 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy, and I'm your host, Vichuan. Our underwriter is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, and that's a program of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. I'm very pleased to welcome our guest once again, Toby Kinjade, who's a regular now on my show because he has so many good ideas and lots of good, lots of good flies that he actually customizes them himself. So Toby is a pioneer in the solar industry. I knew he was, but I didn't realize he's been in the solar industry for over 40 years, so about as long as I've been in the hydrogen industry. So today we're going to talk to Thorin about solar energy powering Oahu. Can it be done? Can we make that case? Toby, welcome back to the show, and I got to tell you I'm one of those people that doesn't, I'm not, I don't believe we can do that, but I want you to tell us how we can do that. Fair enough. Aloha, Commander, and thanks for having me. Well, okay, this is a really big question. I mean, and it's such a big question that the whole world turns on it. Can we actually power a modern grid, an energy intensive grid like Oahu with solar energy? Is that a pipe dream? Am I pulling your leg? Am I am I fantasizing or being aspirational? Well, I'm a realist. I've been in the solar industry for a long time and we deal with reality. We deal with water pumping systems, home power systems. So the question for me is all about reality. And that's the only thing I'm interested in. So what we have is, well, I'd love the slide that you have there. You're showing how you can double use land. And with agrivoltaics, like you're showing, this is something very useful. But what's interesting is when you solar power an island or an island grid, we want to use no new land. We want to do it with a footprint so small that you don't even notice it. So is that real? The other thing is we don't want to use our good agricultural land. It's not like we have gobs of gobs of spare land. So we don't want to cover all our ice fields up with arrays, like you saw on the opening slide here. Absolutely. So the big question is, can you actually solar power a grid as intensive as on the island of Oahu? Now, the funny thing about that is that's a big order. I mean, just at first glance, that's a big deal. So hey, let's jump to the first slide and let's just kind of set the scene. So our world, everyone I think would probably agree in reality is a fossil fuel economy. We're fossil fuel run. And so on this slide, we want to talk about very quickly or just briefly, what's the reason we need to change? Well, what are the characteristics of fossil fuels in our civilization? Well, it's toxic. You know, dose makes the poison. So if you have too much toxicity, there's going to be a point where it's going to knock you down. So toxicity, that's a problem. You have the expense. Nobody ever fills their tank up and says, oh, that was cheap. Not lately. And if you're a fleet manager and you're running hundreds of trucks, your diesel bill, just ask one, hey, what's your fuel bill every month? I'll just growl at you. It's big. So that's a problem. And then what's the cost of fuel? How do you know? What's the cost of diesel next week? I don't know. How would anyone know? What's it next year? What's the price of fuel five years from now? So all of the industry all around the world is suffering with these kinds of conditions. So what else do you have inequity? You have a volatile price. You don't know the inequity is everyone needs it and only a few people have it. Well, that's a lot of tension. That's not easy. And then it's scarce because they're not making it anymore. So you got to go find it and you got to secure it and you got to use your, your whatever defense you have to protect your hole in the ground so that you can sell these fossil fuels. So that's a lot of tension too. And so it's on a carbon cycle and burning this carbon. You go outside and you look at a line of cars and you imagine every car is spewing out all this pollution all over the world. It begs the question, hey, can we really keep doing this? So what's amazing is in the last 30 years, we've burned half the carbon that we've ever burned. So, you know, from the 18th, 19th to 20th century, we've all been burning carbon for 300 years. And yet after all of the public money and all of the outcry and all of the commitment to clean energy, have we actually even moved the dial? Not one bit. The No, it's actually the dial is going backwards. Using more fossil fuel than ever, despite all the investments we've made in wind turbines and solar arrays and all the other, we're just barely keeping pace. Yes. And the key to what you just said is we're not, you know, dropping the emissions by 50%, like the IPCC says, you better do it six years or you're not going to stop what's going to happen. No, we're not going the right way at all. So I think any rational individual would have to look at that and say all of the policy, all of the analysts, all of our work has amounted to nothing. It's in effect. So what's the problem? Well, we just went through a list on the fossil fuel side. So what we're going to propose is that, and for example, in the big question of how can we power the grid of Oahu, we're going to propose a clean hydrogen economy for the world. What does that mean? If we could pull it off, what would it mean? Well, it's the opposite of what we just said. It's non-toxic. It's available to everyone. It's inexpensive because there's no fuel costs. It's just hardware. So you could stretch the cost of the hardware out so the price goes down. It's available to everyone. It's equitable because everyone could do it. It's stable. The price is known. It never goes up because it's just hardware. And it's about a water cycle for the 21st century. This is our future. Now, I'm going to make this case that this is the only path actually that we could take that solves all of our problems everywhere, all at once, basically using the same equipment for everyone. Okay. Now, that's quite a claim. Is it true? Am I kidding you? Is this a delusion? Am I just saying this so I can sleep better at night? Am I aspirational? No, no, no. I don't care about any of that. I'm a realist. I want to know, can we actually save this world? Can we actually get off of this industrial drug that we're addicted to that is going to actually tear down all of our species, acidify our oceans, and we're going to end up as a civilization like every other civilization in history relegated to the dustbin? I don't know. This is the turning point. So today, we're going to ask a really big question. Can we actually power the grid on a walk? Okay. But before I answer that, I'd like to see the next slide. Let me throw that up in you because I want to make a point. The terrible of the spilt milk. The spilt milk. Okay. Imagine, I'm going to ask everyone a question. Imagine you have a table and you put a big jug of milk on and then you're setting the table or doing something and your dog jumps on the table. If you've ever had a dog, they always want to jump on the table and they knock over the jug of milk. Glug, glug, glug, glug. And it's spilling across the table, falls off the table and pools in this little puddle. Okay. Here's my question. What do you do first? Now, if you're an oil company, you'd say, oh, forget about the glug, glug, glug. No problem. It's falling across the table. What are you worried about? You got milk on the table, use a straw. And if it's falling on the floor, hey, you're worried about it. I'll get some tissues and sponges and I'll start mopping it up. Glug, glug, glug. Hey, no problem. In fact, here's the best idea. How about I pull up the shag carpet and let the milk drip into the floorboards? Hey, solve some problem. Out of sight, out of mind. That's called carbon capture and storage. Completely ridiculous. As long as you have the glug, glug, glug, glug, we're talking about 40 billion tons of air pollution. Air pollution doesn't weigh very much. So 40 billion tons. It's acidifying the ocean since our disaster. So I would submit to you some common senses left the building because all the policymakers, all of the consultants, all of the fossil fuel companies, watch you to look at the puddle on the ground and disregard the glug, glug, glug. So paying no attention to the man behind the curtain. Just don't worry about it. What I would say to you that any third grader has the critical thinking skills to be able to understand when the jug tips over, you don't start going to get towels, you write the jug. Wouldn't anyone agree with that? That's got to be job one. Unfortunately, we're in the situation here because the fossil fuel companies, hey, they're not going to give up. They're not going to roll over. In fact, it's worse. They went to the public money and said, look, look, look, look. We don't, you want you interfering with our business. So get all the public money to go for a clean economy. And I tell you what, give it to us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to pull up the carpet so you have the sour milk and go on the floor. It'll be someone else's problem. And in fact, this explains why we're in the situation we're in. We're not thinking properly. And so I just want to throw that cartoon up to kind of illustrate, hey, come on, let's bring some common sense and reality to this situation. So thank you for indulging me on that cartoon. Well, okay, so how big is the problem? How much load do we have to take care of? Yeah, that's now that we're going to get to the real question, which you just brought up. Hey, it's a mountain of energy, and it's such an enormous amount of energy, it's extremely intimidating. And anyone who just kind of, you know, at a glance would say, oh, you're talking about Mount Everest, what are you talking about? Everyone knows solar panels are diffuse, not very effective, not a very high energy density, what you want to run an industrial grid, get out of town. Well, really? Well, I'm in the real world. That's where I live. And so let's take a look at that. So let's, let's throw up the first slide. Now, let's answer your question. What are we talking about? What's the point here? Now, I tried to look up, what is the total energy of the grid on a walk-through? And it's a big number. I got a number from 2018, and it said about five and a half era watt hours, that's really in watt hours per year. That's really big. But some people have said from other sources I've read that it's as high as six or maybe even seven, they didn't have references, but I'm going to say A, it could be. But what I'm proposing is, not only are you going to solar power, this is the question we're going to ask, not only solar power the grid during the day, but you have to have enough solar to produce clean hydrogen to provide power at night. And when it's stormy, that becomes when you, when you factor that all in, it's a really big number. And I'm going to say you want to really do this for real. You don't need six or seven terawatt hours. You need 10, really in watt hours per year. So that is a real number. And it's a big number. So I can understand at first glance, you might be like, Oh, what are you talking about? Yeah, it's big. Oh, I don't want all my nice agricultural land covered up with TV either. Yeah, I mean, if we come to the end of our analysis and it takes 50% of the island, no one's going to do that. And all of the critics who have said, you will never solar power a Wahoo. And there are many people that say this, I've heard public utility commissioners say it, I've seen public policy analysts say it, I've heard engineers even say it. I've heard solar advocates say it because they want to be reasonable, I think. But I don't know what their motivation is, but we're going to actually answer this question to everyone's satisfaction. Can you really do this? Okay, so on that slide, if I say 10 terawatt hours, you know, what does that mean? It's hard to put your arm around what that means. Okay, 10 terawatt hours means 10,000 gigawatt hours, which means 10 million megawatt hours, which means 10 billion kilowatt hours. So now we can understand a kilowatt hour because that's on your bill. What's the cost of a retail electricity delivered on a Wahoo? Need 45 cents a kilowatt hour? Not around there. Oh yeah, but every slide where you watch things. Yeah, it's going up and down, but it's a number and everyone understands what a kilowatt hour is. Okay, so what I'm saying is in reality, if you want to have a solar-powered grid 24 seven, 365 days a year, you need 10 billion kilowatt hours per year. Okay, that is big. So so far the critics probably have it on me, but let's get to the end. Okay. Now, I'm sure they're circling like vultures, like look at this guy, you know, this is all just nonsense fluff. No, I'm already not sugarcoating anything. I'm saying, you don't need six terawatt hours, you need 10 billion kilowatt hours a year. Okay, now that's per year. So let's divide that number by 365 days. And that gives us a daily amount of what you'd have to produce with solar panels. Now I'm not talking wind, I'm not talking about anaerobic digesters or anything else. I am talking about the question we're asking. Can you solar power the island of Oahu as far as my brain is concerned? Okay. So when we do the division, it comes out to you need just north of 27 million kilowatt hours per day. Okay, again, first glance, everyone might just walk out of the room and say, you are never going to get there. Oh, really? Let's find out. Okay, so now we've defined how big the mountain is we have to climb. Right. And it's a big one. Everyone understands that. Okay, so let's go to the next slide. If we're going to propose that you're going to power this island, this whole grid, this 10 billion kilowatt hours per year, this 27 million kilowatt hours per day with solar, let's talk about what is the solar resource on Oahu. Okay, so let's bear with me now. Let's just talk about solar energy for a moment. Solar energy, of course, comes from the sun. Little is reflected off the top of the atmosphere. And what we're concerned with what happens when it finally hits the ground. So what the scientists did is they took a square meter of surface area and they put pyrometers all over the world. This has been done for years and years and they measure the two kinds of solar energy that happen. You know, diffuse light, like from clouds or through the atmosphere, and you have direct beam, and they integrate that and they add it all up and they come out with some an equivalent. So what they've done is they made a whole map of the world and they said, well, you have dawn and dusk and then you have peak sunlight. So if we integrate all of that, any location on earth has a solar resource defined by the peak hours per day. So for example, for example, let's say you're in Tucson, Arizona. I've been in Tucson. I know Tucson. It's hot. They have months soon in the summer. This is all accounted for. Now in Tucson, you get about six and a half peak hours per day of sunlight. Pretty good. In Portland, where I am, you get about three and a half hours of peak sunlight. We're in the Willamette Valley. It's a microclimate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Now the question is on Oahu, what is the solar resource? Well, now we understand that you have the windward side, kneeward side, and microclimates, but they've all been analyzing this for years and years and the most reliable number, and I got to pick one. If you look on the map, in the Pacific Rim, and especially on Oahu, it's about five and a half hours per day. You have to give clouds. It's not as good as Tucson, but you've got a lot of good solar energy. Now that's half the equation. That's the energy part. Now we have to talk about how much power and therefore how long will it actually be able to produce power? Okay. So what they've measured is that one square meter of sunlight in 39 and a third inches on a square receives about 1,000 watts of energy per square meter. That's at peak. That means when the sun's up high and you measure what's coming on that square meter of surface, you got 1,000 watts. But that's optical. We're talking about electricity. So what we're going to do is take that same square meter and we're going to put a solar electric photovoltaic panel in that square meter. Now what would you expect the power to be? So again, I have to call out and make a number. What is the efficiency of a solar panel? Well, for our purposes, I'm conservative. I'm not interested in any hope. I want to know what the real number is. So I'm going to choose 15%. Now, is that reasonable? If can we get solar panels that are 15% efficient? Well, yeah. Actually, nowadays you can buy panels. I've seen that 22% advertised, 24% possibly. Anyway, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I don't want a good answer. I want a real answer. That's the world I'm in. So I'm going to say 15%. Okay, we're almost there. Bear with it. So you take the 1,000 watts optically, you put in your 15% solar panel and what do you get? You get 15% of 1,000, which is 150 watts. That's the power in a moment in any instant at peak you would expect on a Wahoo from a photovoltaic panel that's one square meter. Okay, now energy is power times time. So to calculate how much energy we could produce on a Wahoo from one square meter solar panel, we simply multiply power times time. 150 watts is the power times five and a half hours, which is what the government says you've got that they've worked out. This is true. It's not a myth. Now, when you multiply the two, what do you get? You get 825 watt hours per square meter per day. Now, what does that mean watt hours? Nobody uses watt hours. So we have to convert this one about apples to apples into kilowatt hours. So 825 watt hours is eight tenths of a kilowatt, 0.825 kilowatt hours per square meter per day. Okay, thank you. You're all buried with me. Now we have two numbers that we know. We know how big the mountain is. We've got to climb in terms of energy, 27 million kilowatt hours per day. And the question is, can you do that on a Wahoo and what would it take? So we're looking at that. And now we know what the solar resources, we know that it's about eight tenths of a kilowatt hour per square meter per day. All right. Now we know the size of our mountain we're going to climb and we know how good our equipment is in climbing it. So now let's answer the question. So let's go to the next slide. Now, on this slide, you'll see we need 27 million kilowatt hours. And we know that the reference, the resources, eight tenths of a kilowatt hour per square meter per day. So you divide and that tells you if my proposal is correct with that 10 billion kilowatt hours per year, you're going to need 33 million square meters of solar panels. And that's a fact. Now the problem is for me is I don't know how big that is. I don't have a feel for that. What does 33 million square meters mean? Is it helpful? Yeah, it's helpful. Yeah. Well, I thought to myself, okay, what do I know? Well, I do know that one square mile has two and a half million square meters, 2.59. So we just simply divide the 33 million kilowatt hours by 2.59 million square meters per square mile. And what you get is a result of 12.82 square mile. Now it doesn't need all in one place. It's all over the island. We'll get to that. But I still don't have an answer that I haven't satisfied myself yet. Is that big? Is it small? Is it impractical? What do I know? So I thought, okay, here's how you find out. You take your 13 square miles and I'm going to call it 13 because I'm conservative. I think you need more. You need 13 square miles. So everyone, this is real now. You divide that simply by the whole area of Oahu, which is just a hair under 600 square miles. And the answer comes out much to my astonishment just over 2%. Now, hey, yeah, that's not entirely impractical. Now, if the math doesn't care what I want, the math is to the math. And it's good to have said, hey, you need half the island. If it was half the island, I would concede that all of the people who said you can't do it are correct. If it's a third of the island, I'd still say you're right. If it's a 10% of the island, I'd say, yeah, you're still right. That's not practical. But 2%. Hey, the problem is, anyone who has ever asked or tried to talk about solar power in Oahu, immediately gets thrown out as a crazy guy. Because of course, we know when you can't possibly power a modern electric grid of 10 terawatt-hour to do all that, it is never going to happen. Well, let's look at that. 2%. Now, what's amazing, I'm trying to calculate how much of Oahu is already paved. And I think you could argue that's more than 2% because you've got parking lots, you have the tops of big box stores, you have the port authorities, you have government buildings, you have schools. The largest consumer that's not military of electricity is the University of Hawaii, Manoa. You have all kinds of roofs, not with a little panel. I'm talking about you didn't put all these panels. The wonderful thing is, it's already paved. It's already zoned. I can get trucks out there, I can do the whole thing. And the magic that goes to your opening slide is that you could do all of this with not one lick of new land. You already have the land, we're just going to dual use it. You know, in a parking lot, you put a canopy, solar canopy, it's still a parking lot. There's no room. So what an astonishing result. Hey, if unless you think 2% is unreasonable, then I would concede. But if you think 2% is not all that crazy, since you already have land, I'd say the answer now finally to the question, can we solar power the grid of Oahu is? Yes, you can. If yours 2%. So that's an interesting result because most experts that I've listened to just dismissed the question out of hand. They take it off the table. It's not even discussed. They're going to say, well, you've got to do other things that are going to know I'm only talking about solar panels, solar electric panels, and electrolyzers that make clean hydrogen, which is what you demonstrate in your project on the big island. That's what you're doing. You're using sunlight and water to run an electrolyzer to make clean hydrogen fuel to run the fuel cell buses. Wonderful. It's just an extension of that. Maybe add some fuel cells to put back that hydrogen energy on the grid, as we're talking about the grid. But you have proven the case that this technology is not arm-waving. It's demonstrable. It's real. We know everything about it. And what I tried to illustrate in this calculation is I'm not sugarcoating it. I'm not saying you need 6 trillion watt hours a year. I'm saying you need 10. That's the number. And we've proven now mathematically that if you can live with 2%, you are completely energy ingrid. Right. Well, okay. Now let's, okay, sorry. No, no, no. I just wanted to segue into, well, let's talk about the money. Because now that we've established you physically could do it, what about the money? I mean, if it's a trillion dollars, how are you going to pay for it? Right? So let's go to the next slide. Because That's your milk, sir. Yeah. You see, the fossil fuel industry is basically there in command. They're selling you something. They're just like a drug cartel. They want to keep selling it to you. So they're going to tell you a story. And what do they tell you? They say, well, you know, if you want to convert, you want to transition to clean energy, it'll cost you a brilliant dollar. Ooh, that's scary. Well, a trillion. Do you have a trillion? I don't have a trillion. Ooh, I guess we can't do it. And then they're going to say, well, and the cost is they're only giving you half the inflation. They don't talk about what you make. Just the cost will be so detrimental to you. You're going to ruin your economy if you even try. Ooh, now I'm really scared. That sounds terrible. All right. And then they follow up with that with the politicians and say, you want your economy to grow? If it doesn't grow and you don't, if you do anything that's against us, we'll jerk up the price. And if the price goes up, people get mad at you and they won't vote you in. Ooh, the public terrified. I'm not going to get a paycheck. I'm not going to get my, oh, this is terrible. No, no, no, no. What do you want, Mr. Oil Company? Well, we want you to give us the billions of dollars. This is going on to pull up the carpet and let the milk sink into the floorboard, this carpet and store it. So this is really kind of barbaric and kind of criminal and basically tough guys around the world say, you're going to buy our oil or forget about it. We'll bury it. So, so this has been great. Toby, let's wind it up. We have one last slide. We have about 30 seconds. Okay. So what I'm suggesting to you is like, for example, when a school district buys a bunch of computers, they don't actually buy the computer. What they do is they lease the computers. So that way they don't come up with all the money. They make the lease payments and then after three or five years or whatever the term is, then they say, okay, we're going to give them back and we want to lease new computers just like with a car. So the point is you're not going to pay for this huge system we're talking about. No, no, no, no, no, no. An underwriter is going to pay for it. And if it's established and put in and working, then they get tied, they get the, the lease payments and you can stretch it out so that the lease payment is 15% less than what you pay now. So here's the bottom line. How much does it cost to transition the island of Oahu to a 100% clean solar powered grid? Nothing. Doesn't cost you a penny. You don't buy it, you just use it. And if the lease payment is set to be 15% less than what you pay, then I don't know what everyone's electric bill added up on Oahu is, but let's say it's a billion dollars. Well, that means if you did it under this lease program, you're not coming up with the money and you're going to save $150 million each year, day one every year that you're leasing it. So the big lie of the fossil fuel company is, well, you can't do this because it'll ruin you financially is an absolute deception. You absolutely can do it. And this is how. So let's bring up the last slide and tell us all the good things about solar. Right. So what we're talking about is a real solution. You're not going to be devastated financially. You don't have any of the pollution. You don't have any of the vulnerability or the variability that caused you so much trouble. You don't need new land. You have no fuel costs. Hey, tell me where the downside is. You don't even have to come up with the money. All you have to do is use it. And it'll be an industrial revolution you probably won't even notice, except when you go to the parking lot and you have some shame. So. Which isn't bad. That's not bad for my car. Actually, that's my thing. Yes, it's a win-win-win-win. The underwriter makes money. The user makes money. At the state of Hawaii saves 100, if it's a billion a year, saves you 150 million a year. That's not bad. The money stays in your pocket instead of going off island. So to all the energy experts out there who completely dismiss this idea, please, please have a look at the math, at the math we're suggesting. And if you can find where I'm wrong, I'd like to hear from you because I've been in this army for a long time and this is how you get to a real result. So the answer to your question is yes. No, no, please. It's a yes. Okay. Yes, you can do it. Okay. I love Lila, Olivia on a positive note. Though I believe that they've been watching Hawaii, the state of clean energy on think tech, Hawaii and Yi. And today we've been talking story with Paul Vickincade, though powering Oahu on sunshine. Many people think that's impossible. Toby told us how we can do it. Thanks for participating, Toby. I really appreciate you, especially since you're recovering from COVID. God thank you. It's clear out of your sick bed to put on the show to us today. Hey, we all have a future. Let's do it. Yeah. Both the mariners try. Thank you. And thanks for all our viewers for tuning in. I met you on moving back in two weeks with another edition of Hawaii, the state of clean energy. So Aloha, everyone.