 Okay we're back we're live it's given Tuesday after Memorial Day and this is Hawaii the state of clean energy with Ramsay Brown and he's with Hawaii Energy which is dedicated to energy efficiency in the state of Hawaii. Good morning Ramsay how are you? Good morning Jay I'm doing well thank you. Thanks for joining us on the show. Let me let me get some context for a moment. Hawaii Energy this is a special agency created a few years ago to incentivize, to encourage, to promote energy efficiency in our state. Tell me how it works. That's correct Jay happy to and so we are funded by all of our electric bills in a HIKO territory formerly known as HIKOMIKO and HELCO and if you are a resident or a business within the Hawaiian Electric Territories then a small portion of our electric bills come into a fund that we steward back out responsibly in the form of energy efficiency rebates very cost effective it's the most cost effective measure we can take in our step towards 100 clean energy and we've been doing this for about 10 years now Jay that Hawaii Energy has been around and we have programs and educational programs for both again residents all of us who live in Hawaii and businesses and we we encourage folks to participate in as many energy efficient upgrades as you can to bring down our overall energy usage here in the state. Yeah and the idea being the idea being that not using energy is the best renewable of all that's right it's no imposition on the environment it's it's it's free not to use energy that's right and that unused energy lasts a long time we just keep not using it right yeah and we've been following you for those 10 years too so what kind of programs you know have you evolved to or what are your favorite programs at Hawaii Energy right now oh let me say before COVID because I'm gonna ask you what happened since COVID absolutely yeah well LED lights continue to be a strong way to save energy the technology has just advanced so much from the old days of incandescence and fluorescence to now LED lighting but believe it or not air conditioning technology has improved significantly as well there are a lot of companies looking into cleaner refrigerants technology lower greenhouse gas refrigerants pollutants and with that comes a lot of the efficiency analysis as well and so there are new ways to manage your buildings so that they use air conditioning more efficiency efficiently and new technologies and and even in our homes and of course we have rebates for those and one of the unsung heroes are transformers these boring gray boxes not the fun animated kind from our childhood or not the fun movies that you see in Hollywood for all ages very no but these transformers can save a significant amount of energy they're in buildings for at least 30 years upwards of 40 to 50 even and so the current existing technology that are probably hidden in your janitorial closets in all of our commercial buildings are pretty outdated and there's a significant opportunity to upgrade there they run 24 seven and so any equipment that runs all day all night is going to have an opportunity to save energy on the residential side water heating is a big user of electricity right behind air conditioning if your home has that we all have water heating in our homes we have good solar water heating rebates and even heat pump water heating rebates so consider taking a glance at where your hot water comes from at home and see what you can do about upgrading that as well but again to your point that was all pre-covid where some of our our hot ticket items hot ticket yeah so you know what comes to mind when I hear you describe that is a there's a kind of algorithm involved what I mean and I really like your thoughts about this is is when when you have a particular kind of energy efficiency device there's many of them there's many systems to be efficient with then you want to find out exactly how much efficiency is it generating you want to get some kind of metrics on it and you want to see for example whether it's old technology and maybe as you said it needs to be upgraded or updated to be more efficient and then there's a new metric on that and then you have all these different possibilities I mean it's endless and it's probably growing you know in terms of the technology to make energy more efficient that that's what technology is as far as energy is concerned in large part so my question is how do you do the metrics how do you say that this kind of energy deficiency energy efficiency system or device or technology is generating a return of say x x value and this one is x minus and this one is x plus then you have priorities I guess and so the one that gives you the best return for your buck is that the one you focus on is that is that where you put the rebates or is it that one or is it all of them it sounds like a very complicated algorithm but tell me how it works you're speaking my language now my engineering mind gears are turning and I could talk to you about spreadsheets and algorithms all day we do have a team of energy engineers we have an outside evaluation team of engineers who also looks at our numbers and vets them one again because as I mentioned in the start we're spending our public dollars at the end of the day and we need to make sure that we do so transparently and that the energy saving equipment that we're incentivizing is in fact going to save energy so there is a lot of measurement and verification that goes into this there are some round assumptions that we can make but in many cases we're doing measurements on the ground and doing some electric bill analysis what we call regression modeling to account for any variables and we're calculating the energy saved and able to go back and review who in fact the outside engineering firm does that at the end of our year they'll go back and verify that equipment was in fact installed and is operating as intended and they'll make sure that our program has accurately accounted for that savings and will either decrease or potentially increase the amount of savings that we've contributed toward our 100% clean energy goal so a lot of energy efficient ninjas working behind the scenes to calculate the savings from each of these equipment and it is a line by line every single rebate we have a measure we have a rebate for is calculated in one way or another and then we are able to row that all up into the larger overall savings and so you mentioned you know some of my favorite equipment are those that bring in a lot of the energy savings but also those that I like to highlight that aren't well known people begin to become more aware of where their energy is being used again if your water heater sits in a closet outside or your transformer is hidden in some storage room in your basement you forget that it's there and it's costing you money every month on your electric bill and so bringing that awareness to light is very important to the whole energy's mission as well yeah so this is just just a kind of an outreach thing where so I maybe I got a rebate maybe I should have a rebate are you gonna come and look are you gonna gonna tell tell me my water heater is in the wrong place it's next to the oven for example your two heating appliances right next to each other yeah you know one of the things that nationally efficiency programs are looking into are virtual home inspections and so that is something that's being explored again nationwide just how can we do a phone call maybe even the zoom car face time if residents are comfortable and help them to assess what their energy use is walking through you know one of my favorite tips is to walk through your home from one end of the the house to another end and unplug everything maybe you leave your refrigerator plugged in but unplug everything else and then go back through and plug in only the appliances that you need to use and you'll be surprised at some of the things that are plugged in that you didn't even realize were still plugged in ancient phone chargers perhaps old game systems that are just collecting dust that was that was in my case one of the things we found but just really understanding again from wall to wall within your home what is it that is using electricity and where can i go ahead and upgrade that oh yeah so you don't have to be there you know i'm thinking that uh be nice to have an engineer walk through my house but i i probably don't need to have an engineer walk through my house i can walk through my house myself if i just put my common sense on maybe talk to you on the phone or maybe uh on zoom i can find out from you how i can check my own system to see whether it is running at a reasonably optimal you know set of circumstances am i right absolutely and we put out videos and guidelines on our website so that to help people do exactly that if it's a product or an equipment that we offer a rebate for then there will be energy savings because we've already calculated that and so as part of the third party efficiency program it's also kind of a third party stamp of approval that this equipment has been vetted and will save energy and that's something we do on on our end you know i um believe it or not there are equipment out there that claim to save energy that in fact are not impactful or maybe just not right for the climate in hawaii and so we're vetting that as well so you can trust that there will be energy savings from installing and operating equipment on our menu of items both in the residences and in businesses um that they will save energy because we've done our homework yeah well that's that's very valuable because i mean like anything else and and we're finding out in the in the throes of uh covid that people sell you anything and they they may not really be telling you exactly what it will do so um how can how how much energy can i save how can i reduce my energy bill uh just give me a rough idea you know make impress me impress me ramsey a rough idea of how much energy i can save if i get efficient from an ordinary an ordinary user you know who doesn't it doesn't really care too much about it to a user who does care about it what's the spread yeah well we're looking at a solid 50 dollars of saving the spread would probably be 20 to 100 dollars um a year in savings uh easily with some of the efficiency measures that we have uh you might find this interesting we recently um did an analysis and found that in the summer months especially the more human months in hawaii our residential electric bills tend to be about 18 to 20 higher than in the cooler months and so of course that's heavily attributed to air conditioning maybe a little bit of more people being in the house due to uh summer vacation and that sort of thing but for the most part it's attributed to air conditioning loads and so anything we can do to make sure we're using our air conditioning wisely whether you're installing a smart thermostat that's going to sense occupancy or or make sure that you're only cooling enough that um that you need making sure you turn it off when you leave the house you're not pre-cooling and coming home to winter wonderland uh even your ceiling fans and your floor fans you want to make sure those are off when no one's in the room because contrary to popular belief just having the fan running isn't actually going to make your room cooler the way a fan works it is makes your skin feel cooler as the movement of the air passes over your skin so if there's no one in the room then there's no need to run the fan um and so again I hope those numbers are impressive enough for you and another impressive number we have is a five dollar energy kit that you can get from our website um hawaiienergy.com slash promotions and in it they have some led light bulbs um low flow water fixtures because again if we slow down how much water we're using in the sinks and in your kitchen sink when you're doing dishes and we use less hot water um and also in our showers there's a low flow shower fixture and also a smart strip a lot of times we have these fancy entertainment systems now and you think when you turn something off it's it's off but of course there are those phantom loads that are running day and night and these smart power strips help to turn those equipment off when you're not using it making sure that when the tv is off you can also shut down that blu-ray player maybe the game system and subsequent other ancillary equipment yeah I was going to ask you about that you know surely we have the technology to turn all these you know phantom power kinds of um appliances off I mean I should I go out and buy one or do you have the these outlets where you know from say uh I don't know say 10 o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning it's off it doesn't have to be on it's off and I'm saving all the you know the base load kind of uh energy I might be using with the phantom power um what should I get that how do I get that and how much can you help me get that yeah you can get it from uh some of your retailers believe it or not the best buys of the world but we also do have it online which might be a little more convenient now of course you can probably find them on amazon we do have a rebate for them though on our website again go to hoieenergy.com slash promotions and you can click through there it's actually what we call our online marketplace for many energy efficient pieces of equipment for your home the smaller things again like the light bulbs little switches and these smart power strips and there's actually two versions of the smart power strip you can get an advanced smart power strip which is um even more um has even more bells and whistles to it but these will the way the smart power strip works to your point is you have a control controlled equipment usually in an entertainment center it's like your tv and then you have all of this other equipment that you don't really use if the tv is off right you don't need your blu-ray player or your dvd player and you don't need your your soundbar speaker on and so those will automatically turn off when the smart strip senses that the tv is off and so you press one off button and it's it's the effect of unplugging all of that ancillary equipment and so that will really save all night again all day when you're when you're not using that equipment it'll save on that energy use and it's it's just seeping out and it's a vampire sucking your your money out of your wallet we need to get that under control so uh now sometimes you give rebates sometimes you give you give equipment away free sometimes can you give me a handle on when one is appropriate and when the other is appropriate sure when we're doing our education um for different communities you know we'll often throw in prizes out there even even in some of our conferences and presentations just to get things moving I think also you know when we see that there are certain communities that are harder hit from any type of a disaster or that are just having a harder time adopting energy efficient practices you know part of our mandate is to make sure that we have energy efficiency that's accessible and affordable to all and so in those cases we may increase our rebate and it may be depending on the cost of the upgrade and you're virtually free and zero charge upfront to the customer and in those cases we definitely let people know that this is the type of program we're operating for the most part in some cases you know we like to see that the customer the the resident or the business is willing to put some money toward this efficient upgrade again energy efficiency is one of the few upgrades that you can make that's actually going to pay you back on your electric bill and so we want people to understand that and know that hey if you're still even paying a small percent of your efficiency upgrade that's a good thing your your payback is going to be one year two years maybe and after that you'll be making making a profit on this investment it's a great investment well the other thing is and if you do that if you're get skin in the game if you're going to kind of a partnership with Hawaii Energy and with energy efficiency in general you're going to be more aware you're going to be thinking about efficiency because since now it's part of your system your your home or your business and it's part of your business thinking about about trying to save money on energy so even if you you get a rebate or you're encouraged and incentivized to do one kind of thing it'll make you conscious of doing some other kinds of things maybe just don't require any money but that will nevertheless give you more efficiency so it's a mindset thing isn't it I sure hope so you know we're not able to measure mindset just yet but just elevating folks to be able to think a little more outward where they're aware of of their actions and the impact on others and of course the impact on our energy use and our environment is certainly an undercurrent I think that all of us at Hawaii Energy feel and want to be a part of and it's why we come to work every day so are you are you going to be more or less or equally relevant in the years that are coming between now and reaching our target I'm making the assumption we will reach our target I'm you know 100% clean energy by 2045 some people say 2040 but is Hawaii Energy always relevant as we proceed down that path absolutely always relevant and increasing in fact energy efficiency as a baseline is just again a wise investment it's the cheapest energy renewable energy as you mentioned you know step that we can take additionally you know we've been tasked with distributing some electric vehicle charge station funds electric vehicles are a known factor in our movement progression toward 100% clean energy and so we're looking at you know there is this argument between a cart and a horse and do you get more electric vehicles first or more charge stations first and so Arculiana part of Arculiana is to help spur the industry for more electric vehicle charge stations especially in the new construction zone which we're pushing even legislatively and then what can we do to to help get electric vehicle charge stations installed at the new construction it's so much more cost effective to get it in before you've poured the concrete and that sort of thing and also grid services in general so looking at smarter systems that can speak with the grid that can help the the demand and the load of buildings actually match that which the generation is providing because more and more of our generation is intermittent due to solar and wind and other renewables and so having that as a smarter grid system Hawaii Energy is involved and will be increasingly involved in that in the years to come you know I would I wanted to ask you also about these companies they're engineering companies that come and work for larger companies and particularly property management property ownership companies you know the kind of companies that are in the building owners association like downtown one comes to mind is Amoresco this is an engineering company right that tries to save owners money on using electricity so do you engage with them is there any interaction you tell them what to do do they tell you what they have done do you share advice and information indeed we do Amoresco is one of our clean energy allies and we have a whole group of nearly 200 clean energy allies that are working in the energy efficiency space both in residences and businesses and you mentioned the keyword their money J and where the Amorescos of the world are able to help support these energy efficiency upgrades is to provide a return on your electric bill that is going to be matched to the amount of investment that you've put into the building and so they'll do an audit and they'll identify all of these what we call ECMs in the industry or energy conservation measures and they'll work with the owner to put together a portfolio and a plan on what to install and when and how to finance it how to fund this thing so that that you get a positive revenue stream as soon as possible I won't speak for those those contractors you know each of them have their own way of doing business but suffice to say they are still doing business even today even nowadays and they're making it as a helpful and simple and streamlined for any of our our Boma our you know business owners and managers and downtown office buildings type facilities all the way to even smaller facilities that are able to and needing to finance some of their efficiency upgrades there are also new financing mechanisms that are coming online and they're they're very innovative and they just help you get your work done sooner faster sometimes with zero down and again you're able to pay it back on what would have been a higher electric bill now a decreased electric bill um one of the ways that we do that I'm going to tie this into your earlier question about measuring energy use we have a new program it's only a weeks old real-time energy management and so in real time these contractors are measuring how much energy is being used and they are able to measure baseline that against the previous measurement and seeing if there's a trend of increasing energy use they will literally call an employee or call a facility manager on the ground and help them to identify and assess where the savings or where this increased energy usage actually is coming from and how they can save energy and so that requires a lot of metering and monitoring that we're giving an incentive on but it also provides a long-term relationship between really between contractor and customer right and so the contractor is not just installing a piece of equipment and walking away anymore more and more what we're going to see is a relationship so that contractor helps the customer manage their energy usage be aware of it as you mentioned and see a trend of energy savings over time and there's going to be operational things that you can do to make sure you turn things on and off only when needed maybe even getting your employees involved doing some education with your your staff so that they're not turning on lights or calling for air conditioning when they don't need to be right there the folks in the office know best where energy can be saved they know where the hot spots are and where that freezing cold desk is that whoever sits there needs three blankets and they can help inform the contractors on where they can where the opportunities are for savings for balancing the energy use within the building and so that's something we're definitely looking into and happy to work with some of those large companies yeah it's all about technology that's I always say you know energy technology was first now there's energy and energy is the new technology you're talking you're talking about technology Ramsey so let me ask you one thing it keeps popping up and that is COVID you know you have a certain way of operating I think we we got the landscape I hope it doesn't keep popping up too much I mean you and me both so how has it affected energy efficiency how has it affected Hawaii energy I mean it's affected everyone but I have a feeling that you have ways to deal with it can you talk about it absolutely we'll have about a dozen slides here I would like to show about what way and Hawaii energy is doing and pivoting to for COVID recovery and response and on the second slide there we're able to see the impact of energy efficiency on jobs and it's been a huge industry and you may have seen in the news that it's been heavily impacted actually so you know 2.3 million people in the energy efficiency sector in the US over 5,000 in Hawaii and if we go to the next slide as we all know locally unemployment has been huge and we're going to see that there was a massive loss in total energy efficiency jobs nationwide but we were hit pretty hard nearly 2,000 total jobs on hold 50% of our own clean energy allies that I mentioned have said that they had to downsize which is just heartbreaking in our industry and so I want to go back to that clean energy ally survey that we mentioned and what slide 4 shows us when that comes up for you is some of the results there and one of the big takeaways in that teardrop on the left is that 95% of our clean energy allies are still able to operate they are deemed essential businesses and we do get calls from businesses asking if they can still continue their energy efficiency upgrades and we say yes the energy efficient industries are still working we're experiencing heavy delays 93% project delays 81% decrease in sales from our clean energy allies and over 50% supply chain disruption and again that 50% downsize in staff PPE is of course a limited commodity right now and it's difficult to get so we have some of our CEAs that are having a difficulty getting that and then again a quarter of our customers still didn't know that our CEAs were in operation and so something that we're doing is spreading the word we're letting our customers know answering the phones and telling people hey this is something that we're still able to participate in and now might be a good time to do so and so in our shift you know we're aligning with the state's recovery plan and so healing Hawai'i in phase one being stabilization you know lucky enough we have a forward thinking public utilities commission who actually gave us some guidance and we summarize them here in three bullet points ensure reliable and affordable essential services achieve clean energy in our climate goals which is great because that's a good investment to make at any time especially now and then support economic recovery from COVID-19 emergency so you're going to see that our following slides kind of build to this in the commercial sector what we have are increase in education and training online just like this where I get to talk to you Jay and doing more than ever we actually have seen an increase in participation as well maybe because people's schedules allow for a little more online training and not needing to to drive around the island to different conference venues and we're also extending some of our increased incentives from this year we're looking to increase incentives to next year you know what would it look like to have folks apply for maybe an increased incentive maybe a business that's been hit hard but they've identified a way they can save energy on their electric bill if they can ask us for an increased incentive and they can let us know why and we can we can check it against the budget that may be something that we're going to consider here in the next month or so as we start our program year 2020 on July 1st so that's a way we're pivoting again extending incentives looking at new incentives I mentioned the real-time energy management we're also really focused on commercial new construction right now because again if you can get that efficient equipment in at the start then that's the way to go for the lifetime of that building will be more efficient we've put out sector tips and guide sheets as well for the restaurant sector the grocery sector some of some of these hardest hit sectors that are still in operation even the multifamily sector those of us who live in apartment buildings and condominiums we're home all the time now and so that AOAO board and that multifamily facility engineer needs to really be paying attention to how they're using energy and so having these tip sheets have been really helpful and informing our community on what they can do to save energy and then some new technology so HVAC UV light disinfection right in the in our systems is that something that we want to be promoting is there an energy efficient form of it if not what is the energy increase that I can expect you know it's been recommended to use increased filtration filters that are more effective at filtering out different diseases well what can we do to be able to balance that if energy impact from those tighter filters for residents we've also been able to provide some tips we've been on the news most of our local channel is just explaining you know what people staying home more often now more than ever can do to save energy again be raising that energy awareness we've got games that people are playing at home on their mobile devices to help get energy tips and we've also increased our incentives and so I'm going to hover right here for a little while on these increased incentives because they're pretty significant and they're fairly new weeks old I would say most of them but if you recognize any of that the equipment there refrigerators window ACs maybe a pool pump that we can put a VFD on to control when it comes on all of that equipment is great and those are increased incentives the solar water heating when I mentioned that being one of our standard technologies is now more than ever a higher incentive and so if you're thinking on it before thinking about it before now's the time to act this is a great incentive a residential air conditioning as we get ready for summer again we know that those with AC and those with cooling 18 to 20 at least increase in our electric bills on average and so getting an energy efficient air conditioner is important and we even have one for energy star window ACs if that's all that can fit in and maybe some of the spaces in your home we also created these awesome cakey resources so working with the kids as well some coloring and games and just getting them aware of energy at a young age it reminds me of the games we used to play at zippies dying in when you're waiting for your food to get there so break out the crayons for those kids and color some of those resources and then next you know following our state's recovery plan we have phase two reopening the Kama'ina economy and phase three renew and rebuild the long-term recovery so some of the key sectors we're focusing on on the next slide are going to be government a new construction as I message as I mentioned office buildings also the multifamily sector that we've been working with already has has expressed interest in doing more efficiency now that the residents again our home more often a couple of other sectors we're going to focus on hotels you know our local hotels are really down right now but for some of them it's actually an opportunity during this low occupancy stage to install new equipment and upgrade the systems that had so what kind of increased incentives can we provide them that's still going to be cost effective and yet encourage them to take that step even in this time of uncertainty so we're working with some of our hotel customers there another case is that retro commissioning and energy audits are going to be important because they've got to balance their systems that they're looking to upgrade to recover from COVID-19 you know putting in new safety policies maybe new ventilation policies that they've never had before and this is not how their buildings were designed to operate initially and so they may need to rebalance the whole building and then that's something too important to keep in mind for us as we offer some of these new incentives that we can encourage folks to take retro commissioning and energy audits seriously now so hotels and even the health care industry believe they're not health care industry is looking to still upgrade energy efficiency our rural health care industry was hit pretty hard as they had to shift to for COVID-19 and so how can we help those rural health care facilities as well to lower their electric costs health care being quite having quite a high electric bill the next four slides are just going to build to a quick program strategy that I want to end on so providing financial support enhancing our funding maybe offering this idea of a grant that I mentioned that folks can apply for and will show us that they're actually going to invest that money in energy efficiency next we've got new ways to connect so utilizing that virtual digital technologies maybe doing those virtual in-home inspections or audits and and working with our business customers in the same frame our improved environment will be next so indoor air quality or IAQ is something that is often cited these days and so what can we do to offset some of the energy consequences of making sure that we're fleshing our spaces with clean fresh air maybe we can balance that out with the another energy savings equipment in another space and finally looking at some downturn opportunities so as I mentioned it with lower occupancy in hotels or office buildings taking advantage of this for those that are able to make the most of the time where we can be upgrading to energy efficient equipment so that in our recovery and for a long term savings they will be able to see a decreased electric bill I hope I summarized enough for you or some of our recovery plans for Hawaii energy post COVID-19 and as you'll especially see some firm changes come July 1 in our new program year 2020 maybe we can check back with you again then but it but it strikes me Ramsey that you're on it Hawaii energy is on it on every aspect of it you're you're a tech company and you're using the technology and the analysis to handle it every way you can thank you so much for coming around thank you for your participation and your support of think tech we greatly appreciate that hope to see you again soon Ramsey thank you for having me Jay aloha