SolarIndustryMag.com: Hawaiian Electric Updates Tool To Help With Solar PV Installations

Hawaiian Electric Updates Tool To Help With Solar PV Installations

by SI Staff on Wednesday 06 March 2013

Hawaiian Electric Co. has updated its mapping tool in order to make it easier for customers and contractors to make informed decisions about installing new solar photovoltaic systems.

The updates to the company's Oahu mapping tool include the following:

Customers and contractors can now search for a specific street number and name, instead of just street names. This new capability makes it possible to pinpoint the circuit status of a specific home or business.
Data is now updated nightly on weekdays, making the information timely.
Map colors show more precisely how much customer-sited electric generation of any kind is on a circuit.
The tool now shows how much circuit capacity for distributed generation remains before reaching a 15% checkpoint that may indicate the need for further study before more distributed generation can be added to that circuit.

When large amounts of PV and any form of customer-sited distributed generation (DG) are already installed on an electric circuit, Hawaiian Electric needs to consider whether adding more DG makes electric service less reliable for all customers on that circuit, whether they have DG or not.

On Oahu, small solar PV systems of 10 kW or less generally do not require additional interconnection studies at this time. However, larger systems may present reliability concerns that require circuit studies and upgrades.

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