 Wednesday afternoon a special Hawaiian Electric show today on Hawaii the state of clean energy and we have news news from Hawaiian Electric through Peter Rasek he's a spokesman for Hawaiian Electric welcome to the show Peter. Thank you very much Jay it's good to be in your new studio however remotely that happened but glad to be here and glad to talk about various things that are going on with us in the new year. Well it's the beginning of a new year lots of changes lots of things happening I wonder if we could you know touch on some of them you know for example you have a new CEO at Hawaiian Electric that's very important can you talk about that? Sure the CEO's been named Scott Sue he hasn't officially taken office you know the crown hasn't been put on his head just yet but it's a transition period with Alan Oshima who's been our very excellent president for the last five years through some what the Queen of England would call bumpy times I suppose and Scott's going to be taken over Scott's been with the company his entire career Alan was with the company for five years after a very long you know career as a utility attorney and other kinds of things but Scott's been with the company virtually since he got out of college he went to Kamehameha schools he went to Stanford a little college on the on the west coast and got a got a an engineering degree there and came back to Hawaii and he's worked in perhaps four or five six I'd have to count them up different departments at Hawaiian Electric he's worked most recently as the vice president senior vice president for public affairs but he has been he's been in the environmental department he's been in power supply he's very well known to the people in the company and he yes he says he grew up in the company and you know I can say if you notice in the history almost 130 years there have been two Asian Americans who have been president of the company Alan Oshima was the first and Scott Sue is the second and there have been some other locally born folks going back over the years but so you know this is Hawaiian Electric and it really is it's a company of local values and the people who are in charge of it have I think those local values I've only lived in Hawaii about 48 years or so so I'm so you know just a young off the boat off the boat but you know I've tried to live those values as well and I think they're very important we are of this community of nowhere else nobody everybody who works for Hawaiian Electric lives on these islands we all work here you know so we're supplying our friends and our neighbors and our families with an essential service and so I think that that local feeling is going to continue as we move into a very but a very different kind of of energy environment the utility industry is changing across the United States and certainly here as well and we're already starting to see some well we've been seeing those changes and we're going to see them I think more and more quickly coming into the future so it's a pretty exciting time and we're all looking forward to Scott's official coronation and but he's already out in the in the field talking to various departments and talking to people in the community where he's very well known as a longtime Hawaiian Electric guy so we're very very pleased I mean he's my boss's boss so I've been reporting indirectly to him for the last four or five years and worked with him longer than that and I think we're all very pleased by this this decision and it's a great one yeah one thing that strikes me is I think it's really important to keep Hawaii Hawaiian to keep Hawaiian Electric Hawaiian to keep the special you know local local flavor to the company on the state we have our own special brand our own special way of doing things our own special aloha and I think in appointing Scott Sue as the CEO Hawaiian Electric has retained that rather than somebody from somewhere else I think it's great to have a local CEO yeah I agree with you I think there's nothing wrong with people coming from the mainland but since I did myself at one point but I think you know this is a pretty unique service there is it's a service that every single person in these islands depends on it's a service that you know we really can't imagine life without and it's got to be reliable it's got to be safe it's got to be futuristic really we're moving as I said into a whole new era of change that's continuing we're going to see new kinds of renewable energy we're going to see you know a lot more attention paid to resilience as we see the climate change affects a lot of stuff going on so we're I think it's ideal when you can keep your local values and keep your local experience but you can learn from everybody else and you can teach everybody else people come to Hawaii I don't think most people realize that people come here or they call here or they look at what we're doing here in the electric sector because we are the vanguard in so many areas and you know that's one of the reasons I think that the utility was named utility of the year by utility dive which is an online publication independent journalism we didn't apply for that honor we didn't put our name in or tell them why we were wonderful they sent us an email one day and said by the way you've been named utility of year for 2019 so there's clearly recognition sometimes happens you know there's more recognition outside the state than inside the state for some of our most innovative work that's you know the east west center feels that the university of Hawaii often feels that I think that's not an unusual feeling here at home we we tend you know understandably to focus on well there's a problem here or then my life went out during that storm on the mainland they say oh my god look at that utility there at 30% renewable energy one in three family single family homes on a while who has solar on their roof they're they're experimenting with ways of load management and getting customer participation we haven't even dreamed of so you know what we certainly are not immune to criticism for some of the things we do at home and we're trying our best but I think people in Hawaii ought to be justifiably proud of the utility that serves them and that really is looking out for their interests you know they're paying me to say that but it's the truth it's the truth and and I think if people saw some of the communications we get from other utilities some of the expressions on the faces of other utility presidents and other utility engineers when they see what we're doing here solar smart energy smart power electric power association national organization set a team of executives here a month or two ago just to look at what we're doing you don't hear about that too much and that's okay oh we're not you know we're not begging for for honors and adulation but people should be aware of the fact that we're a very forward-looking and forward-seeking kind of place yeah I'm willing to share I'm willing to share I mean Alan Oshima spoke at a tech for tech force conference back in nothing with November it was very interesting because he was talking about this very same subject and talking about how utilities and energy experts come from all over the country they want to know what Hawaiian Electric is doing and he shares willingly he shares the company shares its its challenges and its lessons with other utilities which is very nice of it in terms of you know spreading the technology spreading the knowledge and spreading the solutions that you found over the years especially particularly in renewable energy well we've learned you know in fairness we've learned a lot from from mainland dissociation national renewable energy laboratory at pre-electric power research institute and many others we take as well as we give but I think it's very much in the you know sometimes people say well why you know why don't you charge them you know if you're going to give them you know you've gained this experience well there may be some role for that in the future but essentially it's kind of a hawaii way you know you share the you share with the stranger you share with the neighbor and you know we're we're glad to make what we've done available and for other people to adapt it because we adapt from others as well so yeah it's it's a it's part of I think what you spoke of before and that's the Hawaiian flavor of the company yeah Hawaiian Electric Hawaii's electric company I always say so meanwhile we gave you an award you know at our at our Christmas function in December and Jim Kelly showed up and accepted the award for Hawaiian Electric for Alan Oshima at the time and that we gave it to you for community service because we feel that you have touched and continued to engage with the community in so many ways that you deserve to be among the recipients of the award we give every year well now we appreciate that again I don't think we we apply for that one either but you know we we're we're glad to be recognized so we don't do it chiefly to be recognized but of course when you do something good it's always nice to be recognized it's always nice to have people notice but we have our people and their families give thousands of hours every year in volunteer work and you know we're going to be right now they're recruiting people to be out on the street with the cops with the Hawaii Police Department next week or so in a safe driving effort we go into the the Loi and help you know clean up the some of the hey-owl in front of the Loi and we we have a lot of community activities plus charitable donations from the companies through the Hawaii Electric Industries Charitable Foundation and through the their own individual donations which the company will often match and you know it's again something we don't do to get get honors but we do it because we live here I mean we're all we are literally all part of this community it works well I want to talk about some of the news that's been released lately one of those things is a puno geothermal venture a lot of people thought that you know after the eruption it was it was going to be history but not it's coming back it's coming back this year can you talk about that sure it's really great news and the good way to start this year as you say after the may year 2018 when the killer way of alcano cut off the road and ate up some of the buildings at puno geothermal venture I think a lot of people thought well they've been around for almost 30 years and kind of run their course and that's the end of that and the unfortunately what happened we had to use a lot more oil on the big island which has always been a renewable energy leader we had to burn more oil and which raised the prices for people on the big island and but or math the owner of puno geothermal venture I think has been a very good corporate citizen they kept their staff on salary even though they weren't generating any income and we don't we don't pay them a penny unless they send electricity to the grid so the minute they shut down we're not we're paying them nothing but they kept their staff on on they kept their staff employed and paid they flew people by helicopter into the facility periodically to do maintenance and upgraded and they've been very energetic and wanting to reopen and so we've got a great deal all credits of the public utilities commission they said well you know since we're going to have to kind of look at this anew we'd like to see the people in the big island get a better price because most of the electricity coming from puno geothermal venture was under the old kind of contract which we call the avoided cost of oil so whatever oil was charging whatever we had to pay for oil we had to pay uh to puno geothermal venture for most of their about 30 of megawatts of their production the other eight megawatts was under a newer contract and so the people on the big island though they have been the outstanding leader probably in the world in in terms of the percentage of renewable energy on their grid we're also paying some pretty steep prices and much higher than they would have been they could have been under newer contracts so the puc and wisdom said you know before we give you permission to reopen that plant to put in the transmission lines to replace what was lost we'd like you to renegotiate that contract and that gave us the opening to go to p to pgv and say you know uh we have a contract but the the commission which is our regulator says we've got to renegotiate and they came to the table i i assume you know maybe a little bit reluctantly i don't know but you know because they had a good contract so that's good for them and uh came back to the table and we renegotiated a new contract uh it does two things basically first of all it gets us off the avoided price of oil uh they're going to be paid a stable steady amount just like a new wind farm today we don't pay by what the cost of oil is we pay by what their costs plus a reasonable profit is so some of the new wind farms that we are just i'm sorry new solar farms that we've opened up lately uh they've been in the 10 11 12 cents uh a kilowatt hour range and um so we went back and renegotiated that so starting in about 2022 when they've rebuilt and when they have expanded the uh they're we're going to be paying them at a fixed rate and uh so the bills on the big island will go down about seven dollars 50 cents a month in 2022 i believe and in 2023 this should be down about 13 dollars a month compared to today that's fabulous that's a pretty good break and the other thing they're doing is there they had been at 30 megawatts for many years they added eight megawatts of production now they're going to add another eight megawatts so they're going to be at 46 megawatts of production and so that's a substantial increase for them and for the big island which had already been uh the best in the state in terms of of you know regular renewable energy capacity so by 2023 or so we think 70 percent on on average of their energy is going to be renewable and that's that's going to be a real a real breakthrough that's going to help everybody and you know it's going to put more power into the system at a lower price so you know we've always heard that the farmers would like to farm if they could get less expensive electricity and other kinds of businesses may want to look at the big island and say well you know they're going to they're they're like greats are going to be lower their land rates may be lower and that they may be a place to do some business so we think it's going to be a great advantage to the the community of the big island and uh you know pave the way for future uh progress and how do you cope with the possibility of future eruptions uh this is a great move this is great we want to have diversified portfolio but how do you right you cope with that yeah you know there's really you build into the the possibility I mean you first of all from our point of view we always made sure that if we had if for whatever reason we lost the geothermal venture that there was enough other generation on the on the island so that the people would get the reliable service that they insisted on and they deserve because they're paying for it and uh so even though PGD went out pretty suddenly in May 2018 uh we had to buy more oil we had to burn more oil but we had the ability to keep the lights on across the big island so you know you've got to always plan for contingencies it is you know inherently a risk of having a geothermal plant that it's going to be on a geologically active place and then this is a possibility so you you just kind of build that into the planning and uh PGD certainly built it into their own own planning but we always look at the the total picture PGD looks out for their plant we look out for the big island and we we've always had enough generation capacity uh even though you know it's tempting to say well we don't really need this old plant we'll close it down uh shipment and some of the older older facilities there but we always were ready and the other thing of course is you try to diversify further uh Hu Honua is in a long time coming but that's a a plant that's going to burn biomass and we're we're not 100 certain but we're hopeful that it comes online so that there again we have a little we have some buffer and you can obviously not plan for every earthquake or plan for every every eruption but you have to plan generically so that whatever the worst case is you are uh you're prepared to respond to that that's why we still kept a Honua power plant in in mothball so to speak here on Oahu because until we're absolutely certain that we can meet the needs of all our customers we're not going to give up a facility like that need to have a fallback so let's go let's go to Lanai for a minute uh so there's some action on Lanai we saw something in the newspaper about negotiations between Larry Ellison the owner of Lanai uh and Hawaiian Electric for I guess uh his his wish to acquire utility assets that service uh that area very very interesting can you talk about it well uh this I can tell you what would I can tell you I can tell you what we know uh you know going back historically first of all uh the that electric facility was not always owned by Hawaiian Electric or Maui Electric it was originally owned by Castle and Cook going back to the the plantation days the the pineapple plantation days and then Murdoch took over the yeah well actually dull dull foods to go really back into ancient history and then uh David Murdoch bought the island and Castle and Cook took over the island and they uh all did eventually it was transitioned to be part of our electric company part of the Hawaiian Electric family so you know everything old is new again and now the owners of the island are looking to uh you know looking at the possibility and I would say of of reacquiring that and I want to say first of all this is in the very early stages of negotiation I know that Paloma Lanai wanted to get the word out and they wanted you know the people of Lanai who are either their employees or not their employees but about 3000 people there uh who are very you know sensitive as we know from recent history to what happens on their island uh they're going to be out in the community talking to them about this and trying to convince them that it's a good idea and I'm sure they'll encounter some questions at least and maybe more and it's going to have to be negotiated in a way that we we still have a responsibility to the people who are our customers today to make sure that the deal is good and then it's going to have to go to the public utilities commission and as you know the commission has not always looked fondly on on outside ownership uh this may be a different kind of situation I don't know it'll depend on what the details are in the in the in the discussion but um it's it's an interesting development a lot of interesting things are happening on Lanai it could be uh you know a very interesting model of sustainability and kind of a high end model to be very frank they've got two beautiful uh luxurious resorts over there that are a little bit out of my price range but you know they're doing a lot of other things on Lanai to be more sustainable they already took over the water company over there which of course is a critical piece of infrastructure so I think this was part of of their overall plan but a couple of months ago or in the last month or two we put out a request for proposals for more renewable energy for Lanai and for Molokai following the earlier one that we put out for the for the other islands and when when Paloma Lanai looked at that they thought well you know why should shouldn't we be doing that shouldn't we be the ones seeking the renewable energy for this our island which they do own 98 percent of so uh and it you know in a way to make sense they own the land if somebody else wants to come in there and do a renewable energy project they're going to end up having to deal with Paloma Lanai at some stage anyway so they said well rather than Hawaiian electric and Maui electric uh operations going through that process we should we should take charge of that process and make sure that whatever happens fits in with our own plans which are as I said very grand and very very forward-looking I believe so they came to us and said you know let's talk and we said yeah that makes sense let's negotiate we're not we haven't made it we haven't got a deal we haven't made a commitment we have no idea as I said how the public utilities commissioner will feel about it but you know the more things change the more they say the same yeah and this is an interesting change you're talking about changes here we're talking about a year in which changes will will happen and are happening and who knows what will follow I mean and you have so many renewable projects out out there I think right that's also a major change we're moving ahead with greater greater speed laxity toward renewables and that's very encouraging so the question I put to you though is you know Hawaiian Hawaiian electric is changing its name can you talk about that and what does that mean in the larger sense well what it means is perhaps more symbolic than for most customers than than you know substantial the Maui electric company Hawaii electric light company have been part of the Hawaiian electric family have been subsidiaries of Hawaiian electric for many years and we've gone through a process internally mostly over the last five or six years in which we tried to create one company in the in the bad old days we used to every each of the three companies used to order their own trucks and order their own vehicles and we ended up sometimes with with one kind of truck on this island and one kind of truck on that island which made it kind of inconvenient for you know us to be working together that's just one of many examples so now we have a unified fleet it's got a fleet manager who as it happens lives in Hilo but he manages the the fleet for the entire company for one company he managed and if if we buy things we buy things that work on all the islands so if we buy a new kind of bucket truck or we just got 30 new Kia electric vehicles that we'll be using them on all the islands and we'll have the parts and we'll be able to service them and and we'll have all the the benefits that come from buying a bigger number of vehicles than we would if each company went and tried to negotiate their own deal we have tons of examples of that we're saving money on Xeroxing that's because we're able to negotiate a contract I don't know if we're calling Xeroxing anymore is it electronic copying I guess we we've got now we have a contract that covers all the all the the company on all five islands and we get a better deal for that and we're saving you know we're I hope we're also copying fewer documents because that's kill that's a lot of trees but in any case we are making sure that we're getting the best possible deal and that goes ultimately to the bottom line for our customers uh and uh because as you know I mean we're limited on how much profit we can make by the public utilities commission they they watch us very closely and they say you can only earn up to this amount people think we got some kind of a guaranteed income we got a guaranteed cap and uh so this kind of these kinds of savings ultimately they accrue to the benefit of customers because we can be more efficient we can do more with the money that they send us to to provide electricity yeah economies of scale yeah exactly so this is a kind of a symbolic thing you know many companies rebrand themselves we've changed our logo we changed our logo just five or six years ago we you know this we got a zig zig zing logo five or six years ago and and all of this is part of the process of saying this is a Hawaiian electric company uh Hawaiian electric actually we're not going to use companies so much anymore this is Hawaiian electric we serve the big island we serve Maui, Mola, Kailana, we serve Oahu different operations on those islands but you know you could be answering the phone or calling the company tomorrow and you might get somebody in Hilo uh at the call center there who's sure I'll take care of you I'll help you out you know a lot of people are calling you that anyway Peter for some time it's you know it's it's the it's the direct approach if you will which is good one other point before we run and we only have a minute left uh is on friday uh scott's you among others are uh is speaking at the legislator briefing by the hawaii energy policy forum Peter Russox postman for Hawaiian electric thank you so much Peter thank you jane congratulations on your studio thank you aloha