Project Summary
Hoʻāhu Energy Cooperative Molokai and Shake Energy Collaborative working together again toward the goal of deploying residential solar and battery storage on Molokai to further decrease energy burden and advance local workforce development. Through group purchasing and collective ownership, this project aims to maximize installation cost savings for participating homes. Further, this project intends to primarily (but not exclusively) serve Molokai’s off-grid community. (Should we say - because they are marginalized as non-utility customers and therefore do not fall under HECO’s, Hawaii Energy, or the PUC’s mandate for support. And as a minority, they are often overlooked by county and state government agencies.)
Collective Ownership:
Hoʻāhu considered multiple ownership options, including:
-
individual ownership by each household (requires household to qualify for a loan or raise the money, and also owe enough taxes to benefit from the tax credits)
-
collective ownership (Hoʻāhu raises funds for the total cost of the first round of installs and recruits a tax equity investor to take the tax credits in exchange for investment capital)
-
lease to own (some hybrid of the above options where the co-op owns all systems initially and the individual households buy them over time)
Out of these options, Hoʻāhu decided to pursue collective ownership for the first round of systems to be able to both raise the money together (putting less burden on individual households) and learn from the operation of each system to be better for future rollout.
Project Size
12-15 household systems of about 2-4 kW PV and about 10 kWh BESS each installed in the first year.
Shake's Role/services
-
Development project management
-
Assist with contractor vetting and onboarding
-
Coordinate necessary planning, engineering analysis, and permitting
-
-
Community co-design facilitation / Engagement & outreach
-
Project financing
-
Cooperative organization advising