 Okay, we're back, we're live, it's, well it's the, I guess you'd say it's a 1230 block, I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech, and we have Hawaii, the state of clean energy, and our special guest from Hawaiian Electric. We love to have Hawaiian Electric come down. They're one of our favorite energy, in fact, I would say they are our favorite energy talk about interviewees. And we have Jim Alberts, he's the Senior Vice President of Customer Service at Hawaiian Electric. Big welcome to the show, Jim. Jay, it's great to be here, and I'd love to hear the fact that we're your favorite on screen. You are, we've got to get you down more though. Next time we're going to send a car or something. Okay, I like that. It'll be electric. The grand service, an electric car, it has to be an electric car. So let's talk about what's going on. I guess in terms of immediacy and news, you wanted to mention something about the Nissan Leaf Credit, it'd be very important. Yep, so one of the big things that the state needs to work on is how we electrify our transportation system to help with clean energy. So there's a promotion going on right now sponsored by Nissan, and it includes a $10,000 rebate. So when you go to the dealership, take your electric bill in and show that to the dealer. Now it's been going on for a while. The reason I want to highlight it is tomorrow's the last day of this promotion. But it's such a great deal to get a Nissan Leaf with the federal tax credit, this $10,000 promotion off that. You can get a really great price on a good car, and it will really help advance the state. So I encourage everybody to get out and take advantage of it while it's here. Yeah, one of my guests here a couple of weeks ago, he's a retired professor from New Age in physics. And it counts, because physics is really special. So after the show, he says, you have to come downstairs. And he made me go downstairs with him so we could inspect his brand new Nissan Leaf. Oh, that's awesome. And he'll take advantage of that deal. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, and when I think about some of the reasons we want to look at this, number one, it's just a great product. And two, it helps with the overall transformation because we've got solar power during the day. And if we can time that and we can charge electric vehicles during the day, we're really taking advantage of that clean energy. Okay, so what somebody has to do is take his last electric bill, or any electric bill, I guess. The electric bill down to the dealership. Down to the dealership today or tomorrow. Today or tomorrow. And he will get a $10,000 federal tax credit. It's a $10,000 rebate for Nissan. Much better. And then they still can qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit on top of that. So you can cut the price of a... Almost in half. Yeah, in half. In half. Cut it substantially less than $20,000 for the car. Yes. It's a cheap car. It's a great car. And when you think about the lifecycle cost of an electric vehicle, very little maintenance and care. And you don't have to go put gasoline in it. Yeah. Well, you know that Hawaii Energy Policy Forum is doing a program in August, our Clean Energy Day program. And the center of the program, the centerpiece of it is energy and transportation. And of course electric cars are a big part of that program. Oh, that's terrific. And I know that you guys in Hawaii have actually been doing a lot in terms of charging stations and encouraging people. Right. Even this announcement here today to make people, incentivize people to buy. They are the future. They really are. And, you know, the extension beyond that we're also talking to people in town about electrifying other parts of the transportation system like bus fleets. So if you think about the rail when it completes where the rail stops to have an electric fleet of buses that cycle people around Waikiki, very clean, very quiet. It's just a great way to also improve a tourist experience coming to Hawaii. Yeah, quiet is sure right. I took a ride with Sharon Moriwaki yesterday. Yeah. In her electric car. She's devoted to her electric car. And you couldn't hear a pin drop. It's so quiet. It's like an island in the storm, you know, all the stuff happening around you and yet in the car silence crickets. Yeah, it's really nice. It's such a far cry from growing up as a kid where we used to enjoy loud cars. And now quiet cars are much better. Yeah, this is good for everybody. Yeah. Okay, more news. So last week there were two, not one, but two energy conferences. One back to back. I mean, one kind of feeding off the other somehow. The country style one in Lihui, it's a Kauai Marriott, a Kauai energy conference organized by the county and K-I-U-C and KEDB, the Economic Development Board in Kauai. It was very good, very friendly. It was well attended. A lot of people came from Hawaii for sure. Yes. You had a speaker there. And all things considered, I really liked that one a lot. We took a lot of footage over there. In fact, we're making a movie right now to play this weekend and next week about what happened in Kauai. Yeah, that's great. And the fact you can use your new technology to go do your show from Kauai, that's even better. Two of them. That's awesome. Yeah, that demonstrates a lot of flexibility. Well, that's very nice. Yeah, that was very nice. There were a lot of things to learn about that, about how you know, do such a conference and how to make people feel comfortable. And there was a lot of candor, I thought. It wasn't as technical though as Verge. Verge was pretty technical. Right. You were there, can you talk about it? I was there, so the conference part that I was involved in was around sustainable tourism. And because tourism is such a big part of the economy here in Hawaii, that we have to make sure we all work together to focus on that. And sustainability goes beyond just tourism for the hotels. This is a community-wide effort. So we have to think about this for everybody in the state, not just the hotels. And I think that was the key message that came out of that is how we get the right people together to focus on this to make it more sustainable. Yeah, I thought there were two threads that were common in both the conferences. One was business, let's address business. Because business has taken active role in this. And at the end of the day, they can enable it. They must enable it. It's not only the public and the utility and the government, but business also. The second thing that I noticed was transportation is at the center. Everybody's thinking about transportation. Yeah, it really is. All the way from rail to how we started the conversation with electric vehicles and the bike share program, which was just announced on the news last night. So all of those clean, renewable forms of transportation are great. Our world is changing, Jim. Yeah, it really is. And the utility is changing. And you've had some significant changes in the last few months. Can you talk about those? Yeah, we have Alan Oshima, our CEO, reorganized the company in January. And one of the key fundamentals of this organization is how we focus more on our customers. Because for many, many years, utilities not just here, but across the nation had really one job, and that's produced low cost, kilowatt hour electricity, and provide that to its customers. But now it's a very interactive relationship. And customers are generating their own electricity. They're buying batteries, their own generating units. So we need to be very close to those customers on how we enable that future. So that was the big essence of the change behind the scenes. So realigned resources inside the company to be able to accomplish that. And you had a corporate reorganization of some of your officers? Yep, we did. So a couple of new appointments like Ron Cox is responsible now for our operations across all three companies. And that's the other key part of the change is we were organized by geography inside companies before. So one organization on Oahu, one on Maui, one on Hawaii Island. Now these organizations span all three companies so that we can be as efficient as possible and be as cost effective as possible and give customers similar solutions. So another key change with this reorganization is Shelley Kimura is responsible for strategic planning and business development. So we were out actively looking for new partnerships that we can bring innovations to Hawaii. And another exciting part of that change was Colton Ching, who's now responsible for planning and technologies. So all the new innovations that are happening on the grid, we have one place for that to come into the organization. We can prioritize it and we can really show some nice action plans. And Scott Sue, of course, and I don't know if he's been here recently, but Scott was promoted to Senior VP of Public Affairs. So we're looking at public affairs across all three companies as well. That's a lot of vitality in all of that. Those guys are all vital. It's great to hear that they're doing well. Yeah, everybody's doing great. And I think, inside the company, we're really excited about this new approach, customer first. And if we can solve customer issues, it is good for the customer, it's good for everybody. Yeah, things are changing too. With next era, which was a sort of dark shadow for a year of all that travail and the PUC, behind us, now we can look forward some more. Don't you feel that that the mantle is off? And now there's an open field from here to 2045 somehow. Yeah, it really is. We've laid out our plans and the challenge now is just to execute well. We've still gotta be flexible enough to work with our communities and our customers to make sure we adjust as we need to. But even through the next era deal, we had a transformation plan. And one of the nice things about that deal, even though it didn't work out, was they agreed that we would continue with that transformation plan and not change it. So we really didn't miss a lot during that 18 month, two year timeframe. We were able to keep things moving. It may have moved a little slower, but now it's gonna really take off. Yeah, I can really step out. Yeah. Yeah, I find there's one thing that's emerged from me. I like to bounce it off you because you're in a position to say a few years ago, maybe 85. There was a lot of talk about people going off the grid and putting rooftop solar on and disconnecting from the utility. That really didn't happen. It hasn't happened. I remember one program we had where this reporter from Sybil Beat got up and he talked about his experience in that regard. He lived in a country and he went off the grid and he said he really didn't like doing it at all. It was not pleasant, it was not really practical and he was going back on the grid. What I mean is that we have learned that the utility is central, that you must have a central utility in order to have a society where everybody can rely on the availability of electrical power. And I think we've learned that. We haven't talked about it, it's just gone that direction. And now it's very clear that you are going to be the steward, if you will, the steward of the development of clean energy in Hawaii and you will be at the center throughout this period of transition. Yep, now we would tend to agree but we don't want to take that for granted either. So we know that in this environment people have choices and options and we want to make sure people understand what their choices and options are. But in the case of somebody who wants to go off the grid, we think we can provide a better value proposition by being this grid platform because all the new technologies, all the new renewables, if you want a diversified set of renewables, you need a way to bring it in across the whole system. You can't have it just be in one spot. So the grid gives us a lot of economies of scale that operating one at a time just doesn't offer that. But we don't want to take it for granted either. No, but I think that's the right approach. And of course you want to perpetuate this. It's always going to be a marketing issue and you're in the middle of that from now till this transition, the transformation sort of comes to rest which hasn't happened just yet. And when we come back from this break, Jim, I'd like to talk about how that's doing in terms of the regulatory aspect of it, in terms of the plans for the grid and community solar and all the PSIP kinds of plans that you've been generating and look down the field with you at that. Sounds great. Yeah, we'll be right back after this short break. We all play a role in keeping our community safe. Every day we move in and out of each other's busy lives. It's easy to take for granted all the little moments that make up our every day. Some are good, others not so much. But that's life. It's when something doesn't seem quite right that it's time to pay attention. Because only you know what's not supposed to be in your every day. So protect your every day. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. Aloha, my name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I'm the host of Shrink Rap Hawaii where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at three o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Okay, we're back. We're alive. We're here in the Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And our special guest is Jim Alberts from Hawaiian Electric Companies. And he's the senior vice president of customer services all across these three islands. Anyway, four, five islands. Right, five islands. Five islands. And we're talking about Hawaiian Electric. We're talking about the evolution of the transformation of energy in Hawaii. And Hawaiian Electric is right in the middle of it. It's got a lot of action going, a lot of plans that are being created and hopefully implemented. So let's talk about the one thing that was pretty important. And let's see, that was IS. You had a grid modernization plan. Can you talk about that? Yep, so we've been working on this plan to modernize the grid for a while. And during the commission's last order, they asked us to revisit it and come back at the end of June and file that with them. So we're prepared to do that. And it'll get filed tomorrow. Now, this part of it's hot copy. It's hot copy. It's a scoop. It's coming out tomorrow. Now, if you step back from all this new thing, big picture, because we've got a couple things that are out there, the power supply improvement plan, the PSIP, which really looks at what are the resources that we're going to need to get to the 100% renewable over time. The new grid plan really says, what infrastructure do you need in place to really enable this? Now, we want it to go deeper this time than just technology. It's got to start with customers. And if we start with customers and say, what do customers really want and need? How are they going to use the system? What services could they possibly contribute on their side? It caused us to step back and rethink that. So you'll see a lot of updates and changes in this plan compared to the last one. You'll see it come in phased in a little bit slower over time and probably for a little less money up front. Is there the way it should be, though? You take a plan. You have evolving customer tastes. The whole community evolves. And certainly, you have technology changing for all the time. So you've got to be sensitive to those changes. And therefore, you've got to modify the plan to comport with those, or at least to deal with them. Yep, you really do. And in this day and age with technology changing as rapidly as it is, it's unrealistic to think you're going to have a 25-year plan that doesn't change that you don't have to adapt to, which is why the PSIP focuses on the five-year action plan. Even though we project out how do you get 30 years out there, realistically, that first five years is a good planning horizon. Sure. That's the part that counts. That's the part you can see and touch. Because you have to actualize something. You have to make something happen. What puts you put out? You have to know in that five-year period. So the PSIP dwelling on that from, oh, yeah, the PSIP was submitted in November, December last year. That sounds about right. And it's now almost July. Any idea when that's going to be reviewed and approved? No, but it's, man, it's a big document. It's a big document. A couple hundred pages. Yep, it's thousands of pages. A couple of thousand. A couple of thousand pages, probably. So it's a big, serious docket in the commission doing the right thing by taking the time to really study this and come out with a good answer. Yeah, bottom line, though, is you need a plan. Yes. I mean, an approved plan, a plan that everybody isn't comfortable with so that you can move ahead. You can't implement the plan you don't have. That's right. Now, a big part of all these plans, one of the shifts, even in our reorganization is about marketing. So one of the new parts of our organization in my team is a marketing organization. So how are we going to more deeply and thoroughly understand our customers, including looking at customers differently? In the past, the old regulatory model says, hey, everybody's a residential customer. But we know that not all residential customers are the same. So we've got to be able to differentiate those different types of customers and offer different products and services to each, things that make sense to them. Yeah, and it's a matter of stimulating them and incentivizing them to do certain things, maybe energy efficiency or something like that. Yes. Or de-incentivizing to do certain things and sort of changing the conduct of the consumer or the groups of consumers in the economy. That's exactly right. And it's a very refined way of looking at it now. It really is. So we posted a position. I want to plug that here online, too. We posted a position that's out online for a marketing manager inside of our company. So we're looking for some talented people at our skill at marketing to come and work at Hawaii Electric. Exciting time, because the company is thinking this way. This is an exciting opportunity. Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly exciting. I've been in the industry almost 30 years now. You must have began when you were four or five years old. I was about five when I started. But I've seen the industry grow and change over time. And each year, there's growth and change. We think that that's it. But it just keeps growing and changing. And I think that's inevitable. That's the way it's always going to be. It's going to keep growing and changing, which means it's really exciting. Yeah. In fact, I would say, don't you agree that it's accelerating? Because the technology and the world is accelerating. And not only that, but the challenges are accelerating, too. Therefore, I'd like to talk a little about the grid as it relates to the Clean Energy Initiative in general. So you need infrastructure for the grid. You need new equipment. You need certainly batteries. And the question is, do we have an idea about how that's going to be provided? Because right now, you have a lot of people who are building, selling, designing, developing batteries for the consumer side of the fence. And then you have the utility also doing big battery installations, which I personally favor myself. And you have two things work at the same time. How do you connect them up, so to speak? Yeah, so there's room for both. We are going to have to have batteries on the grid. And those batteries will help us manage the system as a whole. Now, each customer has the option to put batteries into their home or their business as well, whether it's managing demand or managing energy or helping integrate their PV system. But we've got to be able to get to a point soon where they can all talk to each other. Because if we don't, we end up in a position where you might have to overbuild the system in order to accommodate fluctuations. So in order to do this as economically as possible, having a system that's connected and can talk to each other, it can actively be managed. We can minimize the investments that we're going to have to make in generating solutions. Yeah, that's really important, to save money. And if you save money, then your rates are lower because you're more efficient and you can reflect that in your rates. And what I find interesting is that, A, this is the black box. This is the box where every consumer has it and it feeds back information. And you have a master computer somewhere that's processing all of that and determining how much electricity to feed and when. And you can do a predictive analysis on that and figure out what you need in order to achieve that. You're exactly right. When you said the black box, it brought me back to almost two years ago when I was here. And you came up with that idea. So you're way ahead of your time on that one. But that's the key is, what's the software behind the scenes that's going to manage and integrate all of this activity? Because without it, everything's just competing with each other. And up until now, we've been fortunate because renewables are competing with fossil fuels, which is OK. But in the near future, we're going to have renewables competing with renewables for space on the system. And we've got to be able to do that as cost effectively as possible and make sure that bills are optimized because affordability is still a key issue for people in Hawaii. Well, and all these things are linked. All these various pieces are linked. And we are, I think, we're at the head of the crowd in terms of dealing with them. We are. Just a footnote to that. We've had a whole month of shows with talk shows, last one yesterday, by the fact, on the Hawaii State of Clean Energy show from HNEI. Oh, great. I didn't realize this. But HNEI has some world-class scientists. They haven't been revealed that much. We revealed them, and we were just delighted to find the quality of their science and their research in lots of areas around energy. I mean, stuff that will be very useful when it comes to market. And we work closely with HNEI, so they help us with a lot of issues. We take problems to them, and they help us work on those problems because they are talented. So we appreciate having that kind of a resource right here in Hawaii. Yeah. Well, together, I think we can build a system that the world will admire and emulate for that matter. I mean, I think there's intellectual property being generated here that will be useful in every major city, every significant energy center in the world. And if we can solve issues here in Hawaii, it will work anywhere because the fact we're on an island. And I was reading a story a couple weeks ago about California saying they're having to pay other states to take their solar power because they're generating too much. Well, they have the luxury of having a big transmission system that they can actually export this power to other jurisdictions and sell that power. We don't have that advantage. So we've got to find a way to optimize our system here locally for our island communities. And if we can accomplish that, it'll be the most efficient model for almost anywhere. It's a combination of things, though. It isn't just batteries. It's maybe different kinds of batteries. And it's also that software where you can become more efficient. And when that central computer of yours can determine the best allocation of resources, time of day. In fact, you have a demand response initiative going on. Can you talk about it? Sure. Well, I mean, the real focus on demand response is not to only focus on the supply side of the equation, which is where we've been for a while, but how do you also optimize demand? And these are very simple things. We've had programs out there for a long time with demand response for things like water heaters and air conditioners. Great program to help manage peak demands. And it's those peaks that we really have to watch out for because, over time, when I look back at our load profile on the system over the past four or five years, those peaks in the summertime during air conditioning season are getting higher. Even though our loads during the day are much lower, our peaks are getting higher during those seasons. So we've got to find a way to help manage those peaks. And that's one way to do it is through demand response. But it gets back to this notion of your black box. How do you connect everything so that you can manage and optimize the system as a whole? Yeah. This is not easy. I mean, because there are a lot of people, a lot of companies, entrepreneurs, young startups doing really sophisticated technology, but they do it on one side of the line instead of the other. And there has to be a sort of common denominator, a common language, a common protocol standards, if you will, so that they can talk in the same language that you need to hear from. That's right. I mean, the standards are still needed, because there's a lot of development going on out there as you're aware. And not everybody's agreed to what those standards are yet. Now for the community, this is important, because in this transition, if we invest too heavily early on in technologies that are divergent, we're going to have problems. So one of the keys to success is using things like time-of-use rates today, where we can reward customers for using more energy during the day and less at night. Now, the great thing about that is we don't have to store any of that energy. We get to use it right as it's deployed. And as we started the conversation, if we can do it where we're charging electric vehicles during that daytime peak with workplace charging, which is brilliant, because everybody drives to work and you plug your car in, charge your car during the day. We give the right pricing signals. Everybody benefits. And that's rolling storage. Yeah. Rolling storage. And also, considerably, this goes back to a better place, where all the cars strapped together with one great big battery. And if they're all in at the same time, they can all act as a collective battery for the whole community. Yeah, that's right. Is there a future in that? There's a great future in it. I think the fact, like a Nissan Leaf, if it's got a 60 kilowatt hour battery storage unit in it, that's probably five times bigger than a typical home is putting in today. So if you multiply that out over 50,000 vehicles, that's a really nice supply of battery capacity. Yeah. You think there's room for alternative ways to store, for example, hydrogen. Hydrogen can be put in a tank. The electrolyzer technology, they're still working on that. They are. It's too expensive right now. If they could figure out a way to make a cheap electrolyzer, then they could have all this hydrogen and put it in big tanks and move it around on barges. Who knows? Sell it to other places. And you can store it, leave it, sit there until you need it kind of thing. That's right. It's just another form of storage. So if you do find a way to economically and efficiently make hydrogen and store it, then it can be very effective because it's a great clean fuel. So I know a lot of people are investing a lot of time in money, including Toyota, investing a lot of time in money into that technology. So I'm sure at some point it will break through. And when I think about our island resources, we are going to need capacity to plan for those 40 days of rain or clouds that come around where we're not going to be able to count on all the renewables all the time. Yeah, it's a great future looking us in the eye, I think. And one of the things I usually, at the end of the show, is I like to suggest to the guests that he talked to a given group. So sometimes I say, well, you can talk to the legislature. Let's not do that. Talk to the pusing now. Let's not do that. Talk to the customer. No. How about today, just for a minute, could you talk to those young fellows and girls who might go to the College of Engineering and study electrical engineering? Or for that matter, the Scheidler College and learn about management of utilities and energy companies. Is there a future for them? This, camera one, Jim Alberts. Camera one. My perspective to everybody who's thinking about going into this field is you should jump in and pursue it wholeheartedly. Throughout my career, I've seen a lot of changes in this industry. And the changes are going to happen faster and faster. There's so many new and exciting things happening in our industry today. So many new opportunities being created that there are lots of opportunities. So whether it's engineering or business or legal, we encourage you to take a look. And it starts with simple things like when Hawaiian Electric offers internships. We would really love to have you come and take a look at us as an opportunity. Because for Hawaii, if we can train, recruit, and retain people here in Hawaii with those skills, we really become powerful. And rather than having to recruit those skills from the outside, what better way than to have the people who are used to our culture here in Hawaii grow up here, stay here, and help their community get stronger? So I'd really love for everybody to think about that opportunity and come and talk to us. Oh, wow. You heard it. That's a tremendous offer and opportunity. And I want to say I was writing up a paper the other day, and I was aggravating about how to frame this initiative, the Clean Energy Initiative, and what you're doing, and what are we collectively in the community of energy is doing. And it occurred to me that this, Jim, is the most important initiative in our state. It has implications for everybody, everything, and for all elements of our future, don't you think? Yeah, it really does. And when I think about the backbone of our economy here, which is electricity, it runs everything. So our big industries here are the Department of Defense and Tourism. Those things have to have highly reliable, resilient power. So in order to sustain that, we've got to find a way to bring renewables in, but meet the objectives to meet the commitments of our biggest customers so they can serve their customers. Sustainability, essential word, especially a view of climate change and all the things that could happen in our independent state. Yeah, it really is. Well, Jim, I've got to close the show because I've got to run down the Nissan dealership. And get your car. And see if I can make a deal, yeah. Awesome. I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have thought about it unless you mentioned it. Jim Albers, Senior Vice President of Customer Services at Hawaiian Electric Companies. Thank you so much. Yep, thanks for having us, Jay.