Public Utilities Commission Chairman Randy Iwase said he is hopeful the hearings held to review NextEra Energy Inc.’s proposed purchase of Hawaiian Electric Industries will end today.
State regulators kicked off a third round of the hearings Monday at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center to review NextEra’s proposed $4.3 billion purchase of Hawaii’s largest electric utility. The sale needs PUC approval to close.
After the close of hearings, the parties will be able to file closing briefs within 30 days, and the PUC will take the entire application under advisement.
At the Monday hearing, lawyers representing NextEra questioned Maui County Managing Director Keith Regan; Rick Reed, representing the Hawaii Solar Energy Association; Mark Duda, president of the Hawaii PV Coalition and principal at Distributed Energy Partners; and Marti Townsend, director of the Hawaii Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Duda said that to ensure that the proposed transaction is in the public interest, the utility’s business model needs to account for a substantial amount of generation from customers’ rooftops.
“We’re opposed to the business model that they (the utilities) are doing the lion share of the generation,” Duda said.
NextEra questioned a blog post from the Sierra Club’s Townsend, titled “Get Heard: Reject NextEra,” which lists 16 reasons readers should reject the sale.
Townsend said the purpose of the blog was to balance out the newspaper, radio and television advertisements in which NextEra touts the benefits of the sale.
“Our purpose is to help balance the amount of media being put out by the applicants,” Townsend said. “None of the benefits we were aware of were worth mentioning.”
Regan addressed a recent report Maui County released that evaluated different electrical service options for the county such as cooperatives, municipalities and investor-owned utilities.
Maui is one of three HEI service areas, and the second, after Hawaii island, to look at possibly stepping out from underneath the HEI umbrella.
Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa has been outspoken in his opposition to the sale since April.
The December report, put together by Oklahoma-based consulting firm Guernsey, recommended that Maui seek an independent third party to oversee the electric grid and energy market. Regan said it was necessary to explore other options of utility ownership.
“I think it is the County of Maui’s responsibility to explore all options,” Regan said. “We are going to continue to explore and do more analysis as to what our options are.”
NextEra and HEI announced in December 2014 that the Florida-based energy company plans to buy HEI. The contract between the two companies ends 18 months after the announcement. Both NextEra and HEI can walk away June 3 when the contract ends. NextEra has to pay a $90 million termination fee if the company fails to obtain regulatory approval, according to the contract.
