 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Bingo! We're back to four o'clock block. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. This is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. One of our longest running shows, actually. That's Sharon Moriwaki, co-host and co-chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. Aloha. And we have three segments today, okay? One is Jim Kelly. He's that guy. Hi, Jim. Hi. He's the vice president of corporate relations of Hawaiian Electric Companies. We have Wen Kanseho. He's with Hawaii Energy. He's a communications specialist there. And we have John Cole, HNEI. He's an assistant specialist. I'm somehow going to find out what he's specializing in here. Former PUC commissioner, by the way. So Jim, first I want to tell you thank you very much for the support you gave us when we went last Thursday. Hawaiian Electric provided two people to help us on the trip. It was organized by Fred Riddell, the commissioner of energy of Maui and Moriwaki, of course. And we had Todd Tanjo. Todd Kanja. Kanja. Yep. And Chris Reynolds. Reynolds. Yep. Of Maui Electric. From Maui Electric, right? It was all really, really informative. And we got great footage. We're going to put it on OC16, the first class trip. Thank you. Good, good. Well, I'm glad it worked out. It's a really interesting place with a lot of interesting things going on right now. Yeah. We saw that and we love to go to the neighbor islands because we had this whole world view of bringing the islands together and having one island know with the... In fact, the guys, the commissioners and coordinators from around the counties are coming for a meeting at the end of the month and they're going to compare notes about energy and climate and all that stuff. Oh, really? It'll be very interesting. And Fred is involved in organizing that in Waikiki. French good guy. Yeah. And it's good to see the counties get together that way. So Jim, you had a press release. We wanted to follow up. It's more interesting than a press release. I mean, that's the setup. Oh, you guys had a press release. Okay, well, thank you. No, no, no. Can we reframe that question? Yeah. Okay. Making news. You're having a program about electrifying transportation in Hawaii, which is a very important initiative. Yes. And you're having a meeting where everybody's going to get together or everybody got together. Yes, we had a meeting. Yep. We had transportation and energy. Who was it? Where was it? What happened? Tell us. Well, we did. We had the first workshop of its kind last week. We got about 60 people together to talk about how we move forward on electrification of transportation, not just EVs, but also talking more about public transportation, heavy equipment, trucks and buses. There's a big push on the mainland now. A lot of delivery fleets are starting to switch over to electric, and so the purpose of the meeting was to really try to get people in the room together who could talk about, okay, we've kind of gotten past the original hurdles with EVs and getting people to accept them. We have the second highest rate of adoption after California EVs. So people are kind of gutting over the range, anxiety as cars are now coming out with longer range batteries. So what are the issues for the utility in terms of infrastructure, being able to support people charging? What are the public policy issues? There was a lot of discussion about the potential for the tax break that the feds give right now. There's some discussion about getting rid of that. How can we make, you know, EV ownership continue to be appealing? And also, what's in it for, again, businesses, public agencies? We had somebody from the city and county there talking about the electric bus that they're going to have for a pilot program here. So there's a lot of really, we had people nationally from Ford and Lyft and Proterra and some others. Oh, great. Everybody. Yeah, so it was really good and people were very enthusiastic and it's kind of one of those, I guess, spirited and also kind of rare instances where everybody's really together with the understanding that this is a worldwide phenomenon. I mean, this is a global shift that is happening away from internal combustion vehicles and equipment. And Hawaii is perfectly positioned to take advantage of getting aligned with that worldwide global shift. We're not the tail end of it. We can be right in the middle of it. Maybe even a leader. Maybe even a leader. Some interesting talk about autonomous vehicles and, you know, so, right. So it was really, people were very, very engaged. It was a good conversation. So it's one of what nine workshops you're doing? Yeah, we just started with this one and we're going to keep going, see how it goes. Okay, great. That's fabulous. What was the biggest takeaway from that? Good question. I mean, so what is the next step? What is the next session? What came out of it, do you think? I think one of the bigger takeaways was the understanding that I think people have or are starting to have about how the electric vehicle infrastructure fits in with the entire grid, how it, if we do this right, this can be a great thing because we want to have people charging their equipment and their cars during the day when we have all this solar available that we don't want to waste. We don't want to have everybody going home at seven o'clock and charging up 25,000 electric vehicles. That's not a good thing. But if they do it during the day and there are incentives and we make it easy, maybe with mobile workplace charging, then it can really help the grid be stable and also frankly allow more renewables to come on because there will be a place to put that energy. I'm really impressed how Hawaiian Electric has bellied up to this issue. You put in charging stations of all kinds all over the place and you continue to do that and you support this. You organize a program like this, you talk it up, you create incentives and it's the nod that really makes a difference. Here's the utility coming around saying, you guys ought to do this. It has a tremendous effect on the community. So really it's beyond the call. It doesn't necessarily earn you $1. Well, thanks for recognizing that. But you're doing a community thing here. This is really valuable. Well, we think it can be one of those rare things that's a win-win for everybody, the individual customer for the community and for all of us. Well, thank you, Jim. Thank you for coming out. My interest is always, it's always good to see you guys. He likes to see more charging stations too. More charging stations. Okay, we'll work out. Thank you. All right, we'll take a short break. We're going to go to our next guest, Marvin Winconsejo from Hawaiian Electric. Oops. Hawaiian energy. Yeah, well, you know it's a lot of people. Yeah, we're all. It's all one big ol' honey here. One big ol' honey. Yep. Thank you, Jim. Thank you. Aloha, Jim. Thanks for coming by. Come anytime. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Good afternoon. My name is Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, a program on Think Tech Hawaii. We show at three o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday. My guests are specialists from here and the mainland on energy efficiency, which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket. Yes, videos are basically... Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here together, all together. One big family, right? Yes. That's Sharon Moriwaki over there. She's a co-chair, co-host of everything. What are you drinking with? It's Marvin Winconseo from Hawaii Energy. Hawaii Energy. That's fine. That's perfectly fine. You're everywhere, Marvin. And we work closely with Hawaiian Electric. And everybody else. So, you know, no, there's no problem with that. We love Hawaiian Electric. So, Marvin, you know, the word has it. It's just gossip, but word on the street is that in a week's time we'll be right smack in the middle of Thanksgiving. You know, isn't that wonderful? Check your calendars. No, but really, I mean, first of all, how did that happen? 2017 just evaporated. Evaporated? Holy moly. But, you know, we are entering the holiday season and Thanksgiving is almost upon us. And, you know, it's a nice time for us at Hawaii Energy to really be thankful for the folks who we help, who are helping others. You know, there are members of the community, the nonprofits I'm talking about, of course, that, you know, take the time to help our underserved and those who just need a little bit of a lift. But who helps the helpers? Well, first of all, we want to thank all those who give the major contributions. I mean, those who give money to funds for these programs, they wouldn't survive without that stuff. But at Hawaii Energy, you know, we also make sure that we, as best as we can, take care of these places. And one I'm talking about now is Honolulu Habitat for Humanity. We recently finished a retrofit of their facility in Kalihi. They're restores what they call it. It's their secondhand, if you will, store to help those, you know, trying to build homes, and they raise money so that they, too, can build homes for others. And we've got about a little bit of videos. We all take a look at the retrofit and hear from the folks involved with helping Honolulu Habitat for Humanity. Yeah, that's great. I'm going to tell Jim that we visited Molokai in the trip last Thursday. We saw, you know, some of the people, and they are very appreciative of things that Hawaii Energy has done for them. You guys have made a big impression on Molokai. Well, that's great, because we did just finish the latest chapter of the Who We Up program where we were able to deliver at a cost. It wasn't all free, but at a cost to $20, $50, we recycled their refrigerator, give them a new one. But the difference with the nonprofits that we help is we take care of everything. And not necessarily that we pay, but we have our contractors also volunteer to help, or they donate the goods needed, like the lights and stuff like that. So for Honolulu Habitat for Humanity, the bill would come about more than $11,000 for the total retrofit. But not only our program, but through our contractors and all the workers. Yeah, exactly. So if I'm a contractor or an ordinary person and I want to find out more about this program and what the benefits might be for me, where do I look? No, come to our website. And we just revamped it. So it's snazzy. Well, you just go through our homepage and over the menu it'll say... HawaiiEnergy.com. That's a good name. It's easy to remember. Write that down. If you can't best this exam, you're in real trouble. Yeah, but we have it for residential, pro-natal homes, as well as large companies. Companies. So Marvin, as we go closing the end of the year, can you give us just a moment on how the year has been and what you plan for next year at HawaiiEnergy? Actually, the year's been great. We've been able to help a lot of families, help a lot of companies and hotels. And in fact, when we just visited recently, we'll be highlighting later, is the brand-spanking new international marketplace. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's great. So what did you do? They did a great job with all the LED lights. Looks terrific. Their chillers are upgraded. We encouraged a lot of the new builders to do what they did, which is it was built into the design. It was built into the plans. And that's the best time to attack energy efficiency. The cheapest way to do it. Except some people get put off by the idea that it's a little more expensive up front, but over the long run, with the energy savings. Well, at the end of the day, I think you guys have done a lot to train people to educate them about that very principle. Yeah. And as time goes by, at least in my observation, more people understand that. They understand that step in time saves nine. They understand that. You know, to do efficiency really has all kinds of secondary benefits. And I think for you, for having done that, directly and indirectly, you've changed public opinion on this issue. Well, it's good to hear. I appreciate that. And small businesses, too. In fact, we just ran into Jane Sawyer in the elevator, you and I. Yes, we did. And she and I are going to get together. She's with the United States Small Business Administration. And yeah, we're going to talk story about how we can do even more for Hawaii's small businesses as a principle is you never know what's going to happen on an elevator. Thank you, Marvin. Thanks for coming down. Great to talk to you. Oh, we got a movie? Let's take a look. Let's see the movie. Our mission is to bring people together, build restores a way that funds that mission every lighting retrofit company to help us with this project. They helped us in every step of the way from getting the fluorescent bulbs recycled to getting these products donated to getting the team to come in and donate their time and the things that we don't have the scissor lift to get up to this, you know, ceiling heights and just from start to finish they've been a huge impact for us and an awesome partnership. Non-profits, they they don't have the knowledge or the capability or the time to do all these types of things or the capital to do all these retrofits so I'd like to as much as possible help out the non-profits and see what more energy can do for them. We love to help out organizations actually so we work with non-profits during Christmas time and we give out school supplies and baby bags to unfortunate children and then we work with different organizations so we thought why not help out another organization Habitat for Humanity and we just, you know, we really appreciate what they do for the community and we wanted to give something back to them. I can already see the impact that it's brighter and lighter that's better for our customers, it's safer it showcases our products and it's every month knowing that our electricity bill that's going to decrease is perfect. I have to explain what that was all about. Well, as I mentioned earlier that project would have cost $11,000 for but since then since they flipped on the light switch after all that was done each month they save close to 800 kilowatt hours a month that was $210 a month and so that comes up to be about $2,500 a year. Yeah, a 31% reduction in energy usage so, you know, again giving back to Honolulu Habitat for Humanity for all the work that they've done we do it for other nonprofits as well if folks out there give us a call visit our website but, you know, there's energy savings to be had we're going to make sure that you go and get it. So nonprofits only? No, well we have different programs for different sectors, no doubt about it. That helps the... Well, for example we work closely with the City and County of Honolulu that's another most recent one where they've taken the steps at various buildings to retrofit, yeah and here come the incentives City Council has to approve the expenditure but of course it's done, I mean it's obvious and there you go, but yes, we do help we have little silos for each one but we're bound to find the right package for the right sector. Thank you Marvin. Very good. Great work on the video. Happy Thanksgiving. We'll see you guys. We will be more energy efficient cooking our turkey. We'll be right back to talk to John Cole, you'll see. I'm fighting throughout our community because we bring all kinds of cool ideas and I bring gadgets to the show so you gotta watch it for sure. But for the first time, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web based fundraising campaign that raised $40,000. Give thanks to Think Tech. We'll run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can that Think Tech in Hawaii can continue to be public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine and public charge. I've already made my donation and it's really hard to get disgust when they make a donation but I already did. Please sit in your tax deductible contribution by going to this website thanksforthinktech.causebox.com say that three times fast. Closing on behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii 30 plus weekly shows. Thank you and we're mahalo for watching Think Tech and your generosity. Okay we're back. I told you and I told you we'd have John Colback former PUC commissioner and a specialist at HNEI consumer advocate. I mean we could go on. We don't have enough time. John, HNEI that stands for Hawaii Natural Energy Institute it's embedded in the university it's very important to energy because you guys do research but there's more to it. Can you tell us how the evolution is going? Oh right. HNEI we do a lot of research on specific technologies. We have solar research anaerobic digestion, biomass a whole bunch of different areas that folks do research in there but we've been shifting a lot of focus into integrating things into the electric system like the variable renewable energy which is presenting a lot of challenges so what we've been trying to do lately with our policy team and some of our other resources at the institute is to help do some independent analyses of the electric systems and try to inform decision makers like the PUC with those analyses. So we're calling this show HNEI Moving Beyond Technology I thought that was a really provocative title. I'm going to ask you what that means. What does it mean? You can have a lot of great technologies but they need to all work together or be integrated into a system that works efficiently and cost effectively hopefully for everybody. So that's a lot of what my work has been. I've been managing a lot of projects that model the utility systems grids and generation and looking at increasing levels of variable renewables like solar and wind and the challenges that brings to the utility systems grid and then looking at mitigations or how those challenges can be overcome and making reports public and eventually sometimes the utility takes those recommendations. There have been times where the PUC kind of had to twist their arm to take recommendations but we try to provide some independent analyses to help inform the decisions that are being made as we transition from renewable. So it's actually integrating various technologies which people may not realize can work together can be synergized in some way to perform some larger task and this is surely so in connection with the improvement of the grid which have so many technologies and so many issues about putting all the pieces together and really there isn't anybody at this technology over here this company wants to sell you this company wants to sell you that so how do you put them together this is a really important question I would call it HNEI moving toward technology leadership because you're really identifying what technologies are going to be leading the group of technologies. There's a lot of stuff out there new technologies and new businesses coming in like through the entrepreneurs and the accelerators and things like that who have technology ideas but we have to make sure they all can integrate into the system. I'm forming a company doing some entrepreneurial thing I'm dedicated to my company my idea, my technology and I'm not necessarily I could but I'm not necessarily interested in integrating that with somebody else's. Right and how it all works together we get a lot of pitches from these technologies as HNEI does for technologies that we're not necessarily looking at or developing ourselves but we get people coming to us and asking us how this might fit in so that's part of our role as we see is helping to integrate not only the new technologies but the wind and solar as the levels increase present more and more challenges so trying to figure out how all that can work together and keep things reliable and stable. This could be pretty sophisticated but I know we're utility John I'd be reading your reports voraciously that's what I would be doing I hope they are. I think they do we actually work with the utilities when we do our modeling and not only the utilities but the PUC and other stakeholders and experts as we develop scenarios as we get initial results we get together and they help us review it so we make them part of the process so we're making sure as HNEI we're not missing stuff trying to do things that are of value to the community they don't have the flex that you have they don't have the scientific resources perhaps that you have so I want to ask a question on behalf of Sharon maybe suggest it to Sharon to ask you a question give us an example of a problem and the disparate technologies and the solution you do not have to name names however if you do name names they will be very appreciative I'm just going to pick one that from a few years back we did a modeling study with GE on Maui and they have a lot of wind as you know and we made a recommendation in one of our reports that if they changed how they operated their fossil fuel burning units you know maybe put their minimum runs down a little more and didn't produce as much power with those units they had a lot more wind on their system and less curtailment right exactly and they didn't do that initially and eventually in a rate case decision the public utilities commission kind of tweaked them a little bit on their rate of return and told them to implement some of these recommendations and they did tweak the operation of some of their thermal units that allowed for almost no curtailment for a time they started curtailment rows again but that was because of the explosion of rooftop PV which is not controllable by the utility which is a competitor to wind in this only way and so they started curtailing a little more as that went up and now their curtailment has kind of dropped again and that is due to less thermal generation on the system since the HCNS plant that they were buying the electricity from closed down well you know it strikes me it's very interesting so you run the PUC now you're sort of on the other side the other corner of the ball field and you can actually help the PUC by making these reports and suggestions in public and part of being on the PUC at least most of the time the utility has they have to do all these studies and analyses to kind of bring forth planning proposals and things but at the PUC that's kind of all you have as far as deep analysis there's other stakeholders that say things about that or complain about that but you don't really have much beyond that to go on so what H&I is hoping to do is to provide some of that technical analysis that's independent from the utility and it may say the same thing it may say something different or suggest different alternatives but it's something independent and it's a value to the decision-making process and you have the resources to do it from a scientific point of view call it scientific methodology anyway plus the scientists available to you and I know you have some very classy scientists we've met them well you've got some in life they're all much better anyway I think this is an interesting twist because we have arrived our examination here on Hawaii the state of clean energy is where is it going how is it moving is it meeting expectations and who is playing on the field and who is participating in what way to me this is very important that we start putting the pieces together it's like a grand puzzle some kid playing with Legos by the way we'd love to see all these various factors and facilities and pieces of equipment come together and now we're at a place where it gets more sophisticated it's more difficult there's more demands made on the outcome and we really have to focus on the technology and as you said the integration it's so close to you for that this is good we've made such great progress but we've got so much further to go and it's only going to get more difficult and more complicated I'm sure that's true when you have all these pieces and you bring them all together what you have is a notable achievement in a laboratory Hawaii the laboratory of energy Hawaii the laboratory of energy which the world can see and it makes us all the more a leader so H&EI becoming really central in that whole effort by moving to this integration idea and it's bringing everybody together to the table I think before it was all in silos and now the conference where you have the stakeholder thing that you have with HECO that John is involved in I think it's that kind of conversation as Jim Kelly earlier said with transportation everybody coming together then you could see how you do integrate if you don't have all the pieces it's hard to integrate well good and it could be a work on the forum I think the forum sort of sets a pace about having good clear conversation good clear comparison and pairing notes about doing it outside of silos and I think we're developing a kind of culture in the energy community where people know each other they're able to talk to each other they're able to get out of the silos I don't want to use the word consensus but make a kind of common conclusion about which way is best and scientists always have an angle I mean an advantage on that don't you think yeah definitely and there's different levels of technology I don't want to say competence but understanding so we need to cut across all of those and communicate where we're trying to go and the reasons why and the trade offs that are going to have to take place to all levels I mean the technical guys can sit down and talk about it and understand it but sometimes it's a challenge to make it because it's not as easy as us we try to do that type of thing as well I feel the chairman's going to ask you another question now well basically it's always the challenging question what basically in terms of what you've done so far where HNEI is what do you see as the the most I guess the biggest challenge in terms of really making this integration happen I mean we brought people to the table what's the next step forward in the coming year for HNEI or overall HNEI is seeing the integration where the the touch points are and what is the challenge for getting to the next level I think bringing everything together just the whole integration part and some of the meetings I've been at today and tomorrow are about integrated grid planning which would bring in the distribution side and all the rooftop solar and forecast for that and energy storage and other resources that are out there in homes at the end of the lines and being able to bring that into the planning as well because people are going to do what they're going to do but it all has to work within the system and for the benefit of the consumer so you need that yeah well thanks for doing that thanks for coming down Sean we want to check in with you from time to time and the question I thought Sharon was going to ask kind of a closing question I think this is the question I thought Sharon if I want to know what you guys are doing at HNEI if I want to know about your projects and your investigations and your successes and your relationships with other stakeholders in the landscape where do I look do I just call you up there must be some other way you could we do have a website Hawaii.edu slash HNEI and it has all our reports some recent news and projects and there's a lot of menus you can play with there and I also want to thank John because he's done a lot in terms of looking at this integrated planning who all the actors are and having a better view of how to do energy play or how we can better do energy planning so I think that's still an initiative that he's been helping the forum on and leading the forum charge you're probably going to thank him for that for appearing on the show then you're going to say farewell to our viewers am I right? and thank you thank you John and thanking the viewers for being with us and until we see you next time to continue the leadership series for November Aloha Aloha you guys