An Ocean View community is rallying today to oppose a massive solar energy project in its neighborhood.
An Ocean View community is rallying today to oppose a massive solar energy project in its neighborhood.
Residents of Hawaiian Ocean View Ranchos say plans for about 30,000 solar panels on 26 lots is a bad fit for the subdivision and will cause deforestation, draw copper thieves, and create the need for fences, barbed wire and lights.
Ranchos resident Ann Bosted said the community learned in June that Hawaii Electric Light Co. will be building a substation in the subdivision to handle the electricity. The community was also surprised to learn that the project had “come back to life,” during a two-year hiatus period, and had expanded from 18 lots, Bosted said.
Under the plan, Oahu-based Solar Hub LLC and SPI Solar — a global developer of large scale solar facilities — will develop a patchwork of 2-acre parcels, each with 1,172 panels. Solar Hub filed for permits to build the array in 2012 and contracted to sell the power to HELCO at 23.6 cents per kilowatt hour.
The community will hold a public meeting on the project today at the Ocean View Community Center at 6 p.m.
State Rep. Richard Creagan, D-Naalehu, said laws designating huge swathes of the state as agricultural land — and state provisions for photovoltaic power generation on these lands — weren’t designed to promote massive solar projects in residential areas.
“This community is adamantly against it,” Creagan said. “All of the sudden, this residential area will be lit up. People are concerned it will lower their property values. And it very well might.”
Although project developer Dominic Lopez did not respond to an email and phone call asking for comment, he told Bosted in a July 6 email that the company didn’t plan to start installation of the PV until early 2016. SPI Solar is in discussions with residents on ways to reduce impacts, Lopez said.
The project will impact views and force the cutting of large ohia trees in an area with sparse forests, Bosted maintains.
“Ranchos, a rural community of over 1,000 3-acre lots serviced by sealed roads and power lines, is completely the wrong place for SPI’s solar project,” Bosted said in an email. “Ranchos is for homes, not industry. I am very much in favor of solar power and am very pleased to have 16 American-made solar panels on the roof of our home. … SPI’s solar project is exploiting loopholes in the law by splitting a 52-acre project into 26 parts, and locating each part on 26 residential lots scattered throughout the neighborhood. It is unsafe, unsightly, insecure, economically disastrous, dangerous, harmful and will cause extreme hardship to about 100 families living in the area.”
Residents were questioning the project back in May 2013, when Solar Hub’s CEO Pat Shudak said construction could start within three months. Questioned about the choice of land in a higher portion of the subdivision with more trees and less sunlight than makai areas, Shudak said the company had to go with the lots that were available. More recently, residents have suggested locating the facility on open lands well away from homes.