SB 202 Hawaii Senate · 2025 Regular Session

RELATING TO RENEWABLE ENERGY.

SB 202 requires electric utilities to pay homeowners and businesses with solar panels (customer-generators) for excess electricity they send back to the grid, rather than offering only bill credits. This directly affects residential and small commercial customers who generate renewable energy but consume more power than they produce. The bill mandates that utilities compensate these customers at a fair rate for surplus electricity, improving financial returns for rooftop solar investments. It aims to strengthen incentives for renewable energy adoption by ensuring clear, equitable compensation mechanisms.

Issues: ✓ Energy ✓ Environment

Bill status in committee 1 of 4 stages cleared

Introduction

Jan 2025

Committee Review

Floor Vote

Governor

Introduced Jan 13, 2025 Last action Feb 11, 2025

Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

SB202 → SB202_SD1 · 3 edits

MINOR

The bill was reformatted from a draft document to a Senate committee version, with the primary substantive change being the addition of a new exemption in Section 2(c) that excludes member-owned cooperative electric utilities from the new compensation requirements. The text also shows formatting cleanup and metadata additions typical of legislative tracking systems.

Scope change

The bill's applicability was narrowed by adding an exemption for member-owned cooperative electric utilities, meaning these entities are no longer required to compensate customer-generators for excess electricity credits under this legislation.

ELIGIBILITY

Section 2(c) was added to exempt member-owned cooperative electric utilities from the compensation requirements that apply to other electric utilities.

TECHNICAL

The document was converted from a draft format with page numbers and document identifiers to a standard Senate committee format with metadata headers.

Minor text cleanup and standardization of formatting throughout the document, including removal of draft identifiers and page markers.

Floor votes

How they voted

No floor votes recorded yet.

Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions

Key actions

Committee

Feb 11, 2025

Committee

Reported from EIG (Stand. Com. Rep. No. 213) with recommendation of passage on Second Reading, as amended (SD 1) and referral to CPN.

upper

Feb 4, 2025

Upper · Passed

The committee(s) on EIG recommend(s) that the measure be PASSED, WITH AMENDMENTS. The votes in EIG were as follows: 5 Aye(s): Senator(s) Wakai, Chang, DeCoite, Richards, Fevella; Aye(s) with reservations: none ; 0 No(es): none; and 0 Excused: none.

upper

Jan 31, 2025

Upper · Passed

The committee(s) on EIG has scheduled a public hearing on 02-04-25 3:02PM; Conference Room 016 & Videoconference.

upper

Jan 17, 2025

Committee

Referred to EIG, CPN.

upper

Jan 15, 2025

Introduced

Introduced and passed First Reading.

upper

Jan 13, 2025

Introduced

Pending Introduction.

upper

2 primary · 0 co-sponsors