 Hey, welcome to Stand Energy Man. Happy lunch hour. It's my lunch hour again. Thanks for joining me. Stan Osterman here from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies, and I've gotten the background here today. The Blue Planet Research Facilities on the Big Island in Poova, Ava, and that's a 85 kilowatt PV array on their laboratory designed by Paul Pontio. And it's a beautiful facility, and if you ever get over to that part of the Big Island and can get up there to take a peek at it, Paul might even be there to give you a tour or something. That's a great facility, and that's where I take a lot of my inspiration for the microgrid work we're doing for the Air Force at Hickam and where I swap a lot of ideas and thoughts with him to try and keep things going here in Hawaii. So welcome, and today we're actually kind of Big Island-centric today. A few weeks ago, I was on the Big Island for Energy Storage Conference and ran into a nice young lady who had an interesting last name that seemed to be the last name of somebody I knew when I was a kid, and it turns out they're sisters, so we had a good time talking about, you know, what knucklehead I was when I was a little, you know, 13, 14, 20-year-old guy. But now she's a big practicing lawyer here in Hawaii and doing all kind of great work in the energy world. So I have Linda Kapuni and I-Rosehill here, and she's going to talk to us and tell us a little bit about what's going on in Hawaii, in the energy world, from a legal perspective, and give us an idea of maybe how we can do things better. Because like I've mentioned before, it's great to have a technical background and have a technical handle on all this energy stuff, but you've got to take a holistic approach. You have to have the finances, you have to have the legal background, you have to have a whole lot of different public relations piece, you have to have a lot of those brought into the picture, or you can fail in any one of those areas. So Linda, thanks for being here. Thank you. I really appreciate you coming out, and I think we're going to have a great show today. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, what got you started, especially what got you started in the energy side, and maybe a little bit about your connection to the Big Island. Sure. First of all, I live on the Big Island, and I commute back and forth to Honolulu. So my office is located in Honolulu, but I have a little hobby farm with some alpacas and apple orchard and fun things like that on the Big Island. But I grew up and was raised here. I went to Kamehameha Schools, graduated from there, went to UH, graduated from the law school, but to correct you a little bit, I don't do legal work in that arena. What my company does is government and community relations. So my clients come to me to look at legislation that would harm their projects, or legislation that they want to support, because that would encourage the development of various energies, technologies, or other issues that I represent. And for advice on how to deal with the community, if they're doing a new project or if they're having problems, getting their word out, or the education of their community. Nowadays you can't do a project, a large project, without that consideration of how do you talk to the community and who do you talk to in the community? What's the message? And how do you position it so that they understand what you want to be able to accomplish and why this is good for them? Well, thanks for really clarifying that, because if you live in Hawaii any length of time, you've seen a lot of projects that had a lot of hope and good, best intentions go down the tubes because they didn't really have a good understanding of community feedback and how to present to the community. I know as a National Guardsman, we used to work with the active duty all the time and say, hey, look, before you put something out in public, come and talk to us, let us take it out in the community where we have families living and we know the community, and let us help you get a feel for where you're at first before you do it. And that sounds like you do that professionally for folks that aren't military and want to put projects out there. That's important. When energy things are not just technical, there's a lot of components to it. There's financial, the legal, the public relations. There's a lot of components to it. And there's a lot of misperceptions, particularly when you're looking at sometimes new technology that people aren't familiar with. And as you know, being at that conference, the Big Island is just, there's just so much potential on the Big Island. I think if you looked at the studies that have done so far, the Big Island by itself could be a wind or solar power the whole state. It has the resources to be able to do that. Now, nobody's looking at the cable anymore, but you have to remember long-term that's something you want to keep in mind because as the population grows and the urbanization grows, you may not have the ability to do the kinds of projects you've been able to do on Oahu just because there's no ladder, it's too expensive. And we all know that Oahu has the demand and the neighbor islands have the supply. And most energy, when you're talking energy, and that's what was the whole start of the whole cable deal was how do we get the wind power from Maui or Molokair Lanai over to Oahu where we really need the power. And that's a lot of that discussion we had in Kona on the energy storage. That was one of the things that I really pushed hard to have hydrogen as part of the discussion because if you had to move energy between the Big Island and Honolulu in a battery, the battery would be so big you couldn't float it. So there's other pieces to storage, energy storage besides batteries. And that's why I wanted to make sure that, and I work with Greg Barber to make sure that Paul and a lot of the other folks had some input as other ways of storing energy besides just batteries. And for me, hydrogen's a big one and for Paul, hydrogen's a big part of that. And we envision at some point maybe 20 years from now where the Big Island could be making hydrogen, making liquid hydrogen and exporting it to the Orient or to Pacific Islands and it could actually be exporting energy. Can you imagine Hawaii exporting energy like instead of oil but we're exporting hydrogen in liquid form to other countries? Oh, that's incredible. Yeah, so Hawaii could go from an economy that's basically importing all their energy to an economy where we're actually exporting quite a bit of energy. See, and it takes kind of that long-term thinking even though you may not be ready to do it now and it takes a while in the development of the energy processes to get where it's economical or get where it works the way it's supposed to. But it takes that forward-looking thinking to see way out there. I mean, when I started with government, when I came out of law school, Governor Ariyoshi appointed me as deputy director for the Department of Planning and Economic Development and Governor Burns, previous to that, had started NELA. They're not that old. Oh, yes. Fortunately, yes. But NELA was at its beginning stages and NELA happened to be one of the agencies that was under my jurisdiction as economic development deputy director. So I was there when the first pipes were put in and the mishaps that occurred originally with some of them. I saw the first experimentations when they were bringing in the cold water and having the water condense on the pipes and then it would water strawberry plants that at that time John Craven was doing. But now coming back as a board member, because as you know I was recently appointing back to the board, there's so much that has occurred in the 30 years, but it took somebody way back, Governor Burns' time, to envision that that would be a good place to do it, that there was potential in the energy arena and that there was potential in the deep, cold ocean seawater. So back when you were doing that, was there a lot of pushback from the local community on the NELA effort? Not really, not that I recall. In fact, I did the permitting for the host park side of it and it required going before the council and meeting with the mayor and those kinds of political things that you had to do to get the permits through. And no, we did not get a lot of pushback. First of all, you have to remember, that was a pretty barren area, there wasn't much there at the time and you were using a resource that nobody was using at the time so it wasn't a competing issue. I think the only thing at that time that was of concern was that if you put this NELA into position, other developments along the coast, you had to be very careful what they were so that they didn't pollute the water, that you didn't have runoff and you didn't have other things that might affect the purity of the deep ocean sea water for that resource. Well, things certainly have changed and we've had experience recently with SuperFairy and with 30 meter telescope and things get really controversial and it's really frustrating, I know for the business community and for a lot of folks that we spend a lot of energy trying to plan these things out and at the last minute, they get a lot of negative attention and sometimes ultimately fail. How can we do a better job with all your experience? What recommendation can we get from you that we'll get these projects done, start it the right way and head it the right way and get them to fruition so we can actually take advantage of some of these things? The model, if you will, of how you go about these projects has evolved during the years. Early on, developers would come in with a project and it'd be fully developed and then they'd go out to the community and they'd tell them what they were going to do and actually way back, they got away with it because we didn't have a real questioning community. We didn't have the controversy that's out there now and local people don't speak up readily. We have a changing demographic particularly on the neighbor islands. We have people that are a lot more aggressive that speak up more readily so nowadays you really don't want to plan out your whole project. So you get a concept. You kind of know the parameters. You know the kind of timing you want although the timing will never match up with the permitting process and a budget. And what you really want to do is gather up people within the opinion leaders of the community that you're going to be dealing with and fill them out in the very beginning, involve them at the very beginning. Not to say that you have them change your project or build it for you or manipulate how it should be but if you can take into consideration very early on in the project what it is their concerns are you can incorporate those things in and you can mitigate some of those concerns. I think a prime example which came to mind recently was you've been working in hydrogen and they had that hydrogen project that they were going to, the fueling station they were putting at Nelhop. And the next location was up front. At Sopogee. Yeah, by Sopogee. And it was next to the academy, a school. And I had heard about this a while back actually before I got on the Nelhop board. I have friends who worked on the hydrogen project and they told me that there was some issues there. And the issue really was that nobody had talked to the school and the parents at the school and the other community. When they hear hydrogen facility not being familiar with that kind of process or the technology the thought is hydrogen bomb this thing is going to explode. Our kids are right next door. That's a concern. So they didn't do the appropriate lay work to be able to do it where they wanted to do it. As a result, they've changed the location for where it is but you wouldn't have had to go through that you wouldn't have had to or you would have selected a better location from the get-go and not wasted all that time. What I really liked when we went on the tour the storage energy tour was the demonstration that Blue Planet did about hydrogen. That it wasn't flammable that it rises in the air so quickly that it can't explode. I really think that for that technology for example to succeed in the future I would love to see a program put in place in the schools very early that looks and explains to children and their parents what are the technologies that are coming up in the same way they did with an anti-smoking campaign or sustainability in agriculture so that people, children will eat healthier those kinds of things you need to do the same thing in the energy arena because the energy technologies are changing so quickly unless you can explain it to them so they understand why it's so important and to have it in their backyard we're going to meet resistance all along the way. I did a show actually we went on the tour at Blue Planet Research over in Puvava and I actually videotaped Paul doing some of those demonstrations and put it on the show here just so people could look at it and hydrogen is like any other energy storage component where you put energy together and it does have to be handled properly and you don't have problems with it if you don't, you can have a very flammable mixture and explosive mixture with hydrogen and oxygen but if you handle it properly and if you understand the properties of the hydrogen it's much safer than most people think in fact most firefighters and most engineers that work in that field that I've talked to they would rather, much rather deal with hydrogen and gasoline or even pure oxygen they're terrified of it but they'll work with hydrogen all day long and people go oxygen don't we breathe oxygen, you know it's in the air, you do breathe it but it still can be very dangerous so you're right, it is an education thing and it's something we have to get out in front of we're coming up on a break here we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with Linda Rosehill in a few minutes and talk some more about Big Island Energy and what we can do over there Aloha everyone, I'm Maria Mera and I invite you to my bilingual show Viva Hawaii every other Monday at 3pm we are here to show you news, issues and events local and around the world join me Aloha, how you doing? Welcome to Ibaachitak I'm here at Gordo the Texar on Think Tech, Hawaii and I'm here with my good old buddy Andrew the security guy Hey everybody, how you doing? Aloha Good to have Andrew here in the house Please join us every Friday from 1 to 10 to follow us up on YouTube and remember as we say at the end of every show How you doing? I pity the fool who ain't watching this show at 12 o'clock on Friday afternoon Stan the energy man watch it Hey welcome back to my lunch hour Stan the energy man here with Linda Rosehill who kind of splits her time between the big island and Honolulu I won't tell her to tell you which one she likes better because guys here in Honolulu might not like it but thanks for being here with us again today You know we did learn a lot at that energy storage conference at Nelha and Nelha's got some interesting things going on there but when I first got into this job here I really thought of energy in a fairly narrow perspective I thought of it as like electric grid power and gasoline and diesel for your cars and as I grew into what I do I began to understand that that energy is all around us it's water on the high end of a hill or whether it's whether it's wind blowing past you or sunlight hitting the ground or just heat from the volcano or the energy is all there it's all in a different form but it's there already so why are we bringing in all this fossil fuel when we have so much energy all around us whether it's geothermal, ocean thermal whether it's solar, wind we have all those things we're so blessed with all these things why are we doing it? so some of the things going on at Nelha in conjunction with that conference was some new breaking energy storage technology are you familiar with any of the things they're trying to do? one of them in particular kind of sticks in my mind because I thought it was novel and it's a project wherein they use the sun's energy focused on mirrors to create heat that then makes energy that's used is put into a storage system the storage system being made up of rocks and then the case that they're looking at it's going to be lava rock you heat the lava rock up and then the lava rock during the night provides the energy so I mean that's to me a perfect example of using a resource that's so abundant and I know the initial description it was much less expensive than PV's and some of the other storage that's available but we talked about flow batteries I learned a lot about batteries, I'm not an engineer so I'm learning a lot but just looking at all those various opportunities and the fact that Nelha has a storage test project where they look at all the various options and see what works, what doesn't work what the parameters are I think that's what we really need that kind of research to be able to go commercial and use it on a bigger scale you know so that's cutting edge of course we have an OTEC project there and OTEC was there from the get go, I mean I remember the original OTEC projects when we started out it's become more sophisticated perhaps more economical and I think they're looking at having commercial application more readily now than it did way back then so you're right we have resources that we should absolutely use, one of my clients on Kauai, I represent Kauai Island Utility Co-op we're looking at hydro pump storage because you have these old reservoirs that were there from the plantation days and you have them at varying elevations where you can use that differentiation and elevation to have the water come down during the day and pump it back up at night and run it down through generators so then it becomes essentially firm power you know and that's always been an issue of course with alternate energy because you've got it doing particular times of the day but you don't have it at night unless you have the storage capability so that's something that's exciting and it actually can be done on all of the islands. Yeah pump hydro is one of those great especially when you need a lot of power and you need it for a long duration I have a great chart that I use when I brief people about different kinds of energy storage and on the quick reacting side you have capacitors and batteries and that gives you like microseconds out to minutes maybe even hours and then you've got your batteries which are more in minutes to hours maybe even a day and then you got flow batteries which start in the hours and go out to maybe more than a day and then get you up to a megawatt but then you have the real long term storage and that's where the hydrogen and the pumped hydro and even compressed air and you mentioned we're fortunate because we have these reservoirs already from the agriculture times that we can use and that's one of the requirements it's like pumped hydro works really well if you've got the topography and if you live in a flat desert pumped hydro is not going to do anything for you but as long as you match it to your local conditions and what you happen to have already pumped hydro is perfect and so it gives you the chance when you have excess energy from all the solar you use it to move the water and then when you don't have the solar power you use the gravity to give to generate your power at night the beauty of it is too that it's a closed system so you're not using the water it's just rotating back and forth within the system so the only thing you use as far as water is what's evaporated which is relatively minor considering most of those reservoirs are open anyway and there's evaporation in this case you're using it to something that's really beneficial and that would bring the cost per kilowatt hour down considerably but you've got to be looking at all of these different options in order to get off of oil if the goal by Hawaii state government and by all of us is to get off of oil or less dependent on oil you have to look at what are all the tools that are necessary and the other thing you need to look at is how do you facilitate those projects within the governmental process whether it's looking at the kinds of permits that are necessary and trying to make it less cumbersome you always going to have some of the environmental issues that you're going to have to address that in and of itself is a mountain to climb and expensive but what can we do in government for example or in government policy making that will facilitate that development for the longest time the PUC for example giving them the resources to be able to move things a little faster on the docket having the community understand some of it so maybe some of the protests that are coming up will be there because they understand it better what are the public policies that need to be put in place long term that will facilitate these kinds of things and one of the things looked at by PUC was should you be separating out generation distribution that has not been addressed yet particularly because we went through the next era deal and I think that had to be handled before you could move on to the planning docket and all the other things that they're looking at but certainly if you're going to separate it out then you have to be able to come out with policies via PUC via legislation or whatever rule making that will facilitate the development of the generation part of it I don't think people understand that connection that you're trying to make because you have a lot of people that really at this point they're a little frustrated especially if they've invested in PV and they can't connect to HECO and their reaction is then get me off and that may sound great at first but if you come off who's paying for the lines that go to their neighborhood anyway it becomes more of a burden for all the neighbors who remain connected that have to pay that cost if everybody migrated away from the grid everybody or even 50% the other 50% would be paying for all that infrastructure and when it's all lumped together in one kilowatt hour rate it's transparent you don't see it and for you know why for example that's been the argument against wheeling for example the utilities control all of the infrastructure and right now you cannot transport electricity across TMKs because you're not permitted to do that in the law if you wanted to for example pursue the idea of microgrids which has been coming up at the legislature and over and lots of people want to be able to do that they need to be able to address the wheeling problem they're going to have to address how do you deal with Hico Helco and all the utilities for the use of those lines the transmission not the production so how do you separate that out what are the appropriate fees so that the utility doesn't go under because the thing you have to remember is that utility as a public utility has a mandate to be able to provide reliable power firm power across the board you know so it's not as easy as just well I want to do this I'll take my ball and my marbles and go someplace else you know we want to make sure that our utilities stay healthy and that there's this balance that doesn't make them go under but at the same time allows for new technologies to come on board and to flourish and to replace oil you know so that's I think the challenge from a public policy standpoint that the PUC the legislature and the rest are wrestling and have to wrestle with but you got to have those discussions now unfortunately some of these discussions should have happened a while back and I got way laid a little bit because of the next era arrangement and all of it being in PUC but now you're playing catch up nobody could come on board tomorrow with a micro grid or anything like that because you don't have the policies in place to be able to do it that's interesting you mentioned that I agree and we're bringing one other aspect here we've been talking about the grid and we've been talking about 40% of the fossil fuels used other 60% transportation and so that's like my that's where I look at transportation things and I go yeah well now I'm trying to get transportation off of fossil fuel and the grid is starting to become more and more fossil fuel negative I'm starting to compete with renewable energy for transportation how do I solve my energy problems in transportation there's policies in that area that need to come up and there's solutions that work for both transportation and the grid so I'm hoping that the PUC and the government sector overall the energy office and the governor's office they all look at these solutions in a more ecosystem type of look not holistic look not just does it pencil out does it make sense in the long term and do we start changing our policies and maybe changing the way our electric grid is structured and the policies that direct you know rates and changes and infrastructure versus power generation power purchase agreements all those things need to be addressed now it's like trying to solve healthcare without talking about tort reform or something I mean you're just kind of wasting your time you don't always have all the players at the table and that's a big issue I mean very seldom do we have or has government had the forethought or ability to bring the right players to the table to say okay this is what we want to do and I don't mean a plan because my goodness there's been more plans and studies and things in government that you could ever believe but some way to be able to bring these ideas together coordinated in some fashion and have some real direction on what's needed if you want to get from A to B what are the public policies or what are the laws that need to be changed to get from A to B and quite frankly government in and of itself is not able to do it's private sector who's doing those projects who knows what they need to take in the way of money and resources to get us there that has to have input into that discussion okay so now that we have the answer I can go right to Governor Egan and just tell him straight up here's how we do it you got Lindy here me just call us up we'll give you all the solutions because we got to figure it out but believe it or not Linda we've we've gone through a half hour talking about all this stuff and it goes by really quick and I think it's been a great discussion and I appreciate your time here thank you and the perspective that we don't we tend to not avoid but we tend to overlook a lot is not the technical piece but these other pieces the public relations piece the legal piece the bigger policy pieces so thanks very much for being here talking to us about it and we'll have to have you come back again after we have re-energized the PUC and the public sector to get them all together talk about ag I love to talk about ag okay we'll have you back again so thanks Linda I appreciate it