 That's Michael Cullen and we're talking about the Electric Vehicle Charging Station initiative that was just in the paper a day or two ago, a very important initiative and it's an extension of what Hawaiian Electric has been doing and he's involved in that in the electrification of transportation in Hawaiian Electric. Welcome to the show Michael. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So, you know, let's talk about, you know, this is really central for you because if we're going to do electrification of transportation, this is what we got to do and we had 16,000 electric vehicles in the state and it's going inexorably up but we wanted to go up faster and charging stations is clearly the way to do that. You incentivize people. You deal with their range anxiety and so what you're proposing, what Hawaiian Electric is proposing is right in the center of the channel here. It is the thing that will incentivize people to buy and use those cars. So tell me about how Hawaiian Electric looks at this. What is important about this initiative and why now? Well, as you know, Hawaiian Electric has been in the public charging space for about seven years. We started out with a pilot back in 2013. Small scale limited pilot across our service territory to try and support, you know, that fledgling EV space as people were adopting EVs. Hawaiian Electric has been involved in electric vehicles from the beginning. More recently as the first Nissan Leafs were delivered to the state, I think the state of Hawaii got the first one, Hawaiian Electric got the second. We developed rates starting for EV charging back in 2010 but really it's grown and as it's grown, we've seen the need to take a more firm position in this growth to support that transition. There's a lot of benefits from transitioning to clean transportation. As you know, we have a renewable portfolio standard for electricity generation, which will be 100% clean by 2045. But one of the remaining largest emitters of carbon is in the transportation sector. So a light duty ICE internal combustion engine that runs on gasoline will always emit the same amount of particulate matter for the lifetime of the vehicle. With an EV on Hawaiian Electric's grid, over time it will get cleaner and cleaner. That's an important first, you know, right out the gate, we need to do something to support that. That's one of the questions that was posed here. What is it? It's only as clean as the fuel source. So if the fuel source is coal or oil, you're not running on renewables at all. It may sound like it's electric but it's really coal and oil. Now as you move away from coal and oil, which hopefully we can do that really soon, then it becomes purely clean energy. So I think that's an important point for you to make. Correct. And there's a few things to that. Also electric vehicles are just straight up as compared to an ICE vehicle and internal combustion are more efficient just in their operations. But you couple that with an increasingly clean electricity generation source and you have a more clean vehicle. We also are trying to incentivize vehicle charging when we are producing the most renewables. So all of our electric vehicle rates are cheapest during the day when the solar production is at its peak. So the combination of the two actually do have a more positive benefit even in the near term as compared to internal combustion vehicles. So that's very important. The other piece and I think getting back to your first question about why now is supporting growth. There has been pretty sparse third party non utility investment in the public charging space so far. There have been a fair amount of level two charging stations being deployed. However, fast charging is extremely limited. There's only I think right now two non Hawaiian electric owned fast charging stations in the state. So we are looking to expand that and support growth. Maybe lay the foundation for increased growth which will build a market so that other investors non utility investors can also come in and build a business case for them to make those investments in the state. Yeah, you know, that's true. I don't know why but it just hasn't been profitable for an investor and entrepreneur to come in and get a piece of geography from a gas station, for example, and set up a charging facility right there. It would seem to me a natural but for some reason it doesn't really work. I wonder, you know, if the state is watching this, I mean the state energy people, they would say, wouldn't they say, look, why don't we give them a tax credit or a tax holiday while they build these things. So we'll have all these young just perfect, perfect entrepreneurial situation. Isn't it because you know it's going to be bigger and bigger as time goes on? So, you know, so I can build it for 10, 10, 15, 20 thousand dollars and then I can, you know, make a little money on it and it's there for as long as my lease with the gas station lasts and and if they give me a tax holiday, I'm in. I do that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and Hawaiian Electric we support investment. In fact, you know, the scope for this proposal that we're talking about today really is only a subset of the total forecasted need. We didn't, we didn't come out of the gate trying to take the entire charging market. We do believe that there needs to be investment from other areas and so that's part of why we only are proposing a piece of the total need in 2030. I think we should all appreciate that, Michael. I mean you're stepping in because there's a vacuum. You're stepping in because there's not enough construction going on. You're doing it almost in a charitable way in the sense that nobody else is doing it and it has to be done. And so I think the community can appreciate that Hawaiian Electric is doing the right thing here and not not intending to cover the island with all of its own charging stations, just to sort of incentivize the building of charging stations and the purchase of electric vehicles. Exactly, and studies have shown that when people are considering to adopt an electric vehicle rather than switch away from internal combustion, one of the key factors in their decision is knowing that there's public charging available, even if they don't intend to use it. So even if you live at home and they plan on charging at home, knowing that there's public charging stations out there actually makes a big difference for people to pull the trigger and actually buy an electric vehicle. Tell my wife all the time, I say why don't you buy an electric car? She likes cars. Why don't you buy an electric car? This is not enough charging stations. I'm worried about range anxiety. It's that simple. So you hit the boat right on the head with this project. One of the other things that I think is important about this project and about why Hawaiian Electric is doing this, even with external companies, non-utility companies coming in and making investments, what they're looking for to build a business case is utilization. So they're going to locate in places where they are guaranteed high utilization to get the biggest return on their investment as soon as possible. While that's true for us too, we also value and see value in citing charging infrastructure where the market isn't yet developed. So LMI communities, more rural locations where you may not see the level of utilization for a while, but you can start, build the market, incentivize and also help encourage people to think about electric vehicles next time they are looking for a different transportation solution. Well, you're going to a fair amount of trouble to invite people in to express themselves on where these charging stations should be sited. You had all kinds of meetings and people have expressed all kinds of suggestions to you about where they should be sited. And it's what kind of reaction are you getting? I mean, are the people who make these suggestions already owners of electric vehicles or are they putative owners who may buy in the future? So one of the lessons learned from this pilot was there's a lot of different elements that go into siding. Siding requires an agreement between us and a site host, so they have to be willing on the other side to allow us to have access to the location and site of charging station. That approach is important though, because we get community buy-in and we've been listening to stakeholders all along as we build out our pilot. And then in anticipation of this expansion application, we met with a lot of stakeholders and then we also tried to just get a survey of input from folks. We set up this interactive web tool called Charter Hawaii, which we asked people to essentially share their mobility needs and where they think EV charging stations are needed. Is that still working? Is that still up there? It is. It's chargeuphi.com and you can drop a pin and answer a few survey questions. You can drop a pin on an interactive map and essentially show where you would think you would like to where charging stations should be needed. And you can provide a little insight feedback like, oh, this is right next to my work or this is some along a very popular roadway. So we intend to gather that information and overlay it with some of our other forecasting models to understand exactly what people's needs are and it will help us in citing in the future. Well, let me go to that. One of the questions on the list here is you got to go to the PUC for this. I guess this is a fair amount of money involved, 97 million dollars. That's a lot of money. But do you need to go to them? And when you go to them, what is the level of detail? Do you have to tell them about at every site you plan to do this or is it just we want to do 300 charging stations and have a checking off on the box? So that's a good question. We do have to go to the commission for approval because there's an electric vehicle tariff rate that we charge. So anytime we charge an electric rate, we have to get commission approval for that. Plus the investment and the recovery of the costs. We're making an application for those two pieces. As far as citing is concerned, rather than be very specific on the locations, we're asking for some flexibility in locations, namely to continue to listen to community needs and foster that input and feedback. There's a serious attempt and intent to provide more equitable access. And doing so requires meeting communities where they're at and listening. And that's an ongoing thing. It's not something that we would expect to just do a few meetings and then add a location to a list. We wanted to continue as dynamics change, as technology changes, as community needs change, to really listen and figure out citing as we move forward. So we are asking for flexibility. We've done a rough proportionality percentage across our service territories. So 60% on Oahu, 20% on Maui, and 20% on Hawaii Island. However, that's not set in stone. We're really looking to address community needs and figure out how best we can serve and provide the best impact in moving forward. As far as the timeline, it is a regulatory process. It's kind of unique way electric utilities do business. So that application process goes through kind of like a mini case, like a legal case, contested case, and you have different parties. So that process can take a while. Why? I mean, what has to be decided? I mean, this is a great idea. This works for the utility, it works for the public, it works for green energy, it works for climate change. Who would oppose anything like that? What are the issues that they would have to resolve? What's the difficulty here? I don't think anyone probably would contest all of those points. Really, it's the commission's job to determine whether our application is within the public interest. And so they're not just looking at some of the benefits, but also the cost impact to all customers. And they'll be determining whether the scope and the way we went about developing it, we did our due diligence. And so that's really what they're looking for. And then also the rate design. The rates have to do a lot of different things. They have to incentivize utilization, but they also have to accommodate a certain level of costs to do business and operate. And so that's part of kind of a fine balance of some of the work that we were doing and trying to design a rate that's low. And we're trying to make it lower than the current pilot rate. We're trying to make it roughly competitive with the price of gasoline, and more so during the day than in the evening at night time. But doing all those things, the commission will evaluate that and make sure that we did our homework and that the eventual outcome of all this will be in the public interest. Well, that's pretty appealing. It's appealing that you're using the time of day as a metric for how much. But it's also appealing that you're knocking off. I remember exactly what the reduction was, but the contemplative reduction was like 40, 50, 60%. That's a substantial reduction from what the same person would have to pay if he took it out of the grid. Not at a charging station, so that's impressive. And to me, that sells itself right there, and it sells people. It sells people. Things like, wow, I can get it cheap. But every time, Michael, that you open transparency, and I'm sure the company has seen this, we've all seen this, as soon as you say, hey, come in, let us have your feedback. You don't know what you're going to get. And it may be that people are sympathetic and understand, and it may be that they raise issues you didn't anticipate. For example, I paid my dues by putting solar on my roof, and I want to charge my car from my roof or from a battery that I have. I don't, as a rate payer, I don't need to have these 300 charging stations because I already paid for mine. I don't care about the other guys. There's a possibility there, don't you think? Yes, I think that's a possibility. I think that's a valid concern. Cost of electricity is, impacts everybody. What we're trying to do long term, and we build this into our discussion a little bit, and we did this in our strategic roadmap, which we filed a couple years ago as well, is to show how, over time, increased sales revenue from all of these new electric vehicles doesn't contribute to wine electrics bottom line. We're revenue decoupled, which is a whole complicated regulatory scheme. But essentially, any increase in electricity sales contributes to decreasing our fixed costs. And those fixed costs, when they're lowered, reduces rates that we would then charge everybody. So over time, as EVs grow, they'll become a point where all of that new EV growth will help to bring down rates. That's what we're trying to achieve. And that's really important. I think that could address some of those cost concerns. There are people, I think, who are really ready to be essentially off-grid or self-supporting. And in those cases, it's really a question of, if you want to buy an EV, maybe you will use a public charger at some point. For you, it might not be an always, but a nice to have. But it's really going to be, as all electric utility assets are, they're there for the public and they're serving a public good. And so as we all train, transition and go through a paradigm shift here in our transportation, this will be kind of, this is the new fuel source. And so that's an important thing to kind of bear in mind as this transition happens. So I see so many questions flood my mind, Michael. One is, what about hydrogen cars? There's a dealer that has them. A Toyota dealer has them. I forget the name of the car, but they're not cheap. They're more expensive than electric cars. But ultimately, they're electric because the fuel cell works on electricity on a battery. So the question I put to you is, where does that fit? And for example, if I have an installation of an electric charging station, would it be something to consider to put in a hydrogen charging station right next to it? Is that in the woodwork somewhere? So when electric, I mean, even though we sell electricity, we're not engaging in a kind of like pushing out other kind of technologies. Hydrogen certainly has its place. I think really just in looking at the market, it may just be a market readiness thing. EVs have really kind of jumped forward. There's a lot of different vehicle models, a lot of different charging station providers. So they're a little bit further along. That's not to say that hydrogen doesn't have a place. Toyota Mirai, I think it's called Mirai, is a very nice vehicle. The installation of the charging or the refueling stations, I think there aren't too many. But there may be certain circumstances that as we get deeper into this transition to clean transportation, where hydrogen really does make more sense. So we are looking at those things. There's been some talks about the Big Island or maybe some heavy duty uses. Eventually making hydrogen requires electricity for the most part or can require electricity. So we view that as also an opportunity and we're looking to find ways to support that as well as that technology kind of gets more mature and they find specific use cases for it. Yeah, maybe there are people who want to see buses fueled by hydrogen and working for that. So maybe as time goes by, you see that buses that are more hydrogen and ordinary vehicles have more electricity. So I want to sort of paint a picture in my mind, Michael, about how this is going to work. So you're not going to add 300 charging stations on day one. What I'm getting from this conversation is that you're going to do it over time, you're going to do it dynamically, you're going to learn about siting. You're not going to know about all the 300 sites on day one. You're going to see how that works out and build them where people have come to find that they're useful. That could be different on day two and ten and a year down the road. The other thing is if I go to a charging station that you're going to build, you're going to actually contract the building and build these things. Then I bring my credit card and I put my credit card in and then I charge my vehicle and it charges me on my credit card like any other credit card purchase. Is that the way it would work? Yes. So actually there's a couple ways that you can pay currently and we anticipate that being replicated again. You can either use point of sale credit card or you can use a phone app with the network provider. So there's a network service provider who does the transacting and that service provider has a phone app so you can come up with your phone, prepay on their app or have it charged directly through your phone. So there's actually two ways to pay. Well, that's great. I love the phone app idea. That's great. That's easier. That's easier on Hawaiian Electric. That's stellar too because they don't have to have all that equipment, electronics in the box, so to speak. I can just get on my phone and indeed there are other countries in the world of the situations where that's exactly what they do. You go to an app, you say what you want and it happens and the only thing Hawaiian Electric needs is a message from the telephone network saying, feed this guy some electricity. Simple. That's actually a more efficient way to do it. Yeah and then there's some benefits also from using the phone app as you can tell whether the charge station is in use or not so you can kind of plan your trip and then I think some more advanced phone apps actually allow for queuing which is something we'll be exploring as well. What is queuing? Queuing is if there's more than one vehicle who's looking to charge at a given location, you can essentially reserve your space and in virtual line and then be able to access the charger. So that's the technology. You have a new car, right? You have to have room for the car to park. So what about a gas station? Would that be a good location, a good site? So charging is a little bit different right now than gasoline in terms of the duration that it takes to refuel. Gas stations are really built around five, five minutes, five to ten at the most refueling with convenience purchases attached. Charging is a little bit longer. The higher capacity charging stations that are being deployed elsewhere and we're looking at bringing some here too over time. Those will shorten duration times but you're still looking at 15 minute, 30 minute wait time to really fully charge your vehicle or get it most slowly charged with the real fast charger. So it may make sense. There were at the Kahala gas station right on that corner by the on ramp. They used to actually have charging stations but I don't think it made sense for them. This was a while back. So I think just the sitting and waiting at a gas station thing may not make the most sense but as charging times come down then it then it may be more akin to gasoline refueling and it would make more sense. I caught that in the newspaper that 150 of them were what do you call it high high high voltage charging and then the other 150 were two lower voltage chargers. Why don't you make them all high voltage and how do you make the distinction about where to put the one kind with the high voltage and the other kind with the two lower voltage? How do you decide? I mean I would always want the high voltage wouldn't I? And we suspect that's the case. The level two the lower slower charging is really the result of feedback that we received from different stakeholders who were interested in having some form of charging even while they're waiting for fast charging. So right now we've got you know some really high utilization highly utilized charge stations for example are ones that award facility right at Hawaiian Electric. We've got two fast chargers there. That's almost heavily utilized and we think it's because there's a lot of residential you know high rise buildings around downtown very central located but there's a lot of queuing and so people have asked us you know it'd be great as if we could just get a level two charge while we're waiting and it's a it's a keeper to install and so we're looking at doing a kind of a preferred configuration for our buildouts where we try to put two fast chargers and one level two and that leaves a number of level two still but we're just trying to have some flexibility in the configuration. May have more level twos at a given site may have less but essentially be more like a hub everywhere we go. We think that would make better sense it'd be more efficient in terms of the construction dollars you're putting more in at a given time because really the biggest cost isn't the charge stations itself it's the construction you know putting down the lines upgrading maybe making some service upgrades and things like that so if you do it once and have more at a given site then we think that makes more sense not every site can accommodate that so that's part of why we're asking for some flexibility in the way we how we deploy and how we design at a given site but that's really what it what it's primarily for there's also hybrid vehicles hybrid vehicles cannot fast charge because they have the gasoline motor on board so hybrid vehicles can only charge a level two or or lower so there might be a few you know use cases where hybrid vehicles can take advantage of our public charging as well so we want to support that. Oh you might change this though I mean I my reaction to see the 150 of this kind and 150 of that kind is you might you might decide in a year or two depending on feedback depending on you know the experience you're having with with this project that maybe you need more of this kind or less of that kind and you might change the ratio am I right? That's correct and so we learned it a lot from our pilot but scaling is not something we were able to really learn we will learn as we move up and so trying to design out of the gate the perfect kind of solution we knew that that wouldn't be the case so we are really just trying with a with a theory of a preferred configuration and and continuing to garner feedback and we'll just you know we're hoping to get that flexibility so that we can really meet the needs and adjust accordingly if the technology in the future is really pushing towards higher capacity charge fast charging you know like the supercharging stations that you see from Tesla if we can you know if that's the way that the trends are going then we would you know want to look into that and accommodate that so that's that's really but as far as how we propose it we built it around the assumption of DC fast and level too and that was help us that was in order to help us figure out kind of cost components and and figure out what the scope of the overall project would ultimately be so that we could get our hands around it yeah right I mean there's all kinds of things the experiences to have it learned from I mean for example for example um to pose uh you you you hit you hit a great location this is a site that's like magnetic it's going to draw people in that neighborhood they're are going to buy you know electric vehicles so they're all going to want that place and they're all going to get on the queue which I suppose will be electronic so the queue says oh there are 20 people and they all want to charge you'll never get through the day maybe the queue also says you know I'm thinking artificial intelligence and maybe what we were to say is look you can't charge your whole battery up here we're going to give you a couple you know a couple of we're going to give you a percentage of your battery we're going to enough to drive around for a while maybe a day's charge but not two days charge and then the next guy in the queue has to get his turn is this a possibility that is a possibility we we had explored um you know some technology that could limit and that may be something we would do in the future right now we don't think there there is that level of utilization but it it could certainly happen and if that's the case I think rather than kind of turn away folks it it would probably make more sense for us to evaluate looking into a higher capacity charging delivery but but you know in the interim I think that's that's an important element to consider is figuring out ways to make sure that people can get what they need to get around but if if there are some limitations that we want to explore that very exciting time really um so I'm thinking this I'm thinking that over a few years not not all the way through 2030 but you know somewhere after 2023 you you install them all you know and you're in place now you're in place and now it's a learning experience and all that um and it's learning experience for the consumer too and I guess the question I put is you know what happens after 2030 because this this is going to be dynamic and you could have a huge effect on the number of electric vehicles that people buy in the state because of this project you know we you were doing it before but in smaller numbers now this is the biggest project ever for electric charges for electric vehicles you know it's huge really you know relative to Hawaii um so you could have a huge jump in the number of vehicles so here we are you know in 2030 what do you expect is going to happen then two things I think um and part of part of the reason why we're trying to do something significant is to accelerate right to to boost decarbonization it's um becoming more and more pressing every day and so you know we think bold action now it makes a lot of sense um the 2030 was essentially a kind of target for us to finish deploying the charging infrastructure we may finish sooner but that's you know the anticipated timeline for the deployment once we're done with that I think 2030 was also a really good inflection point in terms of forecast and looking at what the technologies may be what the landscape may be so we fully anticipate that the charge stations will continue to be in service up and running um but maybe there are other kinds of solutions needed for that next phase right so this proposal was built to support a growth you know and a forecasted growth but growth will continue beyond 2030 and probably even more so between that decade right 2030 and 2040 it will be a deepening of the technology a lot of different use cases different technologies being deployed maybe higher battery capacities so all of those things kind of lend itself to us saying okay 2030 is a good stopping point for us with this forecast with this design with this concept 2030 and beyond may look a lot different and so at that point we would we wouldn't want to presume to do the same thing as what we're doing now we think you know um that's a good point to stop and look forward and say you know let's let's do x y and z differently and so as we get closer to 2030 um we'll be looking at that and trying to figure out different kinds of solutions and that being said also yeah it's all about planning and and and that's also you know this is just one component of a suite of different things that we are proposing right now we've been doing public charging for a long time so this is kind of further along on the timeline but we also proposed pilots for make ready uh infrastructure where we just build up to the point of the charging station then let a site host uh own and operate the charge station so essentially we're trying to mitigate some of the costs of deployment that could really work for other types of use cases for bus you know we have one for bus or for other types of commercial use cases so that also is a solution and it's currently in a pilot and proposed pilot and and the e-bus is actually in the pilot phase so once we start learning more about that um we can accelerate that program if uh if it makes sense from the permission standpoint and from a company standpoint so that could also be a different type of solution it doesn't just have to be you know company-owned um public charging uh could be other other types of business models so we're trying to help kind of do it in different ways yeah well that's actually to me that has all the badge of success on it because then you bring in investors and you know investors are more than investors they're members of the community um and that would incentivize them you know if they can make a buck and you're doing the um you know the infrastructure and they do the uh you know the equipment at the end of the line uh they make a few bucks um takes the the capital burden off of wine electric to some extent um that'd be a great thing to work on um I only have one more question we're kind of out of time Michael and see how quickly the time goes um you know I I know you're you're you support addressing climate change I know that you're in the green energy business that's what you're in so my question is how come you're not in Glasgow now I can't ask my boss that okay well there's always cop 27 you know yeah maybe I start paddling now thank you Michael Cologne of Hawaiian Electric thank you so much for joining today it was a great discussion I appreciate it thank you so much appreciate it have a good one