A true milestone for a local company specializing in solar technology. Last year, we watched as Hawaii Energy Connection installed a solar display at the University of Hawaii Sustainable Saunders Hall where students are learning about energy efficiency.
Since then, HEC with its solar Kumu Kits, has surged forward in installing residential and commercial solar production units, working with Enphase Microinverters.
"We've discovered in our conversations with them that Hawaii is second only to California, the largest solar market in the country for the roll-out the integration of this revolutionary technology and per capita, Hawaii is number one,” said Steve Godmere from Hawaii Energy Connection.
In fact, Hawaii Energy Connection has installed 300 of the solar electric plants and is responsible for about half such units in the state.
Consumers have rallied to the Enphase method of solar power production.
"Last time we spoke, the Enphase microinverters was a revolutionary new technology that was able to harvest much more electricity from the same modules and it completely changed the residential solar industry,” said Godmere.
Most solar displays are constructed in series, meaning the weakest panel may be the strongest point.
"Enphase came along and said, if we wire our panels in parallel, we can harvest much, much more electricity per panel and have the bonus if monitoring each panel individually,” said Godmere.
The U.H. Saunders Hall experiment has been working extremely well, according to Godmere. "And they're capturing raw data streams now and Enphase is reporting back to them now the raw data and the students now have got spread sheets a mile wide and they're analyzing all of that data in ways that you could never do with a centrally inverted system."
And the future looks bright with regard to solar power and state tax credits.
"They haven't talked about changing or deleting or getting rid of the state tax credits,” said Godmere. “They're very generous, among the most generous in the country."
