PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

Honolulu's city council passes scaled-back solar bond

The Honolulu City Council passed a budget on June 4 that includes a $7.85 million solar bond. While $3 million has been set aside for energy efficiency, the remainder should be available for more than 700 kW worth of PV projects by the end of 2005, although a portion may be used for solar thermal systems.

Steve Holmes, Honolulu's energy coordinator, says he hopes to announce requests for proposals (RFP) before September. Similar to an RFP being done by the California Power Authority (see PI 6/2004, p.72), the projects would have to pay for themselves through energy savings. Bidders would build, own, operate, and maintain the systems for 20 years with the city agreeing to purchase power contracts at a set rate, says Holmes. Construction could start in April 2005.

Vote Solar, a non-profit group which was behind the successful $100 million solar bond in San Francisco in Nov. 2001 (see PI 12/2001, p. 36), originally had convinced Mayor Jeremy Harris to include $10 million for solar technologies in the city's administrative budget sent to the Council. It contained a potential of $7 million for PV, equal to more than 1 MW of installed capacity. A City Council budget committee scaled the request back to $7.85 million. But, he adds, if the mayor decides to veto the budget for being unbalanced, as required by the city charter, there is still a chance the full $10 million would be reinstated.

Holmes says he is also pursuing »a major deployment« of about 8 MW of PV in Honolulu using private funding that takes advantage of tax credits, green tags, and depreciation financing. He expects the first contract to be signed before the mayor leaves office in November.

In Oct. 2002, Vote Solar tried to get a statewide solar revenue bond equal to 40 MW of installed PV capacity introduced in Hawaii. Unfortunately, says Adam Browning, Vote Solar's director of operations, the initiative was ruled unconstitutional since state law prohibits avoided costs being considered revenue.