 think take away civil engagement lives here no problem okay okay we're back we're live this is energy 808 the cutting-edge with me J. Fidel and Marco Mangostorf who joins us by I guess by Voip from in in Hilo which is where God lives in Hilo anyway Marco thank you for joining us again today well full day in the neighborhood neighbor and you're wearing a shirt so it's a pleasure to be with you today Jake thank you we got we had a ton of things to talk about the show is entitled renewables coming clean in 28 2019 it almost rhymed lots of developments and prospects in Hawaii let's start with as we always do I think no let's start with PGV yeah Puno geothermal venture I mean an important an important source of renewables but really stymied by by the eruption so what happened well what's the folks that are not believe throw some thoughts at you I mean you know we renewables are going down in the state every time you hear one of the new renewable projects is less than before and so in a landscape of reducing renewable costs or prices an old avoided cost contract like that is really out of out of touch if you will so my question to you is has there been or should there be a renegotiation of that contract in order to in order to keep up and bring it current and make it and put it in harmony with other renewable costs well they may have something in the contract I mean who knows but they may have a provision in the contract that allows them to renegotiate in order practical way because of the disruption in services so that that's something that should be examined but anyway a couple of other factors going on here I guess I guess one of them is you got to fix the place and they've only been going in by helicopter to see what's going on they haven't fixed the place to get it up and running is not going to be that easy how long do you think it will take before they could you know ideally get it running again yeah that could be very hard yeah and dangerous one other factor I wanted to ask you about and that is the the political environment you know everybody knows that back in the 90s it was not a happy time for or Matt or anybody doing geothermal in the big island and a lot of native Hawaiians for cultural reasons didn't like it at all and opposed it and there was a lawsuit shut it down for a while and so forth and and that seemed to raise its head again when the eruption came around I mean it was a kind of a botchy thing this is a violation of our culture and so you know good that it that it closed down and I had the just an impression now just a just an impression personal impression that the unwillingness of the mayor in the in the county to allow access back to Puna was really also an expression of we're not we're not in a big hurry to have geothermal come back online what do you get about that what is the political environment for or Matt and PGV right now well I think you've got others you know we have Kakihele Senator Kehele Lorena Noe and I haven't pulled them all that's an interesting point Marco yeah okay well let's see what happens it's definitely something we have to follow but let me move on to who who know who know what's going on with them there that we talked about them before and we ought to get a handle on where they're doing here at the end of the year that's a lot that's a lot on the big island yeah yeah that's a yeah yeah and and all you know we always talk about having a diversification of the portfolio but matter of fact you know it's all connected because you have you still have to come up with enough energy to satisfy the market and as you know interesting that you mentioned that were the issue in front of the Supreme Court well if it remains the way you think the issue to the lower court will be what happens when you consider the effect of the emissions from this this plant well you know one possibility for the Commission okay we considered the emissions but we also considered the need to satisfy the market and if we if we believe and there may be more information on this going forward if we believe that for example to a geothermal venture isn't going to resume then that would sort of you know move the needle toward approving the whole new plant even though there are you know considerations around the emissions so my only point is that all these things relate to all these other things at the end of the day you got to keep the lights on well yeah and I totally agree in fact you know we talked about this a long time ago you you can't just build solar without storage you'll never get to a hundred percent renewables you have to have storage and I think everybody's recognizing that and the question is going to be whether the legislature recognizes that you know going forward to make sure that we incentivize the storage so we take a short break Marco and we'll talk about the tax credits right after this break and PV in general we'll be right back I'm getting older do I need to worry about falling yes you do each year one and four people 65 and older will experience a fall and many will be serious the majority of falls happen at home so remove things that could make you trip and install handrails to keep you steady to learn more about the steps you can take to help prevent a fall please talk to your doctor you can also visit a ARP foundation org or Medicare made clear dot com slash falls this message was brought to you by united healthcare and a ARP foundation I'm Jay Fidel of Think Tech come around every Tuesday at 2 p.m. with John David and me we talking about history history lens right John exactly seeing current events through the lens of the past absolutely see you next time okay Jay thanks okay we know Marco Mangos often me we're talking about energy 808 the cutting-edge and at this point we're talking about photovoltaic PV rooftop whatnot and you know the realization if you will the community industry and governmental realization that you can't get to 100% renewables without not only PV but also storage to make the PV into firm dispatchable power so so that means to me and I'm an incentive man I believe in incentives that means you have to incentivize storage every time you get a chance to get to get it at parity so you know for every kilowatt that's generated by PV you're going to have battery to hold it for the appropriate period of time query what is the status of those incentives right now Marco we have 30% I totally agree we're on borrowed time we have to be resilient we have to be able to come up not like Puerto Rico actually come up back back to normal as soon as possible and storage is a solution to that as well as the basic principle of reaching 100 percent renewables on schedule but let me ask you this I mean with this tax credit bill that it's gone in and failed three times was that was that about you know single-family residences was that was that about you know private residences or was that also you know about the utility because it seems to me that it's nice that the guy down the block has a resilient house I don't have a resilient house I don't have PV I don't have storage El Nino is coming El Nino starts this year and the chances of Hawaii being hit are very great already there are strange weather disturbances in Australia because of El Nino so yes we stand a good chance of getting hit so the question is what do we do to make the utility resilient how do we is there a state tax credit for the utility to build solar farms with with you know matching storage such as what Kawhi did a KiUC did it in Kawhi got two facilities out there with you know big storage facilities and and Hawaii electorate would like to do it too but we got to go all the way we have to incentivize this to make it complete if we want to serve not only the individual residences but the community in general comment okay well that's a choice I mean but I think what you said in which it does answer my my question is if they go to these third parties and they say in the contract we want you to not only do solar we want you to do storage so go out and do it and if those guys get a federal credit or I guess they would be entitled to attack a state tax credit if they did it all in a bundle as you said then then everybody it works that way so Hawaii doesn't have to do it as long as it's able to get it done and whoever is doing it gets the tax credit for an incentive and you know that all seems to work for me does that work for you yeah yeah yeah but you know and this happened in Puerto Rico if after Maria in Puerto Rico a good part of the solar solar arrays were broken by the way some of them were not broken it's very interesting how the way you fasten the cells to the supports made a huge big difference in which ones you know were continued to generate electricity afterward but anyway so if you have these big companies from the mainland come in and do you know these these arrays and solar and all that just as we wish then you know you and when you need to get them fixed you're not sure whether that company is going to be able to get here or has a presence here that would be able to fix them and you know it goes to something that you and I have talked about before is it for these big for these big arrays for these utility scale solar farms wouldn't it be a better thing for us to use local companies and to encourage the entrepreneurs to build companies that are big enough to handle big solar farms right here wouldn't that be better for resilience because after all that's what we're talking about well we can only hope that that's the way it's going to shape up with these projects that there that there will be you know local presence and they'll have spare parts and they'll have labor you know that's skilled enough to fix it when it's torn up which could happen I mean you know which way would you want to go to create the kind of resilience that we will need not we may need but we will need when a storm strikes a climate change storm and how would you like to see you know all of these facilities structured to best provide that resilience I know that's really wonderful it's so sort of the mesh technology everybody helps everybody everything is connected and that's where we have to go and we have to build that so it can be resilient even in the face of extreme weather well thank you Marco this has been a great discussion I hope we can continue this two weeks hence and I look forward to talking with you then in the meantime happy new year Marco yeah I thought I heard they say before for Christmas they said what is it melly kaleke Marco yeah thank you Marco take care