Homeowners will be able to install solar power systems more easily under a new bill passed Wednesday by the Hawaii County Council.
Currently, installing any residential photovoltaic system on the Big Island requires design review and approval by a licensed electrical engineer, regardless of how small that system is.
By contrast, the counties on Oahu, Maui and Kauai all only require engineers’ approval for residential systems that generate 30 kilowatts or more.
Bill 66, which the council voted unanimously to pass, doesn’t quite bring the Big Island into alignment with other counties, and will require an engineer’s stamp of approval on the designs of any PV system generating 10 kilowatts or more.
“We are on board only up to 10 kilowatts,” Public Works Director Steve Pause told the council Wednesday, explaining that the vast majority — roughly 85%, he estimated in a previous council meeting — of the solar applications submitted to DPW are under the 10-kilowatt threshold.
Pause also said during previous discussions about the bill that the differences in complexity between a 10- and 30-kilowatt PV system are substantial enough that an engineers’ stamp is still warranted for larger systems.
Puna Councilman Matt Kaneali‘i-Kleinfelder, who introduced the bill and previously worked in the solar industry, provided a lengthy explanation during Wednesday’s meeting about the amount of bureaucratic red tape required to get any on-grid solar project off the ground.
That process, he explained, first requires a contract with a utility provider, and then with an electrical contractor who will work through the initial permitting process. Those permits are submitted to the county, which will either approve or deny them.
Upon an approval, the contractor then builds the solar system, which then requires inspections by the county.
If those inspections pass, then the utility provider is notified, and only then is the system connected to the grid and energized.
Under the new bill, at least the initial permitting process will be quicker and cheaper for those PV systems beneath the threshold.
The council also supported an amendment to the bill closing a loophole that might allow people to daisy-chain a series of smaller PV systems together to create a system generating cumulative energy greater than 10 kilowatts.
Solar installers have been supportive of the bill, because it represents a cost savings for them that they can pass on to their customers.
Micah Munetaka, director of government affairs at investment firm Ulupono Initiative, testified Wednesday in favor of the measure, writing that making residential solar more easily adoptable will accelerate the county’s goals to reach 100% renewable energy by 2045.
“There are an estimated 1,512 annual residential projects on Hawaii Island, each of which would benefit from a policy such as this,” Munetaka wrote. “This proposed language increases efficiencies in government processes and paves the way forward for renewable energy adoption.”
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.