpae Reservoir using energy production from the solar PV portion of the project. During the evening peak, nighttime, and morning peak hours (as well as during periods of rainy or cloudy weather), water will be sent back to the lower reservoir via gravity penstock from Pu‘u ‘Ōpae, through the Mānā Powerhouse and its 20 MW Pelton turbine to generate power for the grid.

Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative signed agreements with AES to develop, build, and operate the cooperative’s solar pumped storage hydro project and a power purchase agreement (PPA) was filed with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission in late 2020.

As owner’s engineer, Black & Veatch will help AES develop technical design criteria for hydro power and hydraulic structures of the project, providing design and constructability reviews, reviewing technical and procurement specifications, performing factory inspections, and witnessing acceptance testing as well as providing construction and commissioning support and closing out the project.

In the pumped storage plant, the pumps and turbine generator are separate and designed to store enough energy in the Pu‘u ‘Ōpae Reservoir to allow the Mānā Powerhouse to run for 12 hours during the peak demand hours.

Pu‘u ‘Ōpae Reservoir is the middle reservoir in a series of three. Pu‘u Lua Reservoir is used to store water as a buffer to provide a steady supply of water for the system and offers recreational fishing access for residents. Water is also delivered to the Pu‘u ‘Ōpae Reservoir through a 4 MW Pelton turbine from the Pu‘u Moe divide diversion structure between Pu‘u Lua and Pu‘u ‘Ōpae.

ENGIE North America has scrapped a 60 MWac solar plus 240 MWh battery storage facility that it was awarded by Hawaiian Electric Co. in May 2020.

ENGIE North America blamed “elevated interconnection costs coupled with global supply chain and production issues, as well as tariffs and trade disputes” affecting the photovoltaic solar industry.

NHOA (formerly Electro Power Systems) was to supply the battery storage system for the Puako project and act as a system integrator as subcontractor to ENGIE.

In announcing the cancellation, NHOA said it was “obviously disappointed” with ENGIE’s decision, and said that production issues mentioned by ENGIE were “in no way related to NHOA’s technology nor scope of supply.”

The now canceled project was seleted as part of Hawaiian Electric’s renewable energy procurement that included 460 MW of solar power and nearly 3 GWh of energy storage on Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii.

Through the award, Oahu was slated to add eight new solar-plus-storage projects and one stand-alone storage project totaling 287 MW of PV and 1.8 GWh of storage.

On Maui Island, three solar-plus-storage projects and one standalone project were awarded, totaling 100 MW of generation and 560 MWh of storage capacity.

And on Hawaii, two solar-plus-storage projects and a stand-alone storage project were awarded. Projects included the ENGIE venture as well as a Hawaiian Electric project to self-build a 12-MW/12-MWh system, and a bid by EDF Renewables North America for a 60 MW/240 MWh PV and battery system.

Thanks to Hawaii’s smart inverter settings, most customers can “instantly interconnect” new solar despite high levels of solar already on distribution circuits. That’s according to Steven Rymsha, policy director for grid solutions at Sunrun.

He said that other states considering smart inverters “need to understand what Hawaii has achieved” through smart inverter functions, in terms of increased hosting capacity, deferral of new infrastructure, and consumer protection.

“People still don’t believe the amount of saturation” of distributed solar in Hawaii, Rymsha said in an interview. He said that distributed solar represents about 18% of generation in Hawaiian Electric’s service area, or around half of the utility’s renewable generation.

The Hawaii Solar Energy Association, utility Hawaiian Electric, and others have proposed blanket activation of volt-watt alongside volt-var, combined with consumer protection measures for rare cases where volt-watt causes excessive curtailment. California already uses both volt-var and volt-watt.

Evaluations underway

Twelve states besides Hawaii and California are evaluating smart inverter standards: Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland, New York, and Massachusetts, plus Washington, D.C.

Following a 10-year career with Hawaii utilities and now working on state policy for Sunrun, Rymsha said that when a state begins discussing smart inverter settings, utilities say “‘We can’t have one common setting like California and Hawaii, that’s not going to work for us.’ They seem to be stuck in this mode of analyzing.” In one state, he said, the smart inverter discussion has been going on for two years “and we have nothing to show for it.”

Wasted infrastructure

Rymsha said he is concerned about “how much wasted infrastructure” will be built in other states as a result of delays in choosing smart inverter settings. He said he empathized with utility staff with whom he interacts, and said that “everyone’s scrambling for time, everyone’s delayed.” Even so, “they’re imposing requirements on interconnection that just make the processes clunkier, harder, longer.”

Rymsha said that a decade ago, when he worked at Kauai island’s utility, “we were trying to figure out” how smart inverter functions were going to work. Six years ago, when he left Hawaiian Electric, “interconnection was really challenging, as we were just policing thresholds.” Now, he says smart inverters are “working fabulously, they’re working incredibly.”

Solar association leaders in Hawaii and California recently echoed that sentiment, saying that with smart inverters being required for new distributed solar, they no longer hear of limits to new distributed solar due to voltage issues.

The consultancy GridLab has produced a brief report on regulating voltage using smart inverter settings, targeted at a general audience. And the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has published a longer document, with more technical detail, on the same topic.