Hawaii utility wants to pay households to share clean energy

Something unusual is happening in Hawaii: An electric utility and rooftop solar installers have agreed on a proposal to reward households for sharing clean energy with the grid at useful times. In many places around the U.S., utilities treat rooftop solar as an obstacle. They say it shifts grid-maintenance costs from customers who have solar to those who don’t, or causes headaches for their system planning and operations. Utilities in California are currently urging regulators to levy a monthly fee on anyone who adds rooftop solar, regardless of how it operates. But things are playing out differently on Oahu. Hawaii’s most populous island, with a million residents, is struggling to ramp up enough clean energy ahead of shutting down its largest fossil-fueled power plant in September. To that end, the monopoly utility, Hawaiian Electric, teamed up with advocates of customer-owned energy to say households should earn money for using solar and batteries to keep power flowing to the grid. Learn more here: https://bit.ly/3gPa7p7