As the alternative energy industry in Hawai'i grows by great strides each year with consumers' mindsets shifting to renewable resources and the Hawai'i Clean Energy Initiative mandating that at least 70 percent of the state's power come from clean energy by 2030, solar contractors are still held back by outdated energy policy. Consumers are willing to purchase PV for their homes, but imposed limits on installed PV systems per island capita are stifling the demand. For Brad Albert, owner of Rising Sun Solar Electric, installing solar on rooftops isn't enough to curtail Hawai'i's energy quagmire. Brad has made it his life's work to affect change in the industry by attacking the problem at its source, in the legislature. As president of the Hawai'i PV Coalition, a non-profit organization working to promote solar electricity and energy independence for the state of Hawai'i through education and outreach, his goals are to get the pubic educated and involved in local energy policy and see to it that PV is accessible and affordable throughout the islands.

What got you involved in Hawai'i's energy policy in addition to being a solar contractor?
If you do something like solar, you start to see the big picture and solar is just a part of it. Everything is a circle, just like the recycle logo. Once you see that, you're not going to be happy just installing a few solar systems, because ultimately you want more than just the ones you can put in. You have to be part of your community and part of that is participating in the political process. Furthermore, our industry is a policy driven. Our business will either increase or I'll be laying people off based on what happens with national and state level policy. So it only makes sense, in terms of a self-sustaining interest, to be involved as well. If we're successful as an industry that means more people are getting solar power and that's helping the economy. In the renewable energy economy, prosperity is only going to lead to more prosperity versus now, under the carbon-based energy generation model of oil and coal, where we're taking resources that are destroying other resources, which eventually is going to really hurt our economy.

How does the Hawai'i PV Coalition fit into shaping policy?
There's an industry component and there's an individual member component to it. People that get PV systems should become part of the PV Coalition because now they're part of that family. People who want to learn more about solar should also become part of it and also people in the industry that want to promote solar. We're promoting the renewable energy and energy conservation agenda in the state, but specifically PV, because there's no limit to solar hot water systems or light bulbs in your house, but there is a limit for PV. There are also technical debates going on like is it better to have centralized renewable power, like a big wind farm, or is it better to have distributed generation, like PV systems on your house. And the question is not whether it's going to be one or the other, but what's the blend and what's better for Hawai'i.

The PV Coalition is not the driving force behind creating legislation. Unfortunately, we're understaffed and there's no O'ahu manpower, which it would take to do the legislative piece, but it seems like the Hawai'i Solar Energy Association is handling that. It's like HSEA is throwing the ball to the legislature and we're the fans cheering and saying, catch the ball and run with it and don't drop the ball. But it seems like there's a lot of ball drops. The HSEA has been more of the lobbying branch and the PV Coalition has been more of the public awareness and support effort. But you need both.

With the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative in place, doesn't a cap or limit to the number of installed PV system in Hawai'i seem counterproductive towards that goal?
The cap was made so that the public utilities commission can approve limits for different islands. In Kaua'i, the limit is one percent of peak demand, which means that when the grid is hitting its peak in demand, how every many kilowatts of power that is, one percent of that. Kaua'i is already at one percent, they're done. We are limiting jobs. There are solar installers on Kaua'i that are probably out of business that were doing work a year ago.

On O'ahu, the number is one percent also, but it's a much larger grid and the energy rates are a lot less here, so less people have put in systems, so there's still space available. On Maui and the Big Island, we hit the one percent just in the first quarter of the year, but they raised the limit as of December 26, 2008 to three percent, and we'll be there soon enough. But having a limit is different than setting a goal. So just the fact that there is a limit discourages people and it makes it very difficult for local solar installers. For instance, if I went to a lender and said, hey, our company is growing and we really want to borrow money and we think we can install this many systems next year. Then they say, but what if they don't let you keep going. I don't have an answer for that because it's a possibility. It already happened in Kaua'i.

Who benefits from limiting solar installations? Why are we limiting the number of PV systems? Shouldn't we be saying that if we can get to 40 percent renewable power generation by all these people putting power on their homes, then why should we do anything else?
The utilities push back is that potentially the circuits can't handle what they call "as available" or "intermittent" power on the electrical grid. But there are controls that can go on each individual circuit and there are other ways the grid can be smarter, but that cost has never fully been assessed.

The only thing that I think would be a potential public benefit would be that the utility would say we're limiting it until we can study our grid and make sure it's not going to disrupt our power quality. But they already know they can go to 15% without even trying to think about it. So why is net metering limited to one percent or three percent? And the utility is saying that they're thinking they will change, but nothing has been said or done. Until we have visible policy that is best practices and makes the most sense to get to our goal the quickest, we are not going to be moving there in an efficient manner. People like myself are going to have to spend more time trying to change policy instead of putting in more solar systems.

What changes have you seen over the last five years in your industry?
Literally, when I went to Maui in 2003 there were seven solar systems and we installed the eighth one. We'll probably do eighty this year. The rate of adoption of new technology is faster now than any other point in history.

The solar industry in the U.S. grew by 80 percent just last year. My company in Hawai'i grew exactly that amount. We went from seven employees to fifteen. And we're using more outside services, which is money going into the economy. But there's a lot of guys, electricians and other trades, that are on the bench and don't have work right now. There's just not enough people who want solar systems or who are trained to install them. Work force development is the thing but you can't have the chicken before the egg.

Are you pleased with the progress of people utilizing photovoltaics for home energy needs?
The industry is growing, but I feel like it could be a lot more rapid. I've been doing this for ten years and every year I see more people do it, but also feel like it wasn't enough and there always seems to be a push back from the utility or in the policy. It took an economic crisis of historic proportion to pass the extension of the tax credit. You would think that it's just so obvious that's it's just the right thing to do for the economy and the world. It had been introduced 20 times in 2008 to be passed in both the house and senate, but never passed. They did the right thing for the wrong reasons-only because there was a crisis that had nothing to do with the environmental crisis. And it was almost always a filibuster on party lines with the republicans not voting for it and the democrats for it. It just makes you wonder if this oil-based economy was behind all this, because why wouldn't they want the solar tax credit when it's just a smart policy to have.

What can be done to make PV even more sought after?
The most empowering thing would be to have a program run by the state or county that says this is how you put energy efficient and energy generating devices on your home and we'll spoon feed it to you, which has been happening with solar hot water to a degree, and its been successful. Its just a matter of doing that across the board, but it has to be policy driven, creating a policy that is going to influence massive change instead of incremental or isolated change, and that's what the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative is seeking to do. But what seems to me and the industry perspective is that there wasn't enough public input into the process to define or agree upon what sustainable is. And I think we are all on the same page, but it should be more clear. And further more, what blend of energy do we want. Do we want centralized generation or distributed generation?

With PV it feels to us like instead of saying, everyone should get one of these on their home or business, the utility is accepting of it, but probably not happy about it. The policy from the state is that PV is available, but they're not really advertising it or promoting it. There's no public awareness piece attached to anything that exists. It's supposed to be up to the industry to go out and sell it, but in other places like Berkley, Calif. and Colorado, they came up with a county thing where you get funding by creating a loan that isn't attached to the owner of the house, but attached to the property. In other words, it's part of the property tax. If you sell the house, the loan just carries forward. The loan is 0% and secured because it's with the property tax, so there's no process to get the loan, because if you pay property tax, which everyone who owns a house does, then you get the loan. If you foreclose, the whole thing just passes to the next owner, so it's really clean. This is something that would encourage a lot of people en masse to get PV on their houses.

What are some of the most recent changes in energy policy people should be aware of?
The limit of net metered system, also called distributed generated systems, was limited to 1 percent per island. There was a net metering bill that went through a year ago and the only piece that passed was that each island should be able to choose their limit because each grid is different. Another net metering bill came through this year saying you should be able to keep your net metering contract and rate you were paying if net metering laws change in the future.

Was there energy legislation tucked into the big financial bailout?
If you look at the growth on Maui, the number of PV systems installed in the first quarter of '09 was over three times the number of systems installed in '08. And its 100 percent attributable to a policy change that wasn't made by Obama, it was made by the Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the seven-billion-dollar bailout. To get signatures, they extended the federal tax credit for solar energy and other renewable energies. It's called an ITC and it was going to end at the end of 2008, but they extended it for another eight years and they fixed the language in the bill and that's the important part. A lot of bills can be labeled with a name and have a good intention, but then the devil is in the details and if they don't get the legislation right then you don't get the result that you were thinking you could get. So they fixed the tax credit to allow more people to take it.

Before, in 2008 and going back, you were limited to $2,000 for a PV system and it was supposed to be a 30 percent federal tax credit. If you spent more than $6,000 you were maxing out that credit, you were never getting the full 30 percent. The same thing is true on the state side; on the residential side you were limited to $5,000. So now the feds said there's no more limit, it's the whole 30 percent for the next eight years if you invest in renewable energy, solar specifically. If you're in a specific tax category, which most people who can afford to invest are in, called alternative minimum tax, you can't lower that alternative minimum floor. But now they're saying you can take this solar tax credit and lower your amt tax. This has never been done, its historic in tax law.

There's a bill right now, SB 464, to make the tax credit refundable. That's good because a lot of people don't have state tax liability, or they have very little, so they don't really see a benefit. So between making it unlimited and refundable and what Obama wants to do, which is make the federal one refundable too, if all that happens we'll get another immediate market reaction.

Is the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative a tangible goal in your eyes?
What we have with the HCEI, to use someone else's words, is a pregnant void, because there's all this energy, everyone wants renewable, but there's very little factual data pertaining to upgrading the grid to handle more distributed generation and the economic impacts it will have on the economy. Or if we go the centralized route and limit the number of these systems, which is essentially where we are at now, then how quickly is that power going to be able to come on line, what is the cost to the rate payers and what's going to be the effect on Hawai'i's economy. Is it better to essentially let the utility company put in the power and then everyone buys it, or should everyone be making the power as much as they can and then getting the rest from the utility. It seems like the latter, distributed power generation, will have a bigger positive and much more rapid impact with where the economy is at. The sooner we create this rapid investment in renewable energy in this state, or in the country, the sooner we are going to start pulling up, out of our nosedive in the economy.