Hawaiian Electric BYOD Plus: the program that replaced Battery Bonus

If you are searching for Hawaiian Electric's Battery Bonus program, start here: you cannot enroll in it.

Hawaiian Electric's own Battery Bonus page opens with the status. "The Battery Bonus program is closed to new participants as of July 1, 2024. As of Sept. 30, 2025, Hawaiian Electric is no longer accepting validation and verification documents for Battery Bonus. Customers who did not meet the deadline are encouraged to reapply under Bring Your Own Device Plus." (Source: Hawaiian Electric, Battery Bonus, read August 6, 2026.)

Battery Bonus is still widely referenced by installers, forum posts, and rebate roundups, which is why people keep looking for it. This page covers what actually replaced it, what the replacement pays, and where the two programs differ enough to change a decision.

Why Battery Bonus closed

The program had a hard megawatt cap, and it filled.

Hawaiian Electric published enrollment against that cap: as of April 1, 2024, Oahu stood at 46.8 MW out of a 40 MW allocation and Maui at 8 MW out of 15 MW. (Source: Hawaiian Electric, Battery Bonus, read August 6, 2026.) Oahu was oversubscribed. The application window closed a few months later.

This is worth internalizing beyond Hawaii. Capped programs are the norm for battery incentives, not the exception, and the gap between "a program exists" and "you can join it" is where most stale incentive advice goes wrong.

What BYOD Plus is

Bring Your Own Device Plus is Hawaiian Electric's current battery incentive program, and its page states directly that it "replaced Battery Bonus." (Source: Hawaiian Electric, Bring Your Own Device Plus, read August 6, 2026. Every BYOD Plus term below comes from that page, read on that date.)

The shape of the deal: you buy a new battery for a rooftop solar system, commit a specific number of kilowatts to the program, and let the battery discharge during a two-hour window you select, every day, for the duration of your participation. Your household load is served first, and the remaining excess is what the program targets.

In exchange you receive an upfront cash incentive based on the kW committed, plus a monthly export credit for the energy sent to Hawaiian Electric.

The published incentive terms

Upfront incentive: $400 per kW committed, with no maximum cap, paid once after contract execution and proportional to the kW committed.

Low-Moderate Income adder: an additional $400 per kW committed, also with no maximum cap. The Public Utilities Commission has defined LMI for BYOD Plus as a household with gross annual income, counting all occupants, below 140 percent of area median income. Hawaiian Electric requires customers to submit and receive confirmation of LMI status before applying through the Customer Interconnection Tool, and states that confirmation is valid for one year from issuance.

Monthly export credit: paid every month for energy drawn from the battery, calculated on an assumed exported amount. How it appears depends on your underlying tariff. Net Energy Metering and NEM Plus customers receive kWh bill credits shown as an increase in kWh exports, labeled "REC KWH" on the bill. Customers on another underlying tariff, such as Customer Grid-Supply or CGS Plus, receive a fixed monthly export credit calculated by a formula in Hawaiian Electric's Rule 33 and shown as a separate "Monthly Export Credit" line item.

Hawaiian Electric's own worked example: a customer with a 15 kWh battery commits 5 kW for 2 hours, for 10 kWh discharged. That earns a one-time incentive of $2,000, and Hawaiian Electric estimates the average monthly export bill credit at about $52, noting that the amount fluctuates with the customer's billing rate and island.

We are quoting that example as the utility published it. It is an illustration, not a quote for your house.

Eligibility and the operational requirements

Minimum commitment: devices must have a minimum committed capacity of at least 1 kW.

Paired with generation: Hawaiian Electric states that currently only battery energy storage systems paired with renewable energy generation are eligible. A standalone battery does not qualify as the program is written today.

New batteries only: BYOD Plus requires a new battery. Hawaiian Electric also states that customers participating in Battery Bonus, the Scheduled Dispatch program, cannot transition into BYOD Plus.

Advanced meters: all participants must be using an advanced meter.

Which rate programs it stacks with: BYOD Plus is available alongside Smart Renewable Energy Export and Smart Renewable Energy Non-Export. It is also available for legacy distributed energy resource programs including Net Energy Metering, NEM Plus, Customer Grid-Supply, Customer Self-Supply, Customer Grid-Supply Plus, and Smart Export, with an important limit: on those legacy programs, while storage of any capacity may be added, any additional capacity is limited to up to 1 kW. If you are on a legacy DER agreement, that ceiling is likely the binding constraint on what you can earn, and it should be the first thing you confirm.

Application path: apply online through Hawaiian Electric's Customer Interconnection Tool. The page notes that the tool is still being updated to reflect BYOD Plus and that applicants should select "BYOD" in the meantime. Submission also requires 3 or 7 days of operational data verifying dispatch, and a signed W9 form, signed by the account holder if they own the system or by an authorized signatory of the leasing company if a leasing company owns it.

The term length, and an inconsistency worth knowing about

Hawaiian Electric's BYOD Plus page states in its agreement section that "A customer must participate in their agreement for 5 years," that early termination requires paying back the upfront incentive at a prorated amount, and that "The BYOD Plus program is approved for 5 years."

The withdrawal section of the same page describes ending participation "before the 10-year commitment" with 60 days written notice and prorated repayment. Ten years is the Battery Bonus commitment length, and that language appears to have carried over.

We are not going to guess which governs. Confirm the commitment length in your own executed agreement before you sign, and ask Hawaiian Electric directly if the page is ambiguous when you read it. On a program with a prorated clawback of the upfront check, the term is not a detail.

BYOD Plus versus Battery Bonus, for people who are comparing

This comparison matters only because so many people arrive expecting Battery Bonus terms. Battery Bonus is closed; these figures are historical, published on Hawaiian Electric's Battery Bonus page as read on August 6, 2026.

Battery Bonus paid a one-time $850 per kW committed, plus a monthly capacity bill credit of $5 per kW for the ten-year program duration, plus, for non-NEM customers, a monthly export bill credit for the first three years. Its dispatch window was set by Hawaiian Electric between 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. daily, for ten years.

BYOD Plus pays a $400 per kW upfront incentive, doubled to $800 per kW for confirmed LMI households, plus a monthly export credit, and lets the customer choose the two-hour window.

Two honest observations. The headline upfront number is lower than Battery Bonus for a standard customer, and there is no monthly capacity credit in the BYOD Plus terms as published, which was a durable part of the Battery Bonus value. On the other side, BYOD Plus has no published megawatt cap on its page, an LMI adder that can double the upfront payment, and a customer-selected window rather than a utility-assigned one.

Anyone quoting you $850 per kW in 2026 is quoting a closed program. That is the single most useful thing to take from this comparison.

Taxes and who receives the money

Hawaiian Electric requires a signed W9 as part of the BYOD Plus application, and states that if a leasing company owns the system, an authorized signatory for the leasing company signs it and the leasing company is eligible for the upfront incentive.

For Battery Bonus, Hawaiian Electric stated plainly that the one-time check and monthly capacity bill credits are considered income and are taxable, that it provides participants with tax forms, and that it cannot offer tax advice. We did not find an equivalent explicit statement on the BYOD Plus page, so we are not asserting the tax treatment of BYOD Plus incentives. The W9 requirement is a strong signal, and a tax professional is the right person to ask about your situation.

The ownership point deserves emphasis because it repeats across every incentive in this space. If a leasing company owns the battery, the leasing company is the party the incentive is paid to. That is the same ownership logic that governs the surviving federal credit after Section 25D ended, which we cover in the 2026 federal tax credit guide. On a leased system, ask in writing what portion of the upfront incentive is passed through to you and how it appears in your pricing.

What this changes about a Hawaii battery decision

Hawaii has the highest residential electricity rates in the country and a rooftop solar penetration that makes evening peak the whole problem. That is the context for both programs, and it is why a battery in Hawaii tends to pencil out differently than one on the mainland. The Hawaii state report covers the rate and net-metering picture.

What BYOD Plus specifically adds to that decision, and what it does not:

It adds a real upfront cash incentive that scales with committed kW and no published cap, doubled for confirmed LMI households. That is meaningful money against the installed cost of a system you were likely already considering.

It does not add flexibility. A daily two-hour discharge commitment, every day, is a heavier operational obligation than the summer-only, opt-out-anytime demand response programs in New England. Your battery cycles more, which is a real consideration against a warranty measured in cycles or throughput.

And it does not remove the standing rule for every grid-services program: enroll a battery that already justifies itself on backup value and bill savings, then treat the program income as upside. Run your own numbers in the calculator first, and verify every term on this page with Hawaiian Electric before it affects what you buy.