 I'm your host, Mitch Yuan. Our underwriter is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, and that's a program of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. So I'm really, really pleased to welcome our guest today, Ken Aramaki. Ken is the Director of Transmission and Distribution and Interconnection Planning for Hawaii Electric. Gosh, that sounds like a huge job, Ken. Today we're gonna talk a story about renewable energy zones and the Hawaii Electric Community Engagement Plan for Oahu. Ken, welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Thanks, Mitch, thanks for having me. So let's get to know a little bit about you first as a person. So where are you from and where'd you go to school and how long you've been at Hawaiian Electric? Okay, I was born on Kauai, born and raised on Kauai. I went to high school. High school is the more important question, right? Yeah, that's the important question for Hawaii, for all you people on the mainland. It's more important than the college you went to. Yeah, I actually went to school in Oahu for preschool I went to in the pack. Oh, cool, that's a great school. Yeah, for college I went to University of Portland, and then I have been working at Hawaiian Electric. Basically my whole career, I had a little stint at the DOD at NAFAC, but for the most part of it, about 12 plus years now at Hawaiian Electric. And that's a pretty big job you've got. I mean, imagine that head of TND and distribution interconnection planning. I mean, what kind of a staff do you have? Yeah, so my area is made up of four departments. So I oversee four managers as well as their staff. And yeah, it is a lot. It's a major area, it's super exciting. It's probably as high tech as it can be for the utility. And being in Hawaii, being at Hawaiian Electric, we are leading everyone else across the nation in our pursuit of mule bulls. Yeah, what you're accomplishing is fantastic. So let's start off on the next slide too. Let's talk about climate change action planning. So tell us a little bit about it. It looks kind of complicated, but those letters are small, but you can tell us what it all involves, I'm sure. Sure, yeah. So late last year, our company set out this ambitious goal, which is to cut emissions 70% by 2030. And that's compared to 2015 levels. In order to do that, really this slide is to set the context of what we're talking about today. For us to actually reduce carbon emissions, it's not just addressing one key initiative, it's actually many. And so it kind of starts with retiring our fossil fuel generating units. As we start to retire those, we also need replacement capacity to take the place of those. And replacement capacity comes in the form of large utility scale renewable resources as well as DERs or distributed energy resources like livestock solar batteries. In addition to that, we do see basically a large, a major growth in electric usage over the next 10, 15 plus years a lot due to electrification and transportation. So in order for us to meet these goals or achieve these targets in an effective manner, we also need to promote energy efficiency to find ways to reduce demands where it makes sense. And then lastly, developing programs that shift energy around so that we can reduce or we can use the most economical resources during the times that they should be used. So a lot of it is going to be one of the hardest, it is not going to be, it is the hardest place to find renewable energy. I mean, my first job at HNEI like 20 years ago was to look at, well, what kind of renewable resources do we have throughout Hawaii? And it became quickly apparent to me that Kauai, Maui and the Big Island could be totally self-supporting, but that it was the real challenge was going to be on Oahu because of the large population in the small land area. So I guess this is going to be a major challenge. I can say. And of course, people are very conscious about systems in their backyards. So I'm going to be really interested to hear how that goes. So let's flash up the next slide three. And so this is like a renewable energy planning from 2027 to 2033. And so my question was, first of all, I didn't tell us about that, but why the long lead in? Why is it going to take us five years to get to this plan? Or is that when the... Well, just tell us about the plan. I was kind of curious about why it was five years to ramp it up. Sure. So first of all, this slide is what we call our near-term plan. So this is the seven to 10-year timeframe. This is what we call near-term. And that's because it takes a long time to develop these resources. And actually what I get into for the renewable energy zones that goes beyond these time frames as well. What this slide shows is that, if you look at each island, and I guess I won't go over each number, but we already have a lot of resources both on utility-scale renewable energy, as well as on DER or the customer-side resources. But we need to find ways to keep increasing that. And in the near-term, what we plan to do, which is what we're calling stage three, we did a RFP for stage one, stage two, and those projects are currently in progress and going in. Then the next one is stage three. And these, stage one, two, and three, they basically use the infrastructure that we have today. Okay. And find ways to interconnect more resources to them, but we're gonna reach a saturation point. We're gonna reach a point where you can't just merely, it's not already plug-and-play, but you can't merely plug-and-play utility-scale resources to our current system. So we're gonna have to find ways to increase it even more to get to that 90, 100% targets. And that's where renewable energy zones come into play. Right. So let's move on to slide four and let's talk about integrated grid planning. So how important is the community engagement component and how are you gonna reach out to them? But tell us first of all, what is integrated grid planning? I mean, people hear it all the time. It's kind of like a buzzword. So what does it actually mean? Yeah. So the Hawaiian Electric has been working on this integrated grid planning process for a few years now. This is essentially the first of its kind. We are a vertically integrated utility. So we have the ability to do this integrated grid planning process. It takes the place of the traditional integrated resource planning process, which we essentially looked at find optimizing generating resource mixes on the system. The integrated grid planning process looks at the generation, the transmission and distribution resources, finds the optimal portfolio and then finds ways to go out and procure those resources as well as go and develop those resources. So to do this process, it's generally four major steps. I mean, there's many sub tasks through this process, but essentially it starts with data collection. That's gathering information, that's using assumptions, determining what the methods are gonna be for the technical analysis. Then it goes into plan definition, which is developing that plan. And so we take what the inputs and assumptions are, the methodologies, we do an analysis, we figure out what the best or optimal resource mix is, we develop what the supporting transmission distribution resources are. And all of this is to essentially get to these high renewable energy portfolios. And this plan definition, this is where the renewable energy systems planning process continues. And that bar on the bottom, essentially along the way we've been doing and we're gonna continue to engage with the community. We engage with key stakeholders within the integrated grid planning process, but we also go out to the communities to help educate, to help understand what their needs are, so that we can integrate all that into integrated grid planning process. So you're doing this not just for Oahu though, you're also doing this in parallel on the Big Island and on Maui is my understanding, correct? Correct, as well as Lanai and... Oh, right, right. So that's a huge job. I'm sure you have a lot of contractors helping you out doing, are you doing all the modeling in-house? I mean, I think H&I is doing a little bit of it for you. Yeah, a lot of the modeling is done in-house. We do supplement with consultants. I mean, we're getting off topic, but what we do find is always so far ahead in advancing these types of analyses that it's actually really hard to find consultants that can help fulfill these roles. So yeah, that's all right, it's also been very interesting. Well, that's the good news and the bad news, but it's great to hear that we're so far ahead that it's hard to find other people who know how to do it. Well, let's go on to the next slide and we're gonna now talk about renewable energy zones. So what are the opportunities and what are the barriers? First of all, what are they? And then what are the opportunities? What are the barriers? Sure, essentially, as I explained before, and I'm not gonna go through each of these bullets, but when we did our renewable RFPs, which is what we call stage one, two, and three, we're using the resources that we already have on the system. Going forward on a longer-term basis, we need to start planning for what the transmission infrastructure is gonna be in order to support these larger tranches of renewable energy resources. So why we did this initially under the integrated grid planning process, that was to come up with proxy costs so that we can better understand what the supporting transmission is to get renewable resources in certain areas. And ultimately, what we're gonna continue to do is engage with the community. We're gonna engage with key stakeholders to refine this plan and try to identify what locations are best suited for renewable energy development and where it's more realistic to pursue those developments. And then we're gonna need to start planning for the transmission infrastructure required to support those. So let's move on to the next slide. And I think you've kind of covered that in this previous conversation we just had, but is there anything we missed there that we need to talk about? Yeah, I mean, the only thing that I wanted to mention was that while the study basis is on solar and wind potential, the analysis that we've been doing is technology-agnostic. So it looks at basically, we do powerful analyses and that's basically looking at how many megawatts can be pushed out into the system from various locations. So really, it could be solar, it could be wind, it could be biodiesel, it could be hydro even, it could be any type of resource pushing on megawatts in certain areas of the system. Yeah, and yeah, it's in the process. So let's talk about Oahu now. Let's go right on the Oahu. Next slide is slide seven. So why don't you describe where we have these renewable energy zones here on Oahu and give everybody kind of a preview of what you're looking at. Okay, so let me take a step back. The renewable energy zones where we are today is we're looking at it from a technical aspect first, and then that's when we go out to the community. So in terms of the technical aspect in this initial draft of the study, this is looking at where this potential exists and what it takes to interconnect that entire or a large part of that potential to the system. So we're kind of aiming high and then we know that we're gonna have to try to address which areas are best suited, which areas we need to avoid, and that's the type of input that we need. Look forward to with the community. So for Oahu, I mean, really it covers much of the island. In the past, a lot of development, renewable development has been east and north sides of the island and southern central. And based on this map, it's almost everywhere. The areas that don't really have solar wind potential is kind of that Honolulu area, essentially, and that's because it's currently covered by buildings and homes. But yeah, so this just looks at these large areas that have lots of land availability and are well suited for solar wind development. So let's look at, I think the next one up is Maui. So why don't you give us a little overview of the zones on Maui? Okay, so in our initial study, which by the way, it is available online. Yeah, our initial study, we looked at, and as you said, development on Maui or the island and I'm not sure about Kauai, not from Kauai, but the other islands besides Oahu, there's much more land available to develop renewable resources. And so on Maui, basically all the green are areas that were indicated based on a study done by the national labs as potential areas that could be developed for solar wind. There's so much availability that we wouldn't, for Maui and Hawai'i Island, we wouldn't be trying to get every square inch or square mile of all those in order to meet the demand of the island. Yeah, so basically prioritized looking at where our infrastructure currently is, which is kind of the strongest technically transmission infrastructure on the island is kind of in the central sort of going westward areas on Maui. And so that's why we looked at these options or alternatives of pacing our potential zones in the central sort of southern areas and going west. Okay, so how about the big island? Let's look at the next slide, the big island slide. Yeah, and Hawai'i Island is similar, lots of potential. This one we also looked at two different options. And again, these aren't actual like clan options. These are kind of technical options that are initially for discussion purposes. And we do plan to provide these maps to, it's already available, but it's not like the community is actually actively looking into our filings and submittals. But as we go out to the community, we're gonna have these available, we're gonna have these, we're gonna ask for their feedback on these and try to better optimize where the resources should be. So let's go to the last slide where we have a community engagement slide. So how are you going to reach out to them? Are you gonna go to like the local community boards? Or I mean, how are you gonna get the people engaged in this? I mean, it's good to say, yeah, we're gonna have this plan, but how do you attract them, bring them in and then manage the information that you get out of it? Yeah, so over the next few months, we are starting to plan workshops and meetings, hybrid in-person and online, types of meetings on Oahu Maui and Hawaii Island. So, yeah, we are gonna have these available for the community to attend. We're also going to, we're working on a web-based application where basically the zones would be shown and folks could add their input on the website if they aren't able to make these community meetings. Yeah, I mean, that's our plan now. For the next few months, my schedule is full of meetings, so. So, what kind of feedback are you looking for though? What do you wanna hear from them? I mean, part of it is, yeah, this is very interesting, but are you also looking for their recommendations as well? Yeah, I mean, what we wanna see is, the community knows the best. So, as we go out to these areas, we wanna understand what areas within that area doesn't make sense to add large-scale renewable resources. What areas should we be avoiding if we are planning for resources in the area? And what other considerations should we be taking into account as we iterate on this planning process? And essentially what we wanna do is get more input on how to better size or locate these renewable energy zones so that we can then find the supporting transmission requirements to support these areas. So, what has been the initial reactions? There've been, from the people that are aware of this program, what's been the reaction from the local community so far? Or is it too early to say? Yeah, we've been, we've had elements of this discussed with the community and other RFP type of community engagements. We've engaged with key stakeholders. We have key stakeholders within our integrated refining process. And I also recently did a webinar with the Koi Energy Policy Forum. Right. I think in general, people generally agree that this is the right thing to do or that we need to do this, especially we're gonna meet our state polls. I mean, I think there's just like, people just wanna know what the next step is. I think we're currently at this initial level trying to identify, understand what the high level requirements or considerations should be. So, I think as this plan keeps on morphing and keeps incorporating more input and people will have more input. So, do you have a feel for when you're gonna start holding these community meetings? I mean, I think you said, is it two or three months? Is that so like early in the, in 2023? We are planning then in October and November. Oh, okay. And it'll probably still into maybe December, January, it's on frame as well. So, how do you get a dialogue going? I mean, it's good to go out and give a pitch and then they give suggestions. But then how do you respond to the suggestions? Do you have to go back out again for several iterations till you're zero in on something? On a, what kind of consensus of the community and a feeling for them? Yeah, I think, well, I think what we plan to do is get this initial reaction and initial feedback from them and see and go from there. We wanna see what, you know, it's probably gonna be dependent on each community, you know, what they feel is, you know, right for their community, what things we should be considering for their areas. And then, yeah, I mean, if we need to go back and get more clarification, then, yeah, I mean, we'll try to proceed that. So we're coming to the end of our time, believe it or not. So are there any messages that you have an opportunity so you've got the podium right now? Is there anything that you wanna say out there about the overall program and what your expectations are before we wind it down? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the state as a whole, we're all on board on this renewable energy. Progress and in order for us to get there, we're gonna have to be, we're gonna have to do things differently. We can't just use what we have today. We're gonna have to plan for that future, that, you know, that 15 plus year future. And we're gonna have to look at these types of resources and transmission infrastructure. So, yeah, I guess that's it. I mean, that, you know, we're planning for the future. We have that insight, we have a vision and this is how we're gonna go about it. So let's throw up the last slide, slide 11. This tells us how to get in contact with your, reading a little bit small there. Ken, why don't you just help people where they can go? Yeah, so to get more information on the integrated grid planning process, you can go to onelectric.com.com slash clean energy. And there should be links to the integrated grid planning process. Alternatively, the shortcut is heco.com slash IGP. And then you can also email me ken.aromaki at poinelectric.com. Hey, great. So, HEPF will put this up on our own website, your slide deck so people can have access to that as well. And so, Ken, I think we're gonna have to leave it there. Thank you so much. So we've been watching Hawaii, the state of clean energy on things like Hawaii. And we've been talking story with Ken. Aromaki of Hawaiian Electric, who's got a huge job, putting all this together, energy zones and transmission and distribution and planning so that we can become a clean energy state. So thanks for participating, Ken. I know you worked late last night getting a slide deck together. Thank you. No, thank you for having me, Mitch. Okay, and thanks to our viewers for tuning in. I'm Mitch Ewan. We'll be back in about two weeks with another thrilling Hawaii Energy Policy Forum show on Think Tech Hawaii. So Aloha, everyone. See you in two weeks.