County permitting not a breeze for windmill customers

A sleek windmill whirls against a blue sky background in a full-page Kauai Electric Inc. advertisement inside the front cover of the 2007 Hawaiian Telcom Yellow Pages.But residents would be hard-pressed to find these Skystream 3.7 systems in action at homes or businesses on Kaua‘i.
Instead of transforming wind into energy, 14 of the nationally acclaimed, eco-friendly units are collecting dust at a Kapa‘a warehouse. But it is not for lack of interested customers, Kauai Electric President Kevin Hurst said.An unclear county permitting process has snagged residents who want to install the renewable energy systems to lower their electric bills, he said.The units, which vary in height, average 1.8 kilowatts per hour in a breeze blowing eight miles per hour and are about as loud as an air conditioning unit or living room noise, Kauai Electric Vice President Chris Jensen said.“I’m fatigued,” Jensen said in an interview last week. “The county should be working with us, not pushing us away. Their opinions are affecting the lives of thousands.”Jensen, a licensed general contractor with 16 years experience, said the local company holds the state’s largest inventory of Skystream systems and is the only known distributor on island. Kauai Electric’s base price for the units installed is $20,000, he added.The county Planning Department has categorized the windmills asprivate utilities, necessitating a use permit. So far, this step has prevented anyone from lawfully installing the units, according to Jensen.Repeated requests for comment from county Planning Director Ian Costa were unsuccessful.The Skystream systems have a UL listing as an appliance, Jensen said.“It’s not a utility. No one is profiting,” he added.Jensen said he has heard “a lot of people barking, frustrated and grumbling over high energy costs.”The Skystream windmills would help residents “spin the meter backwards,” he said.Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative has given the product its stamp of approval and is also investigating the county hold-up, according to Steve Rimshaw, KIUC’s staff engineer in charge of renewable energy.Hurst noted progress last week after a meeting between Costa and Wailua resident Rob Abrew, who wants to install a 41-foot-tall Skystream system on his agriculturally zoned homestead property.In an Oct. 6 report, a senior county planner noted view plane concerns over the proposed height of the residential wind energy systems.The Garden Island could not confirm at press time the status of Abrew’s permit application.State law exempts from its “public utility” category “any person who controls, operates or manages plants or facilities for the production, transmission or furnishing of power primarily or entirely from non-fossil fuel sources and provides, sells or transmits all of that power, except such power as is used in its own internal operations, directly to a public utility for transmission to the public.”Jensen has drafted a model zoning ordinance designed to regulate small wind energy turbines, such as the Skystream 3.7, but has yet to present it to the county for consideration.His proposed ordinance would permit the units where structures of any sort are allowed but require height, noise and other restrictions clearly set forth in the law.Jensen said clarifying the process to install a home wind energy system would allow Kauai Electric to start installing its windmill inventory and let potential customers, as the company’s advertisement states, see how their electric bills “could be gone with the wind.”