 I'm Jake Fidel and this is our flagship energy show at 4 p.m. every Wednesday Hawaii the state of clean energy and My co-host is Sharon Moriwaki the co-chair of the Hawaii energy policy And our special especially honored guest is Dave Bissell He is the CEO of Kauai Island Utility Co-op, which is K.I.U.C. And if you don't know that at the end of this show, you'll know how fabulous they are The future is now with K.I.U.C. and David Bissell fabulous So we're going to talk to you Dave about what's going on over there You've got some great initiatives going on you are showing the way to solar with Storage a combination of marriage of these great technologies happening on Kauai That's correct. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me here today. It's always a pleasure Yeah, we're excited about what's happening on Kauai We've got a good strategic plan that our elected board of directors puts together a lot of the success of K.I.U.C. And the Kauai utility is from our board of directors laying a good Groundwork that we take out to the community get buy-in on where we're going and then it's up to me and my staff to Go make it happen and deliver on deliver on the plan and in the co-op the board of directors That's the people that's right board of directors. We've got nine directors Three are up for election each year. They're elected by everybody. That's a member of K.I.U.C. We have members not customers each one gets a vote and they vote a third in each time So there's a direct connection to the people the actual ratepayers and members So ultimately they got to be happy or the board of directors will be changed out and management will be changed out So it's a direct touch from them from the people down to me and down to my staff. So point is it's working Yeah, this is a co-op that is actually working working well You guys are really doing a good job getting where you have to go in this You know form of doing business and you said that the strategic plan was just adopted by the board So so how did that go? I mean, was it a year-long process or? It took about six months and that involved we had a good plan that originally had us at the 50% Target on Kauai and that started off Being really aggressive when that came out in 2008 Nobody really knew how we were going to get there. We were about 8% renewable at the time Board stepped up and said let's move it to 50% Now we were proud and pleased that we've reached 50% either with projects that are done or in front of the PUC right now So we've got to the 50% and the board went in looked at it again and said well That's not good enough. We're gonna move it to 70% let's go through your slides. Yeah, we're gonna have a slide show now slide show So I talked a little bit about this But just where we're sitting relative to our goals in one of the big areas when you're trying to talk about Renewable percentages is how much your sales are gonna grow the more sales grow the harder it is to meet them And sales are starting to grow on Kauai I think they are on the other islands as well a little bit With 1% sales growth in the current projects we have we'll hit 47% supply side renewable energy when complete that's before the AES solar project But after the Tesla what does supply side mean? Supply side means generation That's a generation side and that so that has the 47% has the Tesla solar city dispatchable solar project is going to go online Soon it should be exporting power. Maybe as early as tomorrow So you're here with us. That's right. Well, I want to stay away when they start It'll be it's starting to go within a month or so it should be a full commercial Operations how exciting is that? I don't know. It's just very exciting No, no, no, no, that's the Tesla solar city when we signed last November. So it's still well November of 2015 We signed so it's still pretty remarkable a little over a year a year in three months So what's the PPA you just signed on Friday was it you sign now we signed PPA last Oh, was it last November? No, it was a New Year's Eve signing I remember that clearly because we were pushing to get it signing last year was a gift. Yes gift heading into the New Year, but It was a push and the staff and I and our team we pushed hard and this was with AES Distributed energy and they were pushing hard to make that project happen and get it signed by the end of the year That's a big project. It's 20 megawatts by five hours of battery storage. So 100 megawatt hours of storage a day Almost double what the solar city Tesla one is that's that's a 13 megawatts AC solar by four hours So 52 megawatt hours a day. So another hour of battery and bigger size So we keep moving on our way to Being a continuing to be a leader in the distributed batteries and distributed so can we unpack that a little bit What 20 20 megawatts is what percentage of your total use on on Kawai? that'll be about pushing 10 or 10 11 percent and the Tesla one that's going on lines about 5 percent. Ah, okay You knock it off in blocks. Yeah. Yeah, and and AES. Who is AES? It's AES distributed solar. That's a subsidiary of AES The company that has the coal plant here and it's a big worldwide company. So that's one of their there They're a big energy company all over the place big company all throughout the world Turning into a leader and in a distributed energy and they're and they're putting in the solar That is the solar panels as well as The Tesla batteries both. Nope. We got a we got two projects Tesla solar city. Yeah, and AES AES will be sourcing their own batteries. Okay. So AES is the is the upcoming project Tesla is the one that's going to go on Okay, it's early. It's so many So where is the where is the new one that you where are they both actually the first project? I don't have a picture of it. It's by our existing Kappaya plant it ties right into the switchyard there So it's a real efficient location. It's how I grow farmland there Sharon Yeah, right across the way and the second project is going to be on the south shore of Kauai We haven't announced the exact location yet because they're still doing some final paperwork on it But it's going to be a nice sunny site a good location. They're all former sugarcane land and Kauai that's one of the advantages we have is a lot of Former plantation land is available. It's relatively cheap to Convert over to renewable energies and projects. So it helps helps make them happen And it's a good, you know, we can't do these projects without cooperation from the big landowners on Kauai We've been lucky about that. They they've been supportive By the time we're done, I think we'll have done projects with all of them grow farm A and B Gay and Robinson That work do they lease you the land? Even the state through DHHL on a whole So it sounds like you're on a path of doing utility scale at least Ki you see utility scale of solar Combined with batteries all over the island in sufficient, you know output to reach a hundred percent ultimately Conceivably we could get there. We're starting to see a path We need to emphasize that this is still a relatively new technology The solar city one's going to be the first utility scale one anywhere going into service So we got to make sure they work well that the batteries live up to their expectations And because the batteries don't work as well as planned over a 20 to 25 year period The costs are going to go up on future ones. They got to work where we're optimistic. They will but it's got to be proven out What I like about this is that you're willing to take a risk not only are you willing to take a risk But all of Kawhi all your members are willing to take that risk Well, it's a very measured risk for us on distributed solar because we own two large solar Plants on Kawhi 20 24 megawatts the Anahola and the Kaloa one So we're built about a year you're apart from each other and are in service now and we have some batteries with those Six megawatts with lithium ion at Anahola and about six megawatts of advanced lead acid ones At the other serving other projects, so we've got a lot of batteries, but that's all for frequency control That's not the overnight kind. That's right. And the point is here We own solar projects traditional solar projects that are very low risk It's high capital cost but low risk We do not own the these next two projects coming online with the batteries because we did not want to Right, so it actually moderates the risk that happens, but let me ask you this, you know, it's a math question Well energy is technology and technology is math there you go But you said that one of these projects is four hours of storage and the other is five hours of storage now What I get is either four or five is less than the dark hours in the day So how does that work when the batteries run out at three in the morning? Well, you we the way these projects work is they have five hours times 20 But it does not have to come out over a five-hour period They can come out over a 10-hour period 15-hour period So what it's doing is it'll help originally shave the peak and I think we have a slide Yes, right there showing how it'll look like this is KIUC is a dispatch starting at midnight going through till 1159 at night And down at the bottom is the blue part That's our legacy hydro projects. The green is the green energy biomass plant and those are absolutely Flat, yeah, hydro moves a little bit, but all it all flat On top of that is our remaining conventional generation that a few years ago used to fill the rest of the right mark there and all that yellow is solar and The big big news out of these projects is instead of having the solar the yellow all being over a four or five-hour period We are now moving into our morning and afternoon peak with the batteries so you can see we're starting to smooth out our conventional generation and As we do more of these projects it'll get smaller and smaller so that conventional generation may look more like the Hydro or biomass a fairly flat, but there's still quite a bit of you can see there's still quite a bit of Black or brown there the conventional generation to fill as we do more projects, but you can see it can get there Where are the darkness hours I? Can't tell from the start the peak our peak is right about 7 o'clock 7 o'clock 9 o'clock and so solar Comes in very strongly between say 11 and 2 or 3 o'clock And then it drops off quite a bit in the shoulder period So during this the peak time it'll be feeding the batteries And as the sun goes down later on in a day We'll start exporting out of the batteries where we would normally be hitting our peak using conventional generation We'll be using it with energy from the battery So it's really our peak will be powered by the sun. Yeah, and at 2 in the morning People are asleep anyway The other thing I wanted to ask is these these all connected I mean to like with sound over here in our studio all the sound goes into one mixer and the mixer Distributes it wherever we've got to go and the mixer is smart most of the time But what what happens here is all these plants go to a central repository and then to be distributed Or they get distributed without going to a central No, that's a good question the central repository big words What most people refer to is the electrical grid and everything that goes into the grid gets spread amongst the entire grid So that that's really the keeper of all the energy that goes in and it's it's our job to balance The how much we have to put in the production of it to exactly meet the usage of it During all the hours of the day And it's one of the nice parts of a grid that people tend to take for granted is If it's nighttime and you want to use more you want to use less It's going to be there You don't have to go out and fire up a generator or go adjust your usage because you don't have enough capacity for it We're doing that for you and it's a it's a heck of a convenience and that takes us to the next question And the next question right after this break is exactly how do you do that Dave? We're going to take this break Dave's gonna think about that. We come back. You're going to answer the question Aloha Howard wig. I am the proud host of cold green sink tech away I appear every other Monday at three in the afternoon. Do not tune in in the morning My topic is energy efficiency. It sounds dry as heck, but it's not we're paying five billion dollars a year For imported oil. My job is to shave that shave that shave that down in homes and buildings While delivering better comfort better light better air conditioning Better everything so if you're interested in your future you'd better tune in to me Three o'clock every other Monday cold green aloha and thank you very much Okay, we're back rely with Dave Bissell my coat my co-host Sharon Moriwaki I'm gonna call you a co-chair my co-chair co-host Sharon Moriwaki Dave and us we're talking about uh, what's happening on kawaii only amazing projects and ppa's they got going there And one of the things is is is the the grid when how you do it we can learn from you We can learn from you. I think you're you know an exporter of best practice is what you are And so the question is how do you manage the grid? So that you know the demand that you know, you know, how to supply all that demand And what kind of black boxes are in use who's putting them in how advanced are they and what do you see in the future? That's a multiple compound question And you can answer it by saying it depends Let me I'll answer it slightly different We've got an awful lot or we're not an awful lot, but a lot of very smart engineers at kiu c and Every electric utility has that and that's what those guys get go to school for that's what they get paid a lot of money to To do it's technical and it's a mix of kiu c engineers. It's the engineering staff of the Developers a s and tesla a lot of real high-level cutting-edge Technology these guys are implementing and working together. It's a it's a partnership a true partnership between kiu c and the developers They set the controls for these projects And they're really this is the first place it's being done. So it's it's kind of being made up as it goes Yeah, that's the amazing thing. So can we break it down a little bit like in schematic? So on the utility side You're going to want to know what people what people are asking for And you want to know what you have to give them and you want to match that How do you do that? What kind of boxes and where are the boxes? That's what our control room operators do that are out in a power plant. They sit there 24 hours a day seven days a week Managing the one control room one control room actually Well, no, it's out of port allen and their power plant. Okay big power plant And these guys sit there and that's their job to make sure that it all balances out And it's not all manual a lot the vast majority of it's automatic through controls that are set up But there's somebody sitting there making sure if something goes wrong or the The load is getting too low that they're firing up more generators or vice versa. So And they're seeing everything they see the The bio what you call the bio fuel to the the the high high high what do you call it? Hydro We've seen that Sharon. I've seen that To the solar to everything you've got it's all there in port allen. Yeah, yeah They're sitting there basically looking at a computer screen that's got all those all the generation We have showing where they're at what levels they are how much extra capacity there is so called spinning reserve If it moves up because it's got to be instantaneous So and then the batteries are there also Batteries are super fast response. So the control room that the generators move relatively slowly matter of seconds But the batteries move in matters of fraction actually easier with batteries. Yes to do demand response Well, and it's it's easier in a lot of ways that the batteries are a great system resource the building that they're sitting there kind of And this is all based on control set to the batteries how they respond if there's a if there's a fault in our system If a car hits a utility pole and because of all those batteries are automatically responding So our system may not even blink anymore if there's a Line fault we're in the past conceivably We were shedding low because the generators couldn't respond fast enough. So because the battery just kicks in That's fabulous, but that means you have to have a lot of data coming in all the time You have to you have to censor is there somebody sending you data about all the elements of the system coming into port allen, right? That's correct. How do you do that? Well, it's a combination of our smart meters can get down to the actual residential level and there's an awful lot of controls and set out at the substations that that Send information back to the the control room and the screens that the operators are looking at So it's all Down to a circuit by circuit level. They can see see what's happening on our grid You see that now I think we need to move off this. I'm going to get myself Is that so that they're helping you develop the software and and then it'll be kind of like operated then by your staff Both a s and tesla is they're setting up their controls for their system. They're their systems But our guys operate them. The only requirement is we have to take all that it produces Every day and we have to run the battery out every night So our guys within that have complete well not complete but pretty complete Ability to dispatch the batteries in the system as they see fit Subject to some operating constraints and all of that is ready to roll or is rolling It'll be rolling. It'll take some tweaking, but they'll be coming out and expect that after all we're we're doing You know very advanced things you say run the batteries out. You mean run them run them, you know to empty Well, it's they that's one of the things that the developers the as and a tesla's control They say how far down they can run, but essentially they set a floor, but to us that's that's empty Yeah, sure. That's very interesting. So and that's healthy for batteries. Isn't it you want to do that? Well, they we you don't want to run batteries too much all the way down and up or too low But within those within those controls we you know, we're paying money through these ppa's to have this The the pv generated energy go into those batteries and be able to bring it back out at night So we want to use those as much as we can. Yeah, that's the most efficient use It got to think about the economics But the economics are pretty good on this last ppa because it gives you 11 cents a kilo. That's pretty terrifically good They're really good at both of we thought the 13.9 cents we got a Tesla one and then you better very solid and then it got better So that's a indication of one bigger projects get a little cheaper movement and battery pricing from them And it's it's an aggressive market right now. You know the there's a few few large providers tesla solar city One a s another and there's a there's probably Another ten or so that are fighting to be the leaders in this so there's a lot of interest But you know, we've been talking about utility scale. I mean for kawai What about, you know the homeowner? Well, what about, you know the rooftop? How is how are things moving on the rooftop? You have the same kind of dramatic increase going on there? No, not on kawai and I don't I don't think on the other islands as well that one that technology is more expensive and it's just not Is readily deployable right in today's time of the bad I think Overall distributed both the pv and the batteries End up being two two and a half times more expensive than the utility scale This is a big lesson, isn't it? So you're here to say really that utility scale solar is is the future and It's it's so much cheaper more efficient Then roof by roof by roof. I think so. I mean we got to see how technology evolves. There's a chance that the There's the breakthroughs on the smaller side and the pricing drops radically It's helped happened with pv projects, but every time on the distributed side That's dropped. We've dropped the larger ones have dropped equally in the utility scale side fairly consistently stayed about half the price So from a capital deployment Overall to me it makes a lot of sense to put it where the The price is the cheapest and if it's half the price that seems like a good investment So what's the secret sauce there? We're about out of time, you know, and some people say it's your looks Yeah Some people say your personality But things are working well in in kawai. What what is the secret sauce? We should take note of there's no secret sauce We've got a really good team We've been working for years to develop this team and develop our approach and it's evolved from Doing our own projects relatively small ones to bigger ones to Going out and working within the industry in the marketplace to To make these deals happen, which so we've got a real good team We've got real good engineers good financial people good consultants who have helped us on this and It means a lot to the development community. Whether we're buying it from them or doing Uh, they're selling to us through a Project the kiuc would own they know we can execute And make deals you can make deals get it done. That's really a statement means a lot to them Sharon it's time for you to wrap up summarize And tell people what we learned here today. I think we learned a lot I think we learned that if you have a good team together that you execute on what you say you're going to do I think that that really is the major first step of doing anything And we really want to hear more about what you're doing Dave as we go along But it's very exciting to hear pushing them. I just wanted to know how how scared were you when you said We're going to go from eight percent to 50 percent And what were you thinking when they said do it just do it Well, that's one of the things we I work really closely with my engineering team And it's a lot of it's a testament to them that they've been willing to push the envelope. I'm a financial guy And I'm more willing to say hey, why can't we do this and the good thing with my engineers is they say why not That's let's try to make this happen. We can make it happen You know go do these things within constraints And and we'll make it work as opposed to say no, no, no, you can't do this. It's impossible And and we couldn't and it's a part of our relatively small team that the engineers work directly on the projects To make it happen. It's not A separate group a separate Side trying to make things the engineers are part of it So if everything works together well, and I think that's a big part on being a development Oriented a company good lessons learn Come back to tell us more thank you so much Dave Bissell CEO of KIUC great to have you here man