Consumer Advocacy – Public Utilities (DCA)

Maui residents and businesses can now sign up for Hawaiian Electric’s Battery Bonus program, which pays a cash incentive to customers with rooftop solar who add energy storage capacity, providing support to the grid as fossil fuel power plants are retired. Battery Bonus pays a one-time cash incentive and monthly bill credits to residential and commercial customers who add energy storage to an existing or new rooftop solar system.

The Maui program is capped at 15 megawatts (MW), although the PUC left open the possibility to increase the cap if additional capacity is needed.

Incentive payments for Maui customers are:

• $850 for each kilowatt (kW) of battery capacity committed. (For example, a 5 kW commitment would yield a $4,250 payment).
• A monthly export credit for Battery Bonus participants who are not part of the company’s Net Energy Metering program. The fixed monthly bill credit is based on the respective retail rate for exporting energy during a two-hour period of the evening peak. The credit is available for three years.
• A $5-per-kW monthly peak capacity payment for the 10-year duration of Battery Bonus.
• Removal of the 5-kW-per-customer size limit for PV systems, as long as the additional solar is not more than twice the battery size.

For more information and updates vist hawaiianelectric.com/batterybonus