Why condominium owners are outside Hawaii's solar-access law

This is the gap the bill existed to close, and it surprises people.

HRS § 196-7(a) is emphatic: “no person shall be prevented by any covenant, declaration, bylaws, restriction, deed, lease, term, provision, condition, codicil, contract, or similar binding agreement, however worded, from installing a solar energy device on any single-family residential dwelling or townhouse that the person owns.” Contrary provisions are “void and unenforceable.”

Read the scope: single-family residential dwelling or townhouse. An owner of a stacked apartment in a high-rise is not covered by that mandate.

What condominium owners get instead is § 514B-140(c)(1): “The installation of solar energy devices by owners of condominium units shall be allowed upon written consent of the board.” That is a permission from the board, not a right against it. Section 514B-140(c)(2) then routes single-family dwellings and townhouses inside a condominium back to § 196-7.

What boards can do, and already can

§ 514B-140(d)(3) gives the board authority to install, or to lease or license the common elements for the installation of, solar and wind energy devices on the common elements — but not on a limited common element without the consent of the owners for whose use it is reserved.

And such an installation “shall not be deemed to alter, impair, or diminish the common interest, common elements, or easements appurtenant to each unit or to be a structural alteration… provided that the installation does not directly affect any nonconsenting unit owner.” Section 514B-140(e) defines “directly affect” as affecting an owner “specially, personally, and adversely… in a manner not common to the unit owners as a whole.”

That is a genuinely useful power: a board can put solar on the roof without a 67% material-alteration vote, provided no individual owner is specially and adversely affected.

The conditions that come with § 196-7 where it does apply

Worth knowing, because they are the template any future condominium provision will follow:

• Association rules “shall not impose conditions or restrictions that render the device more than twenty-five per cent less efficient or increase the cost of installation, maintenance, and removal of the device by more than fifteen per cent”;
• “No private entity shall assess or charge any homeowner any fees for the placement of any solar energy device”;
• the owner must register the installation within thirty days;
• for placement on a common or limited common element, consent is required — but must be given if the owner agrees in writing to comply with design specifications, engage a licensed contractor, and within fourteen days of approval provide a certificate of insurance naming the association as an additional insured;
• the owner and each successive owner bears damage costs, maintains that insurance, and must remove the device when reasonably necessary for repair or maintenance of the common elements.

Note that § 196-7.5 gives electric-vehicle charging in multi-family dwellings the treatment solar does not: no covenant may prevent installation, restrictions “shall not prohibit the placement or use… altogether,” no placement fees, with the same registration, consent and insurance conditions. So Hawaii has already made this move — for EV charging, in condominiums — and simply has not made it for solar.

What a board can do now

• Decide the portable-device question before an owner asks. Plug-in panels on a lanai are cheap and increasingly common, and “we have no policy” is not a durable answer.
• Write any policy in the § 196-7 idiom — design specification, licensed installation where wiring is involved, certificate of insurance naming the association, registration, removal on request — because that is the template the Legislature keeps reaching for.
• Look at the roof. Section 514B-140(d)(3) may let the board do more, more easily, than an individual owner can.

What to watch

Reintroduction in 2027. Two consecutive unanimous Senate votes and a 7–0 House policy committee vote is not the profile of a bill that lacks support — it is one that has not survived a single committee’s calendar.