Five programmes, all closed
Hawaii moved off net metering for new customers well over a decade ago, and the succession of replacement programmes is why so much published material about solar here is out of date. Customer Grid-Supply, Customer Grid-Supply Plus, Smart Export, Customer Self-Supply and the Standard Interconnection Agreement are each closed to new enrolment.
Each of those had different export compensation, which is why a savings figure quoted from an older source is not conservative or optimistic so much as simply describing a different contract.
The practical filter is simple. If a quote, calculator or guide uses the phrase net metering about a new Honolulu installation, it has not been updated, and its numbers should not be carried into your own arithmetic.
This is not a reason for pessimism about solar in Honolulu. Oahu residential electricity averaged 40.54 cents per kWh in 2025, so the value of not buying a kilowatt hour is very high regardless of what exporting one is worth.
Export or Non-Export, and the difference is not small
New rooftop projects go onto Smart Renewable Energy. The Export track provides export bill credits, is open to all renewable technologies and carries no project size limit. The Non-Export track also allows all technologies and project sizes, but does not permit export to the grid at all.
On the Non-Export track every kilowatt hour your system produces is either consumed by your household at that moment, stored in a battery for later, or lost. There is no credit for surplus because there is no surplus permitted to leave.
That changes the design brief completely. A Non-Export system is sized around your consumption pattern through the day and around storage capacity, not around annual totals, and a battery moves from being an upgrade to being the mechanism that makes the system work.
So ask which track your project is being designed for before you compare quotes. Two Honolulu quotes at similar prices can be describing genuinely different products, and the savings model behind each will only make sense once you know which track it assumed.
The seven-year clock on older agreements
If you already have solar, or are buying a home that does, there is a transition rule worth knowing. Customers on Customer Grid-Supply Plus and Smart Export move to Smart Renewable Energy Export after seven years in their current programme, with the earliest transitions having begun on October 1, 2024.
Hawaiian Electric performs that switch automatically, so it is not something a homeowner opts into or can overlook their way out of. The date that matters is the original agreement date, not the date anyone remembers the panels going up.
Customer Self-Supply customers are treated differently. They are not required to move, but may elect to, in which case they go onto the non-export track.
If you are buying a house with an existing array in Honolulu, ask for the programme name and the original agreement date in writing during the purchase. Those two facts determine what the system will be worth to you and when that changes, and neither is visible from looking at the roof.
Costing it out at Hawaii electricity prices
The 30 percent federal Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a cash or loan purchase in Honolulu receives no federal tax credit. Section 48E, the commercial credit, survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements, so ask what a provider claims and what portion reaches you in the rate.
The state RETITC under HRS Section 235-12.5 remains, at 35 percent of actual cost capped at $5,000 per system, where a residential photovoltaic system is defined as 5 kW of total output capacity. It is now the primary tax credit for a Hawaii cash buyer rather than a supplement to a federal one.
Hawaiian Electric Bring Your Own Device Plus pays $400 per kW of committed battery capacity with no maximum cap, doubled for low and moderate income households, in exchange for a five-year commitment and a daily export window.
And the largest number is the one that is not an incentive at all: Oahu residential electricity averaged 40.54 cents per kWh in 2025. Ask any installer to rebuild the projection from the RETITC, BYOD+ if a battery is included, the correct Smart Renewable Energy track, and that avoided cost.