 Okay, we're back. We're live. It's the 4 o'clock rock. I'm Jay Feidl. This is ThingFake. And this is Hawaii, the state of clean energy, a flagship energy show by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum every Wednesday at 4 p.m. And my co-host, Ray Starlin. Hi, Ray. Hi, Jay. How are you today? I'm good with you, with you guys. We've got a great show. Lisa Harmon, she's here too. Hi, Lisa. Hi, nice to see you, Jay. Now today we're going to talk about part of our Whatever Happened to series and What's Next series, which is kind of driven of what we did last Thursday at the Hawaii Legislative Briefing. And today our topic is Whatever Happened to PV. And there's a lot to talk about there. That's why this is a nine-hour show. I'm only kidding. And, you know, we got two great guests for that, Colin Yost, of Revolution Sun and Robert Harris of Sun Run. But before we get to that, we have Lisa. We have the NegaWatt Moment from Hawaii Energy. And you have a movie, perhaps, that you would like to play, Lisa? I do. I'd like to show you a little video first, if we can. Okay, we're going to do that. Today we're here at Hilton Hawaiian Village. We hosted a Lunch and Learn event for key customers here in Hawaii. Hawaii Energy, Sylvania Lighting and HD Supply sponsored the event so we could explain the new programs for 2017, Sylvania Products and HD Supply Distribution, and how customers can take advantage of the programs offered by Hawaii Energy here in the local Hawaii market to significantly reduce their energy at affordable rates for Hawaii customers. Hawaii Energy has helped HD Supply as a supplier in more ways that I can consider. They've helped us with our programs. They've helped us with the technology and technical questions, and especially with the rebate program that we have. Hawaii Energy has been an excellent partner for many, many years working with vendors like myself with Sylvania Lighting and our distributor partners here in Hawaii to be very innovative with their programs to help their customers and our customers significantly reduce their energy at an affordable cost and making everything possible. We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. This is Hawaii the state of clean energy, Ray Starling and Lisa Harmon. Lisa, what was that movie about? Well, that was a video about an event that we had last week with our clean energy allies. So these are the contractors and allies in the marketplace that are helping promote our programs. So it was a co-op funded event, meaning we supported the event with our partner HD Supply in order to educate the businesses about the great incentives that we have to purchase energy-efficient lighting. Yeah, this is really important because this is a way to reach business. I'm going to say you can always reach business on its stomach. That's right. We had some great food and really good information all about the program, the rebates that we have for different types of lamps, and then HD Supply. Sylvania gave a technical presentation on how to choose the right color temperature and the right type of lamp for your business. So it's more than education, though. You want to motivate them to think efficiency. Absolutely. So there was a lot of hotel ownership, decision makers there, hotel facilities personnel and engineers that know what they need in their facility. And so we're there to help guide them. And again, offer incentives on buying a premium piece of lighting at a reduced cost thanks to the incentive from point of view. Yeah, yeah. So it works in many ways. You introduce them to the incentives. Now you've got them down, going down the track. So you understand, they understand what's out there, how you can help them, and then you help them. Right. That's right. And so we help the trade allies, too, in providing funding to host these types of events. Again, they're the market multipliers that do the outreach so that we can get to all the customers because we want to help pave the way to get us to that hundred percent. Absolutely. You're an important part of that, but you knew that. Of course we are. So what caught my eye when I looked at your notes on this was the thing about hotels. Yes. Because hotels are huge users. You know, I'm not home all day, right? But guests in hotels spend a fair percentage of time in the hotel room and the hotel using a lot of energy per capita. And if you reach the hotel, what did I tell you before, it's a ripe pomegranate. Yes, you did say pomegranate. We work really closely with the tourism industry here and with all the major hotels. You large and small of the hotels to help them reduce their business expenses by purchasing more energy efficient equipment, be it lighting or HVAC, air conditioning pumps, motors, building envelopes, types of things. So many things, really. A lot of things that we can help with, absolutely. What kind of response are you getting from this program, this new program? Oh, fantastic. Well, we've got the co-op event funding. So we've got a lot of contractors and clean energy allies interested in having our assistance to spread the word about our good programs. And of course, our lighting distributor instant rebate program that you saw featured on the video has been really successful because it's just so easy for businesses to participate. They just go to a participating distributor, which they can find on our website, purchase the lamps they need and have the commercial rebate applied instantly at the time of purchase. So how do I get an invitation to your next lunch? Well, if you go to our website and sign up as a clean energy ally at whiteenergy.com slash CEA, we will put you in our database and you can get an invitation that way, especially if you're a contractor out there doing great work, Jay, and I know you are a matter of speaking. So would you be there? Of course, I like to attend all the events. Yeah. Let me ask Ray if he has any cross examination here. No, I think you covered it well, but I do want to mention if you haven't been to the Hawaii Energy website lately, you guys have put up some great videos and they're they're interesting to look at there. And they're very informative. So I hadn't looked in a while and I took the opportunity to do that. So you've done a great job. Thank you. Please pass that back and also to the folks out there watching today. Take a look. You'll find something there for you no matter what you do with energy. It's covered there somewhere. That's right. I could do a quick plug for our Hawaii energized and maybe that's the new video that you saw too. We just released season two or number two video number two today with a lot of great energy informative tips. So check that out on our website at whiteenergy.com. Okay, the Academy Awards are coming soon. That's right. We'll have to tell Shayna and Ramsey to prepare our newest stars. Thank you, Lisa. Lisa Carmen, Hawaii Energy. Thank you. And take a short break. I'm going to come back to our principal guest Colin Yost and Robert Harris will be right back. Oh, and Aloha. My name is Raya Salter and I am the host of Power of Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to figure out how we're going to work towards a clean and renewable energy future. We have exciting conversations with all kinds of stakeholders, everyone who needs to come together to talk about renewable energy, be they engineers, advocates, lawyers, utility executives, musicians or artists to see how we can come together to make a renewable future Tuesdays at 1pm. Aloha, Howard Wig. I am the proud host of cold green think tech Hawaii. I appear every other Monday at three in the afternoon. Do not tune in in the morning. My topic is energy efficiency. It sounds dry as heck, but it's not. We're paying $5 billion a year for imported oil. My job is to shave that shave that shave that down in homes and buildings, while delivering better comfort, better light, better air conditioning, better everything. So if you're interested in your future, you'd better tune in to me three o'clock every other Monday, cold green aloha and thank you very much. Hi, I'm Marianne Sasaki from Life in the Law on think tech Hawaii. I'm delighted to tell everybody I'm so excited. I'm going to Washington to march with women on Saturday, January 21st. It's going to be a huge, huge event. And I think we're doing something in Hawaii too, aren't we? Yes, we are here on Oahu. We're going to be at the Capitol, starting at 8am. So all this hacking has become a major topic. I'm Andrew, the security guy. Join me on Hibachi Talk and learn a little bit more about it. I have my friend Gordo and my puppet buddy Angus. Check us out on Fridays at one o'clock on think tech Hawaii. Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. That's Ray Starling, my cohost. And today we're talking about whatever happened to PV, because we're talking about whatever happened to all these things. And in the series that Ray has established here, he's kind of like the producer for this. But it is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forms project, right? And it's the month of January. I do know where I am. Today, we're talking about PV. And so the question is whatever happened to it. But Ray, can you expand on that? What is the, what is the object of this discussion? Well, we wanted to go back and look over the last decade. We had a lot of ideas put on the table about what we could do for renewable energy in Hawaii. And some things got on the table and then disappeared. Other things got going a little bit. And some are still chugging along. But PV is one of the ones that's actually done quite well. And so we wanted to explore today, you know, what what was different about PV that allowed it to to do what it has done. And it hasn't done as well as it wanted to, obviously. So what could we do going forward to make it different? And and we've got two smartest guys in the PV area with us today, Colin and Robert. And so we've got the right people to ask these questions to so we get started and kind of talk about what what has happened to PV over the last 10 years. Before we actually start the conversation, Colin, could you make that microphone point to your mouth instead of your shirt? We're getting a great report on your shirt. But absolutely better. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Sure. So when you came in, I asked a question, I'm going to ask it again, you know, we've so many articles about the demise of the PV installation industry, you guys are living proof that it's still alive and well. But what about those articles? What about the trends that Marco Mangelsdorf reports to us in and out of the star advertiser every every few days? Is it is it okay? Is it safe? Sure. Thanks for the question, Jay. So I mean, just make sure we're clear what we're talking about PV or rooftop solar or something that everybody sees. Now it's approximately one in every three single family homes now has a PV system on it. And what that's caused is, you know, if you look back in 2006, the peak energy demand was about 1pm. And over the time period since then, again, obviously, energy efficiency has a component of this. The peaks actually shifted now to 7pm. And the overall consumption of power in Hawaii dropped by about 10 to 15%. That's because of PV energy efficiency. Obviously, like, you know, basically, we're just looking at the net system effects. But obviously, PV's had a big part of this. And what's that has resulted in is the average consumer is seeing about a 10% reduction in bills. Obviously, those who have PV are seeing more of that benefit. But overall, the reduction in energy consumption is something that flows to everybody. So it's a tremendous success story to some extent that we're able to say, we have the highest penetration per capita, and we're actually seeing a lot of the benefits from that. But recently, there was a decision to eliminate something called net energy metering, which is sort of a bedrock. You are still burning over that. Well, again, just from a like, you know, like what is going on, right? So, so that that has been eliminated. And we're seeing a transition in the market. And so much like if you were to go to an automobile manufacturer and say, All right, starting tomorrow, every car has to have three wheels. Could they do it? They build it? Of course, it's just going to take some time. And so I think we're seeing that transition period. Where's that transition going to go? So I mean, it's pretty clear that solar storage is where we're headed that all systems from now on, well, self generate power, and we'll store some of it's the ideas that you'll produce electricity. Do you think that when the PUC knocked off net energy metering, it intended to incentivize storage? I think absolutely. And I think it's very much what is happening. And I think in their order, if you look at it, they're very much saying that we see a bright future for they call, you know, DRs energy policyways have to have lots of acronyms, but on distributing energy resources or in this case, sort of self generating, self storing systems. And, you know, this is where the future is. And I think the solar industry is embracing that. And although I think certain players are still having a lot of trouble with the transition, you know, understandably, it has been a rough transition like going out of business. We've seen a lot of players got a business obviously the market itself is contracted. But this is probably the darkest period right now. And I think the future looks very promising. Maybe it'll reveal itself on inauguration day. I'm only kidding. Colin, how much of what Robert has said, do you agree with? I actually do agree with everything Robert said, I am very optimistic about the future. I do still have concerns, though, about the transition to the future. And yeah, I think one of the lessons learned, we talked about this show, having a lessons learned component is how did we get here? I don't want to dwell on it too much. But I think that the way we need to continue moving is to do things in a planned and deliberate way, not have abrupt starts and stops to programs, but have intentional timelines for we're going to transition to such and such when we when we do new tariffs, and to make sure that consumers and the utility have advanced notice and any manufacturers and solar companies have advanced notice. So we can plan for those things better. We had very abrupt end to the net metering program. We had an even more abrupt end to the customer grid supply program. And self supply is just now getting started. But if we can be more deliberate about these things, we're going to be more successful. And technology will also enable us to be more successful. But really, in the planning of it, we have to have advanced notice because HECO, for example, when we started the grid supply and the self supply programs in October of 2015, it took HECO four months to get the forms together for consumers to apply for these programs. And that kind of thing is should not be repeated. That put everybody into an artificial four month law, consumers and the industry, that wasn't necessary if we just did a little bit of extra planning. Can you point it up to you? Yes, actually, this is more than PV, it's acoustics. That's right. All right, so where does PV fit going forward? I mean, you know, we've said for years we have to have a diversity of sources. Renewables is almost synonymous with having multiple renewables. And yet, you know, with all the trouble, still, PV is the 800 pound gorilla in renewable energy right now because everybody likes it. It doesn't have controversy. You know, there's no crowds in the street throwing brick bats Yeah, the Tea Party likes PV. It does. Yeah, it's funny, we've now done three polls in Hawaii gauging the popularity of rooftop solar and almost consistently the support's been about 94%, which is about the ubiquitous of support for anything. I mean, it is cross, you know, race, you know, location, people love solar. It's mom and apple pie. Yeah, truly. And then the neat thing too is, and I guess this is an important factor, is that, you know, when you start talking about diversity, you're talking about a planning perspective where you're saying, okay, we want to buy so much of this and so much of that and so much of this. The distinction here is that people are deciding to self-generate. So the market itself is working. That consumers are saying, well, I can buy power from the utility at this price where I could self-generate at a cheaper price. So I'm going to choose to self-generate. And that's market, knowing what markets are supposed to do. And indeed, PV is the one thing that comes to mind when you think about self-generation. You can't do that with wind, not on the consumer side. In fact, there's no other source, am I right, where you can self-generate, have your own package, take care of yourself, even if you don't have, even if you don't need anything from the grid right now in a given moment, yeah. I agreed. And I think if we only viewed it as self-generation, that'd be one thing where we'd say, okay, people are starting self-generating. Overall, the load's going to reduce. But I think the other exciting component about this is, we don't necessarily want these people just to depart the grid. Having them integrated and connected to the grid, and able to provide resources back is really where the potential is unlocked in a way that benefits everyone. So, instead of building a new peaker plant or spending millions of dollars and built by new generators, like currently being proposed, you simply say, all right, 100 homes have these solar-postorage systems. We no longer need these other resources, so that money can now be saved, potentially paid back to the customers a little bit to incentivize them to contribute. The idea is it's a net savings for everybody, and I think that is going to be a major component to Hawaii's future, simply because people are economically incentivized to self- generate, and once they're self-generating, you're going to want to encourage them to provide those resources back. Okay, so give me a picture of, you know, Christmas future here, and stand back, you know, from your obvious connection with solar. Is there room for wind? Is there room for other renewables? Or should we plan to make solar 94% plus of our total renewables portfolio? I think a diversity is always important, but if I were a regulator right now, I'd be cautious about entering into expensive rate payer-based contracts for fear that that become a stranded asset in the future. One thing that's really attractive that the Commission has been doing recently is they've been doing independent power providers. They've been competing over bidding for third parties and providing the power. So they enjoy the benefit, but they also enjoy the risk. So if consumption goes down, we don't need those resources in the future. They bear the risk, not the rate payer at large. So to the extent that you're looking at large projects that rate payers will be on the hook for, those are the kind of things I would, as if I were a regulator, I would look at very carefully, because if load dropped, say by 20%, you're going to say, well, do we need those resources anymore? I've talked about big projects for a minute. You know, you guys are mostly involved in the consumer side of the equation, not on large, you know, utility scale solar projects. But don't you think they have a role here? Aren't they more efficient? And aren't they more, what do you call it, don't they have greater social equity when the poor guy, you know, he can't put 40 or 50 thousand dollars on his roof, but the utility can do that out in the field on their installation. What role does that play in the future of solar and white? Yeah, I think there's absolutely a piece of the pie that should go to utility scale and just larger commercial solar. It does have some advantages and disadvantages, but it's part of the puzzle. I mean, we need to get to 100% renewable as quickly as we can. Although, as Robert said, at the beginning of our discussion, distributed residential PV has contributed greatly to lowering everyone's costs and bills. And that's not something that's normally talked about or appreciated. So there are also disadvantages to utility scale, especially when you're integrating storage. You have to really have massive amounts of storage to get the same kind of smoothing effects and versatility that you can achieve, perhaps a lot easier on a distributed residential scale. And you're still going to have line loss issues when you site that stuff far away from where the users are. There's not a lot of, you know, load that's close to the open D&E class agland in Hawaii. So if you site it out there and you're transmitting that power over lines, you're going to have a significant loss of energy doing that that you don't have when you site it directly on top of the user. Do you guys support community solar project? Yes. Are you part of them? Do you contract for them? Doesn't exist yet. I'm still waiting for it. Okay, but I mean it's something you want to, is it a big business source for you, community solar? Do you see it as something you want to be involved in, something in which you could make some money? Again, because the program hasn't been set up yet, it's really hard to determine whether or not it's a viable program. Are you participating in setting it up? So we are in the docket and we are involved in those discussions. So yeah, I mean community solar I think could play a incredible role and kind of give an opportunity for everybody to sort of invest in and enjoy the benefits of solar. So like I do think we have an all-the-above requirement or approach. We're going to need a lot of different resources. When you talk about a hundred percent clean energy, you don't need just a hundred percent. You need to actually well above that because you need spinning reserves, you need other things and there's a lot of other kind of grid improvements that you know probably longer than the show to talk about. But that being said, if you have a market force that's working, that's happening, like you know everyone's now buying a different kind of car or whatever, you start to start to plan for that. You say okay we anticipate a large amount there, how do we benefit from that and how do we you know also make sure we're not. Sure, you got to do your business planning on it. Now in terms of business planning you know we was speaking before about the package deal because we hear more and more about the package deal and Robert told me he's already doing a package deal. I don't know if a revolution is already doing a package deal. Absolutely. Okay, so how are you shaping that particular product? How successful is it so far and where do you see it playing a role in the future of the development of solar and light? Well we're agnostic as to technology type, manufacturer type, so we look at each individual consumer, see what's best for them and then put together their own package of a storage plus solar solution or I mean we have one customer who just wants a battery. He doesn't even have PV on his house but he wants a battery, he wants to use it for the things that the battery can do and maybe he's thinking about participating in a time-use program. It's not a big market store. You may know it actually, but in any event we will do anything a customer wants and anything that's in the best interest of the customer but I think that even before self- supply has really taken off a lot of the grid supply and even some of the net metering customers that we're still building from the backlog, they have asked for batteries as well because products like the Tesla Powerwall 2, the new generation of Tesla is so attractive and it has so many different things that can help a home function better and provide backup power and all that kind of stuff that people were asking for it and it's more much more affordable than ever in the past. I mean it's come down in price. You know that's like those ads on TV where they advertise a drug that your doctor would have to prescribe and then you have to go to your doctor and ask him for the drug so I can see so many coming in to call on and saying you know I got to have a Tesla battery. Can you please arrange that? People do. What are the side effects? But it's not necessarily the best battery for everybody. There will be instances where other manufacturers products might be better. Let's talk about technology. We only have a couple minutes left here and I wanted to get that in before we summarize. You know technology is high on the list of elements that govern your business and your future and for that matter you know the role it plays, your business plays in development of clean energy. So what kind of technological things are happening? What should happen? What will happen? What are your thoughts about the technology moving forward Robert? So Jay I mean you're absolutely right. Technology is driving 99% of what we're talking about today. It's a disruptive and positive force here where normally economic and policy things that complicate energy you know energy generally you know the technology sort of helping us ride through all that. You know you asked about you know what does a package look like? What does it look like to a consumer? So you know for example our company offers a lease that starts at 18 cents a kilowatt no money down. So you have solar and storage and then you know basically your paying significantly less than you would be paying to utility. So why wouldn't you do it? And again there's competitors are offering very similar things. It's not unique. So the idea is you know we're sort of reaching people who don't have the money necessarily do that. We're reaching you know folks who just want to see the benefit right away. Like the guy with the battery. Well you know like you know we installed the very we installed the very first self-supply system and it's a person who wanted to build the greenest house in Hawaii. So he's done a lot of amazing things like his own water purification system. He used the old Bradford floorboards for his home. People love technology. But I mean this is one where he can say I'm actually saving money with it too. I'm going green and I'm saving money. So excited. It's a great thing. Ray you gotta summarize because we're almost out of time. Well I wanted to get at least one idea from each of you as to what what could we do going forward that would help you see the future better. Okay 30 seconds each. What's not being done right now? The state of Hawaii? Yeah the state. What could we do better that would make it easier for you guys to get solar on more houses? I think the number one thing on our customer's wish list is an incentive for storage. We don't yet have a real incentive in the tax code or in the programs that we run that incentivizes specifically storage. Like the new time of use program is not a does not have a storage. Excellent important thought. Robert what do you got? I'd say I'm recognized people have a right to self-generate and then stay out of the way. You can't force people to buy power from utility and once you've recognized hey you have the right to self-generate just allow them to do that and then let the market take over. Okay Robert Harris of Sun Run and Colin Yoast of Revolution thank you very much for joining us thank you Ray whatever happened to PV lots is happening with PV.