 We're back. We're live for the two o'clock block. I'm Jay Fidel here on ThinkTech and we're talking today about energy in America, but it's really much more than energy in America. It's about Farsilla and also ascend analytics and talking about energy in Hawaii, but they come from national, in fact, global perspectives. And we have for this discussion, Yusie Haikkonon, Gary Doris, and John Robbins. And let's see, I want to be sure I get the guy who is with analytics and that would be Gary. Okay. And Yusie and John are both from Farsilla. So, Yusie, tell us, you know, in general terms, the size and scope of Farsilla. It's huge. It's global. And it's been around 180 years. And although people in Hawaii may not have heard much of it, it is an enormous company doing enormous things. And in my perception anyway, it is moving fast to deal with global development. Yeah. Yeah. Farsilla is, like you said, over 180 years old Finnish company, originally. And during the last century, Farsilla was very strong in shipbuilding, in engines for ships. And since, I would say, the 1980s also grew very strongly into the power plant business. So at that time, of course, it was quite a lot of business with, I would say, applying the marine engines to the power business, burning heavy fuel, burning gas, etc. Virtualize about five billion, five billion euro, five billion dollar size company, global, really, like you said, Jane. In the marine business, I would say one third of the ships that you see when you go out there, they are surely having virtual engines on board. And in the power business, we've done close to 75,000 megawatts of power plants around the world. And recently, we have really developed not only products, but also the vision of the company. For example, on the energy business side, we are really having the vision today that we want to lead the world to a decarbonized future. And that may sound funny because we have been selling power plants all through the years that burn gas and even oils. But we know that in the future, we have to develop along with the societies and learn to use those fuels that are available. We are also doing battery storage today, etc. Those things that we think will be needed in the future. Yeah, a moment about Finland. It was six or eight months ago, we had some of the city officials from Helsinki on the show. They were really impressive. And they have a thing in Helsinki called Cities as a Service, C-A-A-S. Very successful. I think it's an exemplar of how the Finns are these days. They're global. They're efficient. They're very advanced. They're pioneers in so many things. And certainly, Francella has done that. I mean, I've seen the pictures of the various ships and marine well ships that you make. And they are very advanced. They're all over the world, every kind of ship, every kind of floating ship you could ever see. They're all there and they're populated everywhere. And from this kind of marine platform, you have decided to go into renewables with a vengeance. You are really tackling that. How long ago did that happen? It sounds like it was a bit of a pivot, but a major pivot by a major corporation indicating a major direction by global companies. Can you talk about the decision and how it's been implemented? Yeah, I would say it started about 15 years ago already when we saw quite a lot of wind power being built in places like Denmark and Germany in Europe. And we saw how certain challenges emerged then when you started to have enough of wind power in the power systems. Gradually, we started to see that the power systems need to change when you add more and more renewables to those. When you add solar and wind, actually the generation will depend on the weather. So with the sunny shiny, you get power, but in the night, you don't get solar power. And the wind conditions, they also depend on the weather. So we saw that operating those power systems, they will bring new challenges. And the traditional power systems, which typically consist of large centralized, quite inflexible power plants that you start and then you run them a year or so. And then you do maintenance. I mean nuclear coal, large gas plants, etc. Those were not a good fit when you start to have more and more solar and wind power in the system. So a few years ago, we decided really that we changed the vision of the company. Like I said, then we have worked now already for 10 years in modeling power systems, using really top softwares in a scientific way to understand what would be the optimal way to decarbonize the power systems. So this is really a strength of Wärtsilä that even though we are an OEM of engines and power plants and ship engines and storage, we are also extremely interested in understanding the future and modeling the future. And we hope of course that by doing that, we would be able to bring forward such technologies, services, softwares, things that will be needed in the future and then maintain our good position in the business. Well, I looked at your website. It's very impressive. Of course, it's impressive on the marine end because that was your calling for many, many, many years and still is. Yeah, you're everywhere. But I looked at the energy side of your website and that's also very impressive. You're all over the world. You're in 50 countries. You have projects going on everywhere. And what touched me was that it's not that you have one single system that you drop in a given location. You're always sensitive to what resources are available in that location, what the needs are in that location, how you can put it together best for that place, which I think is really important. That's a secret sauce as far as I can see. So when we say that you're the Director of Growth and Development at Farsilla Energy, is that a global title? Are you the man you see? This is an America's title. I'm heading this function for the area of Americas, which is South and North and Central American Caribbean. So this is the title and this job contains all these modeling aspects. It contains market development, talking to politicians, etc. It contains the project development activities in the front line and marketing things. So it is more or less everything that takes place before we start actually selling things. So this is a kind of peeking into the future and talking to people about the future very much and this kind of stuff. It certainly is. Not only in the United States, but elsewhere. I mean, I saw your initiative in Europe. Well, it's really everywhere, but Europe has a green energy program. The EU, that's impressive. We talk about that in the U.S., but I'm not sure we can say we have a green energy program just yet. So John Robbins, you are a business development manager at Varsilla Energy. Do you know UC? Do you get to see him and talk to him once in a while? Not as much lately, but I live on the West Coast. UC is in Texas. So we don't cross paths very often, but we do talk from time to time. We see each other a lot on emails. I'm sure a lot of people do these days. Does the name Georgetown mean anything to you? Georgetown, Texas? What happened there? Well, I was thinking of Georgetown in Washington, D.C. when you said that. I'm afraid I don't know what happened to Georgetown, Texas. Okay. Well, tell me what's going on on your plate. So I'm in the power sector, not the shipping side of our business, but what we do, what I do most of my time is work with utilities, work with industrials, talking about the technologies that we have, both on the engine side of our business, as well as the storage side of our business. And more and more these days, as you mentioned, we're talking to people who want to maximize the amount of renewables that they are using, whether that be solar or wind, and are trying to find a way to make sure their power systems are reliable. And that's really where our technologies come in, because they really enable both solar and wind to be utilized more widely and adopted in much greater quantities on the grid. And both of our engine technology as well as our storage technology are both enablers of renewables. And so it's been pretty exciting, especially for me, somebody who's very much a forward thinker in terms of where I want the future to go and how I want the power industry to look. So for me, it's been a real pleasure to work with a technology company that's on the cutting edge of helping the whole grid, both in the United States and around the world, modernize and find a way to become much greener and also much more reliable. And you wouldn't think a company that's been around for 180 years would be on the cutting edge like that with technology in our internal combustion engine technology has been around for years, but it's extremely well suited for this entire renewables movement. So it's pretty interesting. One of the videos that are on your site, on the Farsola site, about energy systems shows three parts. One is a solar field. Two is a storage facility connected to the solar field. And the third is an engine, which I found very interesting because that supports the system even if there's no sunlight at the moment. And even if the batteries are depleted, now the engine kicks in and the engine runs on biofuel or a combination of renewable fuels. That's very interesting. Has that system been deployed in the U.S.? It has. It's becoming more and more commonplace. We're working with utilities in multiple states that are deploying exactly what you described. And there's even one very close to your home on Oahu, which I'm sure you know about, which was the first Vardsilla plant built in Hawaii in over 20 years when it was announced. Back in 2016, we commissioned the project at Schofield Army Barracks, which is owned and operated by Hawaiian Electric. But it was chosen by Hawaiian Electric. Our technology was chosen because they wanted to find a way to maximize the amount of solar, maximize the amount of wind, and make sure that the grid was stable whenever they did that. And they decided the technology that we offer was best suited for that purpose. And ever since 2016, there's been a 50-megawatt plant sitting at Schofield Army Barracks. Many people don't know about it. It doesn't it doesn't run frequently, but it's there as as a backup just in case it's needed, just in case the grid has an issue, or if the sun suddenly drops when they didn't expect it to, or the wind stops blowing when they didn't expect it to, and there's an immediate need for power, and the grid needs that resource to kick in. And that's what it's there for. So that's Gary, let's let's turn to you, Gary, just for a minute. Have you been involved in the Schofield project? I take it that wherever these facilities are being built by Varsilla, there's a need for programming and grid integration and analytics. That's that's what you do and tell me what is it exactly and what is the scope and whether you have any contact with the Schofield project? I certainly have contact with the Schofield project. Ascent is a 50-plus energy analytics company, and what we do is provide the analytic insight to support decision analysis, particularly as companies go towards this transition of higher and higher renewables. In the case of Hawaii, my company was one of the analytic firms Hawaii Electric reached out to to lead the integration effort towards 100% renewables in the resource plan, and the Schofield project was part of that plan and was evaluated in great detail. Is it fair to say that in any significant project, when you have this this kind of multiple multi-mode system, as we have described and as exists on the Schofield, you're going to need this kind of technology, the integration and analytical technology. I don't understand how to integrate all these renewables and have a reliable grid. You need to have an analytic lens, and that lens needs to be much more powerful in terms of how it looks into the future. Your old 35 millimeter lens needs to be replaced with the 300 millimeter lens so you get the depth of field that you need to understand the intermittency and dynamics induced by all this wind and solar you're bringing on. And we run the system and as was mentioned, the Schofield project really serves as backup and to integrate under extreme conditions where you simply can't charge batteries because it's not sunny enough and the wind isn't blowing and you can't make the island all batteries. That won't work either economically or aesthetically. So you end up using a little bit of renewable fuels down the road today. It's existing conventional fuels in the Schofield project. It's the perfect resource to address that gap in the very infrequent periods that occur. We need to firm up the grid because there just isn't enough natural resources to produce the energy. At the end of the day, you're going to make it more sustainable and more efficient. That's what it's about. Are you doing projects all over the country? Where are you working? Everybody's getting on with this bandwagon of let's go and renewables because the economics make sense and thermal generation that stays are very limited. Wardsilla uniquely fits in and fits in the Schofield very neatly into this transition towards 100% because you need some backup thermal just in case. It has to be highly flexible without a startup or shutdown cost like your car engine. Conventional generation just doesn't move up fast enough. It has too much cost. So when we look at minimizing costs for this renewable future, typically we're finding more flexible resources like Wardsilla's have a role. I'll be at a small but important role in this future. Let's look at this in the larger context. The Schofield plant is a backup plant. Yes, we have covered it, John. We have covered it here on ThinkTech. We've had shows with some of the people involved, including Hawaiian Electric, about that project some a year ago, maybe. I was very impressed with it, but where does it fit in the larger picture for Wardsilla's entry into the US market and its contribution to renewables in the US market? It is a perfect fit to that, not only to the US, but the role of the plant is exactly what we see that will be the role of flexible generation in the transition. And even after the transition, you need this component in the power system to ensure security of supply. So globally, like Gary said, many countries, nations, states, regions, even companies have set already goals to decarbonize. There's always a year, 2040 or 50 or so involved. And today they are then figuring out how to get there. And we can see that in this path, you keep adding renewables and you want to use less and less for self-fuse on the way, because that's where the carbon is coming from. And then during, let's say a sunny day in California, maybe you have heard of the duck curve that is there, you would need to switch off power plants because there is enough solar energy for the system. But if you have these inflexible plants, large plants, you cannot switch them off for an hour or two. So you keep burning for self-fuse while you would otherwise have enough renewable clean energy. And that's the role of the flexibility during the transition to switch off immediately when you don't need to burn for self-fuse and come back when you need more energy to the system. Gradually, when you go closer to the totally decarbonized power system, you run less and less. And it is like already here discussed that when the weather then behaves abnormally, let's say there's a rainy period, a long time, and there's simply not coming enough energy from the solar and wind side, then you produce electricity with these plants. And like our plants today, they are capable of burning all these synthetic carbon-neutral fuels. And we have announced in May this year that we will burn 100% hydrogen, pure hydrogen in our engines soon. So we are working on that now in the laboratory conditions. And I think hydrogen will also have a role in the power systems in the future. So thermal plants, they used to burn for self-fuse. People think the plants have to go, but these plants can burn also fuels that do not produce any new carbon on the atmosphere. So then they basically have a new birth in a way. So is virtual converting old fossil plants into plants that use more renewable type liquid fuels? We can use both liquid and gaseous fuels and we can convert. Yes. Yes. Well, that would save a lot of money around the country for all these places that really cannot afford to just demolish the old plants and build everything new. But one of the things that interests me, and John mentioned it, is that this is a backup plant here in Schofield. It is not an online plant. You call upon it when you need it. But query, let's assume for a moment that we get real serious and we don't want to use the primary source, which is oil here for that area. And we want to populate the grid only with this kind of plant that you built in Schofield. So will this work as a primary source or does it have to be adapted to become a primary source? No, it would really work as a primary source. I think it is a question of cost. You can operate these plants as basal plants or as a balancing plant for the renewables. So definitely it would work in both roles. The decision needs to be made by you guys and what you prefer. I think solar power today is very cost efficient. So we should use it wherever you just have the physical location where you can put those panels. And it makes a lot of sense. And when storage, battery storages, there's a strong learning curve still for the next 10 years, at least on the cost of those storage plants. So I think it makes a lot of sense to overbuild solar and build storage and shift that daily excess production for the next night. So this way you get a totally clean system and then it is only to have a backup system for those weather conditions when you have cloud cover or you have some other reason like some countries have something like winter where I come from at least originally. And Denver as well. So of course you have solar cells. You have battery cells and you have this engine that will burn any number of different kinds of fuels and mixtures of fuels. Do you make the solar cells? Does Frantzilla make this battery storage cells? Does it make the engine? Or if not, where does it get these things from? The engines are our own design from scratch. So we have been making engines since 1942, I think, in Wärtsilä and the solar panels or batteries we do not manufacture. But we are integrating systems, then power systems, power plants, et cetera, to serve as balancing functions and even basal plants. In Africa we have had for many years in the sub-Saharan Africa a market share of 80% of all power plants. So there's a lot of Wärtsilä plants. You mentioned 50 countries. That's where the company has its own offices and locations. But actually we have built power plants in more than 180 countries. So there is only, I think, 12 places in the world where we have an Antarctic guys. One other question I want to ask you is that these engines, for example, just to take an example, are built in Finland and I guess they're going to have real quality steel and real quality engineering. But query, they're metric. And I know that the army at Schofield would be very interested in resilience and sustainability. But if a piece went out in that engineering, in that engine and its metric, how would Wärtsilä replace that over the miles? The engine is metric, yes. But we have 4,000 megawatts of these engines running here in the US only. And we have spare parts available in several locations over here. So parts are available with immediate notice. So metric or inches or whatever you like. Well, I mean, I'm sure that the army, there's a good project. It's a demonstration project, isn't it? Because the army is going to be very interested in sustainability and reliability and security and all that. And they were happy with it. Hawaiian Electric obviously was happy with it. And I think it's had very good press here, matter of fact. But query, what's, John, what's next in the pipeline? Do you know? Can you talk about other projects that are contemplated around the country? Can you talk about other projects that are contemplated in Hawaii? Yeah. Well, there's one I think that's quite interesting that's not too far from Hawaii, not in Hawaii, but it's in Southern California. It's utility that, like many in progressive areas, want to reach 100% renewables as soon as they can. But they also have a duty and a responsibility to make sure the grid is reliable. So they had a very old plant built in the 1950s, which was extremely unreliable. They've known for years it had to be replaced, and they recently decided to replace it with a power plant comprised of battery storage and Vartzilla engines to back up the battery storage, as well as all the solar power and wind coming off the grid from all over the state of California and the rest of the Western U.S. So it's another example, a newer example than Schofield is, of a utility that wants to get to 100% renewables, but in this case is in a very densely populated, one of the largest cities in the world, Los Angeles, and has a lot of constraints in terms of space, in terms of people they have to serve and make sure they're not only green, but they're also very reliable. So that's a pretty exciting project that we're working on right now. Gary Doris was also involved in that as a consultant to the utility there. It's the city of Glendale, California, near Hollywood. So that one has been pretty fun to work on lately. Gary, one thing we talked about, reliability and security and all that, and of course, in a world of computers, you are the computer. You are the integrator. You are the computer that connects it all up, makes it happen. And in that sense, you're the one who has to worry about hacking, hacking from far away. I'm sure, for example, you could and do have computer internet control on these projects in some way to make sure they're functioning properly. So query, how secure are they? Should we have any concern about nefarious activities on the integration? Well, my company is actually more involved in the decision analysis of what to build and when as they transition to this higher renewable standards. We are involved in operations as well. But in a different facet, security is a big thing though for the grid and it's something that electric utilities and system integrators and controllers are investing heavily in. And everybody has to be very vigilant about this. In terms of decision analysis, you know, what I think is interesting is both Hawaii and Glendale are faced with the decision, we want to go to renewables, we want to get there quickly. Why should we build this internal combustion engine that sends us back in time? And it's not the case at all. It's a matter of efficiency and capital allocation to most economically improve the environment and reach these objectives. And Lucy said it earlier, the price of storage is declining precipitously and we're learning a lot. It's not a mature technology like an internal combustion engine. If an internal combustion engine can burn renewable fuels, frankly, that are created from the excess renewables when the sun's at its zenith angle, that's clean. It's a good use of that extra energy. You can't consume all the energy in batteries. There's sometimes there's just too much. And so that's a way of taking advantage of the surplus and making clean fuels and then using these highly flexible internal combustion engines to use them when you absolutely need them and the batteries aren't charged. And so when Hawaii was facing the choice of what do we do, the first choice was we need some flexible internal combustion engines as backup to integrate all these renewables. Yeah, Glendale's in the same spot. And it's really interesting to see how much more economic this is than any other choice. And we looked at this in a dollar per ton basis for carbon abatement and it turns out it's in order a couple orders of magnitude less expensive than any other solution. So it really makes sense. And if municipality like Glendale or a private entity is interested in doing the right thing for the right payers in society, sometimes the choice like these were so engines is the right one even though it might sound like they're not headed down the road of green. That's actually not the case. Yeah. You see, we only have a few minutes left and I wanted to just talk to you about, you know, the vision. It seems to me that Brazil is in this all the way. It has committed to do clean energy, 100% renewable energy, not only, you know, in the United States, but all over the world. And if you look at the various parts of its website, you are impressed with the dedication that the company has to making a better world, a world without greenhouse gases and carbon. It's very impressive. But I just wonder if you could talk about the future of Barcelona in the United States. What are you planning? What do you expect will happen? I know there's a lot of variables at play, but what do you expect will happen in the next five, 10 years in terms of Barcelona's participation in our new green deal? That's a really good question. Let me first say that as part of the vision that you mentioned first and that I spoke about earlier, we are part of a community called Path 200. So, if you go to the website, Path 200.org, you can see there those activities that are done we are doing. That's a kind of community where there's passionate people who want to help the world go faster towards the green future. So, you asked about the U.S. I think it's a really good question. We see a lot of states already having set the target, RPS, so and so by year, so and so. And there's always a 100% or so number connected to a certain year in the future. We see quite a lot of utility companies, especially during the last year, lots, lots of companies have come out with a target of their own to decarbonize their portfolios. And we can see clearly that this is the time when guys like Gary are needed a lot because there's a lot of planning going on. I sometimes use the comparison that remember when JFK said that I want to take a man to the moon and bring him back alive during this decade. You needed some science to get them there and get them back as well. And I think this is what is going on right now. We are learning how to do it. And over the next five years, I think many people will learn how to do it. Right now it is still quite blurry, I would say, because these targets have been set very recently. But I think in the next five years, people will figure it out. And for us, we can see a lot happening on the storage side already. There's a lot of real projects every week, something happening on the storage side. While we still need a few years, I think before the market is ready for the total solution where these flexible plants are kind of replacing the inflexible infracradually of the system. And then becoming those plants that use less and less fossil fuels over the years and later on then are converted to these carbon neutral fuels. So we see a storage business happening and when these strategies come in place, new portfolio plans, etc. Then we see a snowball effect coming also for the flexible plants. John and I talked about, we just touched on it, but where does Hawaii fit in all this? Do you see Hawaii as a special place for green energy? It's a special place for this kind of project, this kind of combination of energy resources? If you ask me, I think pretty much on top of the pack, because you have set targets and guys like Gary have really modeled in-depth how to do it, how to get there. So you have really already a plan. California is also moving very strongly forward, but the plan is still in the shaping. There's a lot of discussion of these fuels. You already chose that you have liquid fuel, which is bio-based fuel in the system. So it is already a solution for that. Well, now there's a lot of discussion whether it should be hydrogen or synthetic methane to put in the natural gas grid, etc. I think these things will be cleared out in the next few years, and then much faster movement towards the targets will start to happen. We'll all be watching. Gary, is there anything you want to add before we close? No, it's an exciting feature of this transition to renewables. I don't think they occur so quickly, but suddenly we see the cost of renewables is outpacing thermal generation, and we need to figure out how to take advantage of these economic and clean opportunities. And some of this is taking advantage of the technological innovations. And John, anything you'd like to add before we close? Well, I want to salute Hawaii for leading the country and reaching for high renewable goals. A lot of people are following you now, and thanks for setting the example. And thanks for coming on the show. You see Gary, John, really appreciate you being here. We've been hoping for the show for a long time. We are delighted to see you here and delighted to have this conversation. All the best to all of you. Thank you.