Updates: TASC Lawsuits & SunEdison

On Wednesday, April 20, the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals (ICA) dismissed two appeals filed by The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC) contesting the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (PUC) October 12, 2015 decision and order, in Docket No. 2014-0192, Instituting a Proceeding to Investigate Distributed Energy Resources Policies.

CAAP-16-0000075 grants the stipulation for dismissal with prejudice, TASC's appeal on the First Circuit Court's decision in Civil No. 15-1-2025-10.  I covered Judge Gary Chang's ruling in my January 10, 2016 post.

CAAP-16-0000876 grants the stipulation for dismissal with prejudice, TASC's direct appeal to the ICA on the PUC's October 12, 2015 decision and order.

The ICA's dismissal with prejudice means TASC is barred from filing another lawsuit or appeal using the same claims.  Meanwhile, as the 2016 Hawaii State Legislature comes to a close, there are no bills to override the PUC's decision on net-metering, nor was any bill seriously considered.  I guess Bryan Miller must have overestimated the merits of TASC's lawsuit given this quote taken from GreenTech Media article on the October 12 decision and order:

Bryan Miller, senior vice president of policy at Sunrun, criticized the PUC's decision for being wildly out of step with Hawaii's politics.  

“The decision will not stand," he said. "It will be reversed either in the political process or in the courts, but it will not stand one way or the other.” 

On Thursday, April 21, SunEdison finally filed for bankruptcy.  While certain people may want to be bitter about Hawaiian Electric Company canceling the power purchase agreements and its cautious approach concerning DE Shaw's, a creditor, offer to pick-up the projects, I think this article captures the mess that is yet to come:

SunEdison, the largest renewable-energy firm in the world and the bane of Wall Street's existence since July, filed for bankruptcy on Thursday.  So story over, right? One for the books. A massive company with $11 billion in debt and an SEC investigation hanging over its head bites the dust.  Not exactly. SunEdison has creditors, and those creditors are going to want things. They also may want things that SunEdison doesn't want to give them.

That is the beginning of another story. Instead of watching a stock death drop, we may be about to watch a creditor grudge match.