This story was produced by Grist and co-published with Honolulu Civil Beat.
Hawaiʻi’s main utility is poised to radically revise how it compensates households for the power their batteries send to the grid, a move critics fear will stunt the potential for using that energy to prevent blackouts and hinder the state’s transition to 100 percent clean energy.
Hawaiian Electric, which serves every island except Kauaʻi, will launch the Bring Your Own Device program on April 1, offering households incentives to deliver power during peak demand. But the compensation is nowhere near what customers who joined an earlier battery program received, and some solar advocates worry it’s so low that people may not enroll at all.
That would be a missed opportunity to help build a modern energy system, said Rocky Mould, executive director of the Hawaiʻi Solar Energy Association. “It’s depriving us of the potential for a really viable grid service program that would benefit all. We should be moving as fast as we can to get off oil.”
