 Exitingly exciting episode of Stan the Energy Man here coming to you live and direct from Kailua, Hawaii. And you know, I got to let you in on a little, a little secret. Last week I had to tell you that I wasn't wearing a law shirt, I was wearing a Thiecian shirt just so my Polynesian friends wouldn't get all over my case. But I'm going to let you in on a little secret about Hawaiian culture. Whenever you meet somebody and you find out they're from Hawaii, there's always one question you ask them right off the bat. What school do you go to? And when did you graduate? So you can figure out who, who do you know that went to that school and graduated that year so you can prepare friends and everything else. I met my guest today via a mutual friend in California who does energy stuff. And when she introduced us, I had no idea he was from Hawaii. And then I started talking to him and I go, Hey, this guy sounds kind of local. So it was like, so where'd you go to school? So I'll let him tell you where you went to school. But I guess today is AJ, excuse me, AJ Perkins, who, and that's a good local family name. You wouldn't think Perkins would be like a Hawaiian name, but it actually is a very well known local family name. And AJ is coming in from Southern California and his specialty is microgrid. So AJ, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on. You're wearing the nice suit and tie and I'm in my kind of casual along shirt, but you definitely look like you fit in Hawaii. And so I looked at you and I went, that guy sure looks local. But why don't you tell everybody in the audience a little bit about yourself, including where you went to school. And I don't think I told you I went to Kylo High School. That was my, that's where I graduated from. Back in the ancient days. So public high school versus private high school, but it was a good education, nonetheless. But growing up in Hawaii can't be beat. It's the way to go. So AJ, tell everybody a little bit about you and how you got into microgrid. Thank you. Thank you, Stan. It was, it's always a pleasure to talk to our people back home. And I was excited when our friends said, hey, you need to talk to Stan and to be able to just know that you're right there in my backyard in Kylo. I was born and raised in Kaneohe. Like you say, my family, Perkins, you know, it's funny because I did go to Kamehameha. Okay. I'm the oldest of three boys and my two brothers went to Kamehameha. So all three of us went to Kamehameha. My mom is not a Juli grad. My dad is Farrington grad, you know, so you still got that public private school scenarios. Right. So it's very much a big part of who we are, but I grew up right there in Kaneohe. Like right down the street from Kamehameha school, I went to school at St. Anthony's in Kailua. And also it was, I mean, that was my stopping ground my entire life. I bought my first home in Kailua when I was 19 years old. And that's where I kind of got my start. So my background is really business more than it is energy, right? And I was, you know, I was really fortunate to be brought into this energy space about five years ago. I had moved from Hawaii to California and I was asked by a friend of mine, if I would be CEO for a brand new LED company that he had just put together, they just got a patent on a new LED technology. And now I didn't know anything about the industry, but I know business. So I said, you know, let's take a look at it. I can go ahead and do this. So we, we set out and we, we did some really good sales. I mean, we sold about $5 million worth of product in the first couple of months. And then I learned it wasn't you all certified. I don't know what that is. Right. Um, so, so I looked at this and I was like, okay, um, when we look at the industry as a whole, right? I, I look at this and I said, this is definitely something we need to do. Um, they started talking about sustainability and all this stuff and they started to teach me about these things. And I'm from Hawaii, born and raised, right? And the thing that I told them is as Hawaiians, we don't even have a native Hawaiian language word for sustainability. And I said, you know why? Because that's why folks, right? I mean, our ancestors, my ancestors, I mean, so I got, I got to divert further when you talk about Perkins, right? Because this is, this is the important part, right? So Perkins all my life, I just assumed Perkins was a Hawaiian name, right? Everybody knows Perkins. Okay. Um, and it was, it was my entire life was just Perkins. And I didn't realize that it's a deeply, it's a deeply Hawaiian name, so to speak, right? But my mom, she's a bright, right? So another deeply Hawaiian family, the brights, you know, I'll, you know, kale bright, salt bright, you know, you know, all of these guys, right? A lot of, a lot of musical talent in that family, you know what I mean? So, so you've got these two families, the Perkins and the brights coming together and you've got the prodigies of the Perkins boys going to come in there. And then it's like, wait a minute, that's not a Hawaiian name. So I used to always joke. People always ask me when I got into business, people ask me, Hey, um, what kind of name is Perkins that do sound Hawaiian? And I used to joke all the time, you know what, that's like directly send it to King Commander, you know, and I just used to joke, well, my wife, she's deeply involved with genealogy, right? It's very important for her and her family and all. And our family is as well, but in my generation, it wasn't so bad, you know, it's like, okay, I'll let the old people do genealogy. I don't need to worry about that. So about a year and a half ago, my wife said, we got to do your genealogy. And it lowly behold, five generations above Perkins was King Commander. Wow. So it was, it was really interesting for us, you know, because now it, well, it truly binds you to the Aina, right? So back to what I was seeing when I, when I was getting involved in the energy industry and they're talking about sustainability, you know, reduce before you produce, right? I mean, before you start putting solar on your roof, why don't you make your home more efficient first and all this stuff, right? Let's create the efficiency and the sustainability first before you just start throwing a bunch of solar on your roof. And it was, you know, they, they kept talking about all of this sustainability and it really started to get to me because as a native Hawaii, somebody that grew up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2,500 miles away from anything, we knew sustainability. That was life for us. Exactly. You care for the land, you care for the people, and it'll care for you. So that's where we started to lose connection, right? Where we started to consume more than we need or we started to take more than we should. So now it's, it's really starting to, to hit me in a, in a really dynamic way, right? On one side, it's, it's this responsibility to go out there and teach the world, but then on the other side, I got to be humble and I got to learn. Yeah. There's so many good things going up here that I just really need to understand. And through that time, I've been fortunate. I've been able to aggregate customers that my, my big, the thing that kind of launched my career in this energy space was I, I, I do a lot of public speaking. And, you know, when I was back in Hawaii, I was a DJ all throughout high school, you know, I was, I was a DJ. I used to, I used to do mobile this for the whole thing. So I could, I had a natural knack to speak and I'm also part Portuguese. So that helps you, right? So it allowed me to be able to communicate not on this high level of these engineers, but it allowed me to bridge the gap, right? I could take these, these very high level conversations that my engineers and PhDs were talking about, and I was able to bring it down to the level of the business owners, to the homeowners, to the people that actually really cared. They don't care about kilowatts, kilowatt hours and terms. What they care about is AJ, if the power shuts off in my home, will my mom's breathing machine stay on? That's where it started to hit me hard. So I was fortunate that, you know, as I was speaking at this one particular conference, Lockheed Martin Energy heard what I was doing with another contract from Southern California Edison. And they said, hey, would you like to come in and tell us about what you're doing? They were doing, they were in this contract to reduce load here within the Southern California energy, Southern California Edison region. So through this, they were offering incentives, and I had acquired 129 commercial and industrial customers in three months. They had acquired two customers in six months. Wow. They had 15 engineers working for them. I'm still trying to figure out how to spell engineer, right? So they're looking at me saying, I don't understand this. How are you able to do this? You know, Mr. Perkins, we don't meet with companies like yours. We don't meet with contractors. And I said, it's funny because we're not even a contractor. We're actually just a sales organization. They gave us a direct contract to help them acquire customers. Our small little startup literally acquired more customers for them and all 27 of their contractors combined. It's because we understood what the needs of the customers were. So now fast forward, I now have put myself in a position where I've aggregated so many customers. I've learned so much from interacting with their customers and finding out their needs. Then I start not just understanding about micro grids and all this stuff, but I had started to create relationships with some really high people. Jigar Shah, right? The man and the myth behind, you know, Sun Edison and the solar PPA. He reached out to me in 2018 at the end of 2018 when PG&E was going to file bankruptcy. And he said, AJ, I need your help. Everybody knows PG&E is going to file bankruptcy, but what they don't know is that they're going to start off the power 30 times a year. I need you to start building micro grids and my company, Generate Capital, will go ahead and fund it all. I said, first, I got to go learn on a micro grids, but I'll do it. And we did. What we did was as we started to build this micro grid scenario, I started to look at demand response and micro grids, and I started to bring them together. So traditionally, demand response is curtailment, right? They pay you for shutting off equipment and things because the usage is too high, right? It's the middle of summer, 110 degrees here in California, and everybody's AC is on, so the grid cannot handle all that need for power. So they will ask you, hey, can you shut off a few lights in your house, and for shutting off or curtailing power, we'll pay you for that. It's a good program. The problem is it upsets operations, right? So people opt out. What we did was I wrote three patents around this on how to respond to demand response using micro grids. And the idea was if they call an event, use your micro grid to island the entire building. Yeah, we do the same thing with the electrolyzers in the sense that when the utility has a need for extra power, they what they do is overproduce on solar. And then when they need the power, they curtail the electrolyzer. They cut back on that power and balance out their grid. So it's really a way to use every little bit of power you're getting out of your solar because when the utility needs electricity, they get it from solar. When they don't need it, they balance their grid by shedding the load to the electrolyzer to make hydrogen and then the hydrogen stores energy for later in the day or next day or bad weather or whatever. Yeah, yes. So for us, just not everybody gets all of this, right? I mean, not everybody has the ability to see the projects that you see that I have been able to see. So I've become, you know, I've been I've been called the subject matter expert in micro grids. The utilities call on me once a month to talk about what's going on in the microgrid world. I speak before pre-COVID. I spoke all around the country on micro grids. Post-COVID, I speak all around the world. Right? I mean, they're pulling me in. I mean, just last month I was speaking that IEEE in Sri Lanka. You know, that type of stuff, you know, like they're they're taking me all around the world to talk about micro grids because of the importance and the need, but also because it gives a well rounded conversation on micro grids. We have a white paper that I came out with last year that it was the number one downloaded white paper on micro grid knowledge, which is the largest database for white papers on micro grids in the world. And, you know, it's it talks about nano grids and all these things. So, you know, when instant on the company, one of the companies that I run, we started up last year in January of 2020 as a starter. And what happened was we secured a contract to build nano grids in one million homes for US veterans. Covid came through and changed the whole dynamic. So what's the what's the difference between a micro grid and a nano grid? So it's funny you asked that because, you know, from a simple standpoint, micro is this big and nano is a little bit smaller. I remember the first time I spoke at SPI in Salt Lake about two years ago. This is the largest solar and energy storage conference. And I was speaking there and my conversation was on nano grids. Nano grids for us was originally just a residential micro grid. OK, while I was there, I had I had engineers and professors from the LBNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Alps. And they said, nano grids, did you read the paper from one of our professors on nano grids? And I was like, oh, goodness. Now I have to deal with this Hawaiian boy that's talking about nano grids and LBNL talking about nano grids and a white paper that was issued and published by people that really get things. But it was beautiful because, again, we were able to reach the gap. When I talked to the author of the white paper, he's like, you know what, that was a long time ago when I was there. A lot of things have changed. So again, for simplicity's sake, when we term nano grids, we use that term specifically more towards the residential micro grid. Right. So and then again, you could always just classify it as a small micro grid. But I mean, they're coming out with so many different terminologies. So that's where I would use. Now you can go deeper into it, but, you know, as somebody that's just looking at it, nano is for the home, micro is for, you know, the community beyond. And the community. So you could actually have a nano grid on your home and you can have a micro grid, a community micro grid that my nano grid is a part of, which is all a part of a big macro grid. All right. How much do you actually integrate? Like in Hawaii and TEL's case, or not Hawaii and TEL, Hawaii Electric's case here in Hawaii, they worked with NREL or Sandia Labs, I forget which one, on helping to stabilize their grid. And they inter intervened in there and said, what we really need to do is we need to have control of the inverters on everybody's house so they can control each inverter on everybody's solar panels and tune them out, like you say, curtail them individually or collectively as they see fit. But to me, that just seems really, really complicated. If you had nano grids that kind of took care of themselves and could either export power on demand or, you know, that makes more sense than having the utility control your inverters at your house. How does your how does your group look at that? So we actually have our own control system. So we have what we call the IO Hub, which is a combination of smart meter, intelligent circuit panel and essential loads panel. Right. So these are three different things that most homes that put solar and storage should have, meaning the smart meter, a lot of homes have or will have these smart, right. And that allows the utility to communicate. The circuit panel, it's that circuit breaker where if it shuts off, you go back out and turn it off. Now our circuit breaker is intelligent in that I can actually use my phone to control it, right. Now an essential loads panel, if somebody puts solar and storage on their home, the reality is if you put a 10 KWH battery, let's say the equivalent of a Tesla power, if you put one of those in a normal home, if you let the whole home stay available to that battery, that battery won't last long in a couple of hours because people, what happens is people just think, Oh, okay, I got power. Just turn stuff on and not worry about it. They don't realize that. There's a blackout point on. So what we do is traditionally most contractors should put an essential loads panel, which is separate from your big breaker. And in the essential loads panel, we have the things, the loads that are essential, which is let's say for my home, it's the refrigerator, the garage door opener, some plugs and some lights, right. Essential loads. So what our IO Hub does is it takes all of these three things and puts them together in one. So now it actually allows you as the, it becomes very customer centric. You as the customer can control it. So now the utility doesn't have to do it. The utility can actually send the signal to the IO Hub to say, Hey, there's too much power on the grid. Don't send us any. And now my IO Hub tells my solar going to my battery, going to the home. Right. So now, like you said, you were spot on by saying, that sounds complicated. It's not only complicated. It's unnecessary. If you give the control to the consumer with the equipment that can do this, it's that's where this aggregation comes. Right. But we know, we know, we're not, I'm not trying to take people away from the grid. I'm trying to be able to allow them to be more responsible. You do any micro grids that are technically off the grid? So, you know, I'd say single dig digit percentage of the micro grids that we do are off grid. I, I love connecting a micro grid to the utility because it allows us to work with the grid to support them. Meaning if I do, if I build my micro grid, right, I'm going to have a lot of extra power because I'm protecting your home. I'm protecting your family. And I cannot do that with this small battery or small power. So it's like having a generator, but it's stored power. So now what happens is if the grid needs extra power, I sell it to them. Now I create revenue for you as the micro grid owner. I can't do that if I'm off grid. Right. So that's huge for us. So you work with the Public Utilities Commission or that equivalent in different states to make sure that you get rates, you get, you know, rates and rates established where it actually helps the consumer. Like I know the Hawaiian Electric, we had a rate base that was set up so that people could sell power back to utility, but it expired. And right now, if you produce excess solar, it's just they take it and you don't get you don't get compensated for it. And I think that's kind of BS to be frank with you. You know, you're really helping the utility out and and they're they're just taking advantage. So how do you do that? How do you work with the PUC, the Public Utilities Commission on things like that? So one of the other things that I do, I also sit as a senior advisor for the California Energy Alliance, right? So I actually help them in my in my group, we're helping to write demand response policy for the state of California for 2022. So I'm really fortunate that I'm able to be a part of the group that influences policy. I also used to sit on a group that help control the major IOUs, investor on utilities, their public purpose funds. So I have a really unique opportunity because on one side, I'm helping to write policy on the other side. I was watching what's going on with incentives and then I run a microgrid company, right? So my whole thing is we all got to work together. We all got to create that scenario. So now, I'll be honest, when we did talk about NEM and NEM2 and that, you know, that energy media and all this type of stuff, I hate to say it, but I almost don't care what happens. Why? Because I should never explore any of my power to the grid unless they're paying me top dollar. I'm either using it or I'm storing it in my batteries or some other form of storage, right? Now, as in, you know, our company is an aggregator, right? We aggregate power for the utility. So that's the challenge, right? Because every single homeowner, they don't have the ability to send that power off and get compensated for it. But if I come to the utility as an aggregator and I say, I've got a megawatt of power, I've got a gigawatt of power, would you like it? Now that's where all of my collective aggregated customers. I can take all of that excess power and say, hey, Mr. Utility, you need power? I'm willing to sell it to you, not for 12 cents or $2, sure. You know, like, that's the opportunity that we have, but it's because we've got energy storage. It's because we've got hydrogen. We've got that storage capabilities, right? So that's really what we should be doing. They stop crying over this, all of this net metering is not good and blah, blah, blah. Create the right systems. At that point, it doesn't matter what the utility is. Do you use much hydrogen right now in any of your systems? Or is that one of the new areas you're kind of moving into? That is a new area for us. I mean, so last year, about a year and a half ago, we got contacted by SoCal Everson, as well as SoCal Gas. And they said, hey, we're looking at these different things and all this stuff. And then SoCal Gas comes back and says, would you be willing to do a pilot to integrate a one and a half KW fuel cell into one of your residential solar nanogridds? And I look at it as just power. I don't care what the technology is. You're going to give me a point with power? I'll figure it out. So we started doing that. I started playing with it. And now we've been able to create some really good relationships with not just SoCal Gas and SDG&E and FUCHIA, the Fuel Cell Hydrogen Energy Association. We've created the ability to use these fuel cells as a way to support our microgrids and nanogridds because it adds that redundancy that's needed to our resilient nanogridds. Meaning, so in California, you guys know we had the wildfires up here, right? Right. So you think about it. You got all these microgrids and nanogridds that I've created and put onto homes and businesses in Northern California. I feel happy and proud and good job, right? We protected them. And then the smoke comes and blocks out the sun. And then the soot comes and covers the solar panels. Yeah. So now here you got this $50,000 system, let's say, thinking that you're covered and you can barely produce enough energy to light an LED bulb. Wow. It's embarrassing, right? So we needed to figure out a way to get rid of that jump because we're protecting lives here. So now by bringing in this redundant system of using fuel cells, now it's being powered off of natural gas and it could be powered off of hydrogen, right? But now we've got a secondary power source that's using natural gas to provide power to protect these families and businesses. Great. Yeah, that's good to hear because I follow hydrogen pretty closely and when I look internationally in the transportation sector particularly, but also in the grid sector, hydrogen is really starting to play a key role. And you know, Delisa, who kind of connected us. An IGX. Yeah, IGX. I had her boss on last week to talk about moving hydrogen. We call it passing gas. And it was really important for us because people are just now starting to figure out the hydrogen role as an energy storage medium and coupling it with batteries. And where the hydrogen becomes a long-term storage and the battery becomes almost like a diode, it's your quick pulse, your ultra-capacitor. The battery is kind of filling that role. So you have ultra-capacitors and batteries and hydrogen. Absolutely. And you can kind of sequence them how you need. If you need a real lot of power real quick for short duration, the capacitor or supercapacitor can do it. And then a little bit longer, batteries are good. And then for a couple of days or a couple of weeks, the hydrogen is the one that kicks in. Correct. We were fortunate, you know, right now we're fortunate to be teamed up with Dr. Jack Brar from the National Fuel Cell Research Center at UC Irvine. So we're working with him and his team and then also recently through Delisa as well. She connected us with Cal State, Los Angeles, Dr. Bleckman. And it's just amazing the opportunities that can be created by bringing all of these together. Yeah, there's an awful lot going on, just a ton of stuff going on. Well, AJ, we're down to about our last minute and I want to leave it up to Kamehameha Schools to close us out here. And just thank you for bringing home to Hawaii the sustainability that was here 500 years ago that we seem to have forgotten about and bringing your vision to how that could happen again. And I really, I agree with you. I think we should be sustainable here and survivable. You know, we're on our own. We're in this canoe together over here and 2,500 mile moat around us. We need to be able to survive. So I'll leave the last few minutes up to you. You know, it's, I feel very blessed to have been born and raised in God's country, right? In the islands, we have so many beautiful things, but we also have the challenges that have made us strong. And for me to have come away from the islands and I look at it as a learning opportunity for me. And I did, you know, there's so many things that have helped shape me to who I am today. And as I look to be able to to bring more of this back to the islands, it really is just whole point of point. It's bringing these all together. It's bringing them in. It's such a way that everybody works together. And and that that old adage Pupukahi Iholomua, right? Together we move forward. And I think that's what we have to do is we need to bring everybody together and say, how do we do this? Stop trying to be individual. Stop trying to be the best. It's it's the team that wins the tight right. And that's what we got to do. It's just too important for us to let that go by. We got to protect families. We got to protect communities. We got to protect businesses. It's absolutely necessary. It's it's not just it is our responsibility and it is our stewardship. That's the biggest thing. Great. Well, Adjie, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And I'm going to have to have you back on again so we can talk a little bit more about some of your projects in detail. But thanks for sharing your thoughts with us today. And Manao and and just good luck over there. Keep on doing big. Keep on thinking big and doing big. And maybe someday over here, we'll catch up to you. All right, thank you so much. This was a pleasure. All right, Adjie. Take care of yourself and we'll be talking to you soon. Aloha. Aloha.