Hoku Scientific Inc. said losses widened during the October-to-December quarter as Hawai'i's economic downturn took its toll on photovoltaic system installations.

The Honolulu-based clean-energy technology company reported its net loss widened to $863,000, or 4 cents a share. That compared with a year-earlier quarterly loss of $538,000, or 3 cents a share.

Hoku has been building up its photovoltaic system installation business as it constructs a polysilicon plant in Idaho. The company has been affected by a decline in the economy, which has lowered demand for system installations while causing problems in financing its $390 million Idaho plant.

"Like many companies, we have been affected by the adverse microeconomic conditions over the past quarter," Dustin Shindo, Hoku chairman, president and chief executive officer, said in a press statement.

"However, we have been able to mitigate the long-term impacts through careful planning and conservative cash management."

The company reported revenue fell to $767,000 in the recently completed quarter from $1.27 million a year earlier. Hoku revised downward its revenue expectations for the fiscal year ending in March, saying it now expects about $5 million in total revenue.

Hoku also said it made pro-gress with construction of the Idaho plant and that it was working to mitigate the impact of delayed customer prepayments. It said it may shift its planned demonstration project at the site to later this year, along with shifting its first commercial shipments into the second half of the year.

Shindo said the revised schedule will still allow Hoku to meet delivery obligations. It said it is working to working to resolve $43 million of late prepayments from Wealthy Rise International Ltd. and was prepared to sell capacity reserved for Wealthy Rise to other customers if the discussions didn't work out.