 Welcome to Stand the Energy Man. I'm Stan Osserman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies, and I've got a great show today. One of my favorite quotes from a good friend of mine is, no man is a prophet in his own land. And I find that in Hawaii, we tend to overlook a lot of the talent and quality folks that we have here in all kind of great fields, not just things like surfing and things like that, but fields in technology and energy that we tend to just not really appreciate the breadth of experience and the depth of experience and the kind of things that they brought to the world from our state. So today we've got a good example of that. So my guest today is Paul Pontio from Blue Planet Research, and he's over on the big island at Poova Va and he runs a laboratory over there. And he does some great work for Mr. Hank Rogers, with Mr. Hank Rogers on energy sustainability, energy storage, clean power, carbon free systems, and what's amazing is we don't really appreciate folks that do that work in Hawaii until somebody from outside like NASA sits up and takes notice and says, hey, can you use something for us? And they actually have some systems in place on the big island that Blue Planet supports with NASA and even the international space community. So we've got Paul on today. Paul, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate you taking some time out of your week this week. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Stan. Good to be here. Can you tell everybody just a little bit about yourself and about how you got started with Hank Rogers and Blue Planet, and then we can get into some of the cool stuff you're doing in the space world? Sure. So I came to Hawaii back in 1983 and basically coming from New Orleans, wanted to live where there was blue ocean instead of the Gulf of Mexico. We used to have to ride two hours on a boat to get out to clear water because of the Mississippi River. So moved to Hawaii, did a career in architecture here for about 20 years. And actually that's how I met Hank. I came over to do some architectural projects. And one of the first projects was the energy lab that we're in right now where we do all of our work. So that kind of led to discovering more about renewable energy, especially storage. So we actually developed storage systems to make it work efficiently as possible. And through all that work and discovery, we learned quite a bit. And we went 100% off grid, about five and a half going on six years now, I guess. We've been off grid for all this time. And we've gone through various types of storage to figure out what works the best. And we ended up using lithium ferrous phosphate batteries, which are the safest chemistry of lithium batteries. Most people think all lithium batteries are the same, but basically you have your cobalt chemistries and you have your ferrous phosphate chemistries. So the lithium iron or ferrous phosphate batteries are the ones we use. They were made by Sony. And we actually use those in our Mars habitat as one of our first projects. So up on Montelua, at about 8,500 feet, we've got a Mars habitat. And its power is supplied exclusively by solar PV, battery storage, and a hydrogen fuel cell. So the hydrogen is the interesting part because this is what led us into looking at long-term storage and also not wasting the capacity of solar. And it also applies to wind. So at the ranch here, at the Blue Planet Research Lab, we've got a large solar array. And it produces enough power to run the entire ranch, the 32-acre ranch, when the weather is marginal. When the weather is really not that great, we can run the loads. So in the morning, when we typically have blue skies, we have excess energy. So instead of wasting that excess energy, what we do is use as many load banks as we can come up with, like electric vehicles. We have several different electric vehicles and golf carts for workers and stuff. But the main one is a hydrogen electrolyzer. So we take all of the excess energy and we split water into hydrogen and oxygen. We vent the oxygen and we save the hydrogen. With the hydrogen, we can use it to run stationary fuel cells, which act as a backup generator for the batteries. So it allows us to be fossil fuel-free while we're off-grid. Typically you would have a diesel generator or something of that nature. And so the microgrid basically has been operational for what, five years now? Yeah, a little over five years. And so the grid came before your projects with NASA, is that correct? Yeah, it did. So right at the time we were going off-grid, we were approached by NASA and UH and Cornell to actually do a project for them. And it turns out that NASA can't really build their own habitats and do these studies unless it's an official U.S. sanctioned mission, but they can rent a facility and fund it. So they came to Hank, asked him to fund the project, and they rented it from us. So for us it gave us another venue, or another test bed rather, to deploy renewable energy systems. So our very first battery system other than at the ranch here went into the Mars habitat. And it performed extremely well. And from all the data we collected on that, we realized that this was not only a good small system but this system could be expanded and scaled to cover anything from residential to commercial to utility scale. And because of that we spun off another company called Blue Planet Energy and they're the arm of the Blue Planet family that actually sells and deploys the battery systems. And they've done quite a bit of work in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. Okay, and you know, it's funny because when I was growing up and they were looking at landing on the moon, I remember that they did a lot of the training for lunar operations in holy alcohol inside the crater because of how similar it was to the train they expected when they got to the moon. And it seems like Montelua is probably a similar scenario in terms of pretty austere, not a whole lot of vegetation, especially at 8,000 feet. And probably makes a pretty good habitat for the Mars have, is that correct? Yeah, it turns out that it's actually 95% identical to the same regolith or volcanic rock that's on the moon and Mars. The difference with the moon is it's pulverized into more of a powder from millions of years of being hit by small meteorites and micrometeorites. But it's identically the same in the chemical structure of the rock. Okay, why don't you tell us, give us a little tour of what you've got going up there that start off as the Mars habitat and kind of talk to some of the images that you have. Sure. So this is mission control and what has happened since the high seas missions have wrapped up. We've transitioned from a Mars based habitat or analog to a lunar habitat. And the main difference is that the missions now are going to be shorter missions, whereas before we'd have four, eight, four, eight and 12 month missions. Now they're going to be series of 28 day missions. So these are going to be four week missions from now on and it's open to the international community. So this is mission control, so we're doing everything here at the Blue Planet Research Lab. And this is one of the rooms that we've converted into mission control and we have a large video wall and normally when the crew is inside that would be populated with videos and cameras plus all of the diagnostic data that we need to track their progress. Was it tough transitioning between the Mars habitat and the lunar? I know that like you're delaying transmissions and had different kind of rules for extraterrestrial you know going outside the habitat itself. Was there much of a transition between the Mars version and the lunar version? Not a whole lot. Everything we did was streamline some of the food supply because of the shorter durations but also we gave us a chance to revamp and do a renovation on the habitat. After six years it was starting to get a little bit worn so we took this opportunity to give it a facelift so to speak. We put in completely new flooring systems, new bedding, the combinations now are actually much more comfortable than they were before but the energy side is pretty much the same except for the control system is now upgraded to the latest version of EMC which is our control system for controlling and monitoring microgrids. So all of the systems in the have from their water to their energy usage to the environmental controls are all handled by EMC. Are you able to project out how long you expect all your components to last, your solar, your battery, your electrolyzer, your fuel cell, you know how long those systems should reach out to. I know that when they first come out the manufacturer usually gives you some kind of rough order of magnitude of how long they should last but until you get in the field and things start breaking down or you have different things impacting the operations are things operating kind of up to par across the board or are you having issues with inverters or batteries or any of that stuff. Well so this is what makes this such a good test bed because it's in pretty extreme conditions up there the altitude, the temperature swings from morning to night it can swing anywhere from 36 degrees in the early morning up to 85 degrees during the day when the sun's out. The equipment kind of takes a little bit more abuse but one thing we found is the solar panels and this was surprising and it's probably because of the makeup of the dust which is all coming from lava rock up there. There's really no soil and you'll see pictures of it later it looks like your background over there. The solar panels stay absolutely clean. I mean they look like they've always been just washed by somebody but there's no corrosion it's not holding moisture against the metal components those things are going to last a little bit longer in that respect. So the things that we do know are going to break and that we've had issues with before are some of the subsystems the inverters the charge controllers some of the small electronic devices one thing we have up there is a lot of ground static it's really difficult to ground things when you're on several meters thick of cinder. The site that we're at is mostly a cinder base so there's not a really good grounding mechanism. We get static electrical charges that actually wreak havoc with some of the electronics. That's unusual. Okay. Yeah but the energy systems the batteries are performing exactly like we expected never had any issue with the batteries up to this date that's going on six years now. And you have a fuel cell up there or no? Yeah there's a four kilowatt fuel cell because the fuel cell is running just like here at Blue Planet Research it's in backup mode it's not running a lot of the time it's just there for backup. Okay. The batteries are low so we expect that to last as long as the solar. And what was the biggest issue with the inverters were you able to pinpoint what's causing them to have it? It's just the nature of electronics and electrical equipment. Things will burn out or just small components will get damaged from some of the static electricity different issues like that nothing major we haven't we've never really lost the power system. Okay. What's the next image you have coming up I know we have the control panel there's there's some of the folks out walking around so that yeah it's hard to see them. Yeah they blend into the rocks. They're on an EVA so this gives you a good sense of scale of what some of the lava tubes are like up there. So that's the mouth of a lava tube that they're getting ready to enter. And some of the lava tubes up there go for thousands of feet underground and they have every now and then they have skylights that have collapsed and created an actual skylight down into the tube. So it's pretty fascinating and there's so many different geological formations that make up these lava tubes it gives the crews a really good geology testbed for them to go and analyze and catalog. So this is actually the European Space Agency mission right here this this crew and they're mapping out the lava tubes. So they were on a two-week mission and they spent most of that time creating maps of where all the lava tube and geologic features are that surround the hab. So they will go out on an EVA which is the extravehicle activity and there's a there's a mouth of another one. And you can see the terrain there is pretty sparse and desolate. But on an extravehicle activity they have to get mission control approval they suit up in their spacesuits and they can go out for as long as the life support systems that they're carrying on their backs and run. Okay I think we're coming up on a break here Paul we're going to take a 60 second break then we'll come back and look at more of what's going on with that lunar habitat on the Big Island. Sounds good. Aloha and Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain and we hope to empower. Again Maraming, Salamat Paul, Mabuhay and Aloha. Hi I'm Rusty Komori host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business sports and life which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 am. Aloha. Hey Aloha and welcome back to Stand Learning Man here on Think Tech Hawaii with Paul Pantiu from Blue Planet Research on the Big Island. And Paul was taking us on a tour of some of the stuff that they're working on with the international space community including NASA I assume on the Big Island doing some live experiences. They're bringing folks out for several weeks at a time to live in a lunar habitat and do extra vehicular activities outside on the surface there on the lava to do some serving and things like that. So Paul let's pick it up where we left off. We had a couple of guys out on the lava looking in a big lava tube is where we left off. Why don't we pick up from there and press forward. Sure. Again that's the entry of a skylight into a lava tube. And that one is probably about, I think that was about three kilometers away from the habitat. So they actually go on pretty long excursions to find these formations and spend quite a bit of time going through them. And there are areas inside, I don't know if I have a photo of a particular one but they actually have to get down on their hands and knees to crawl through small openings where it opens up into a larger room again. So there's a certain amount of danger involved with it so they have to be very careful. There's a lot of training that takes place before they go on these missions. But the crews are very professional. And again this is going to be open to the international community. So besides the European Space Agency, we'll have JAXA, the Pan Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and NASA of course, going missions up there. Without lava can wreak havoc on any kind of textiles or whatever the suits are made of, are they pretty sturdy? Yeah so gloves and knee pads and abrasion resistant boots and equipment is really important. And this is also one of the things that's being studied is how do we build spacesuits that are going to be able to withstand those types of elements. I was going to say that we do a lot of hunting on the Big Island. And I noticed that there's two different kinds of lava basically here in Hawaii. There's Lapo Hoi Hoi which is kind of that ropey, soft looking pillowy lava. And then there's A A which is really spiky, rough stuff. And I'm telling you that when you go hunting on the Big Island or on some of the neighbor islands that are newer like on Maui or Molokai or the Big Island, it just tears the daylights out of any kind of clothing, boots, pants that you wear. It'll just shred them. In fact when we take our hunting dogs over there we have to put booties on them so that they can actually survive. Otherwise it would just tear their feet up. I don't know if we lost Paul or Robert but I think we're working on a connection to get Paul back. But Blue Planet, their facility up there is an 85 kilowatt PV array. And it's been functioning for I think around close to six years now. Yeah, so that's the crew. And typically what happens on an EVA, the crews are made up of six crew members. One crew member always stays back at the habitat to monitor the crew that's on the outside excursion to make sure everything is safe and that they're okay by support for them. So this is five of the crew members of ESA who were pairing one of the radio stations that's in the foreground right there. Okay. What's the next image we got? Oh, more of them. That's the crew looking at a smaller entry to a lava tube. Sometimes the lava tubes will have very small pucas, very small openings. And as soon as you get inside they open up into large brooms. So they have to make a decision whether it's safe and not to try to get inside or just photograph it where they're at. Let's just run through the next images because we're getting close to our half hour time point. That's from the airlock. Yeah, that's the simulated airlock from the habitat side going into the airlock. The next image is kind of what the living quarters look like. Yeah, this is the kitchen area, kitchen and dining area. And in the background you can see where the workstations are. And this is an earlier photo. So you'll see I think in the next photo the upgraded workstations on that back wall. Basically what this kitchen was designed for was the very first mission that this all came about from. And it was a study on menu fatigue. Menu fatigue is where the astronauts get tired of eating the same prepared meals over and over. And NASA wanted to do a study to see what it would be like if they could cook their own meals from shelf-stable ingredients like freeze-dried dehydrated foods, if it would be enough of a significant difference to warrant studying it further. So that was the first mission and the rest of the missions actually came about because of the success of that first mission. NASA was so happy that they gave them three more years of funding. And the longest mission at that time was the whole year, right? It was a 12-month mission, it was the longest. That's a heck of a long time to be stuck in a little tiny cubicle. 1200 square feet. With five-year best friends. Yep. Right, yeah, there's the workstations. Yeah, so now they're really nice workstations. There's a new flooring system. So it's gotten quite a facelift since the prior missions. OK, the next image is looking like. So this is Oleg and Ralph. They are actually, Oleg was the Russian commander of the International Space Station recently. So he was just in Hawaii at the wrap-up of the ESA mission. And he went to visit the crew on the day that they were coming out. And then Ralph in the background is, he's an EVA specialist and he holds the record for coordinating the most EVAs of all the space missions since the beginning of space exploration. Wow. You get some handy hitters coming to visit your operations over there. Believe it or not, and we were surprised after a while that it's considered to be one of the premier analog habitats on the planet. Mostly because of the location and the terrain that crews can go explore, but also the habitat itself. There's Oleg again. So he's actually suiting up in one of the analog spacesuits to actually go out on an EVA. I think actually he just returned from an EVA from the crew. They got to go explore lava tubes while they were visiting. All right. Do we have any more images here? This is more back at the ranch. Yeah, so this is a different project, but there's another image that I don't know if it's in the sequence that Chris Hadfield is another. He was a former commander of the ISS as well. And he spent some time in the HAB. And he's kind of known for a video he put out. He did David Bowie's space odyssey from the International Space Station. So we had him in the habitat, and we actually filmed him and recorded him doing space odyssey at our habit. OK, we can throw that last image up then if we have it. Well, that was the last one we had. I guess we're cut off. OK, so anyway. That was an important project. You want to talk about that after or? You want to put the last image back up, the one they want? Yeah. Yeah, there you go. OK, so this is actually at the ranch. It's the community's water well. It's 2,500 feet deep. The water comes from Mauna Kea. According to the hydrologists, it takes 2,500 years for the water to hit the basal lens. So it's slow filtered through quite a bit of rock. The water is pre-contact water by the time we bring it to the surface. And what this is representing on the right is a 1 megawatt hour battery. So this is what I mentioned earlier about utility scale batteries. This is the blue ion M class or 1 megawatt hour battery. We're going to be putting an additional 300 kilowatts of PV on the adjacent land on the left side. And that's going to run the well during the daytime. And the battery is going to take over and continue pumping at night. So this is a significant project for our local co-op water company, Napua Water. Well, I think what we're going to do is we're going to have you back on another show. And we'll just feature that Napua Water co-op solar array and your battery there. But hey, believe it or not, we blasted through 30 minutes already, Paul. And I want to thank you again. And again, point out to folks that a lot of times we just, in Hawaii, we don't really appreciate the kind of talent and the kind of facilities that we have available that impact international space missions and high-tech things like that. But I can tell you on Maui, there's some great high-tech stuff going on, big island for sure. And there's a lot more out there that we need to explore. So thanks, Paul. I appreciate you being on the show today. And we'll come back out and visit you on the Napua Water project probably in the next couple of months. Thanks, Stan. My pleasure to be here. OK, that'll do it for Stan Energyman this week. And we'll see you next week, Friday. Aloha.