 This is State Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Hi everyone, welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. This is a show that's sponsored partially by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, of which I am a member. And during my day job, I'm with the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, where I'm the Hydrogen Systems Program Manager. So on our show today, we have two guests. First is Shannon Tanganon from Hawaii Electric, a spokesperson. And she's going to tell us all the good things that Hawaii Electric is doing to support the mainland disaster relief effort in California. And I also have Kevin Davies from HNEI, who works in our grid start program. And he's going to talk about how we can get more PV on the grid. But first of all, Shannon's going to tell us about the really neat and good things that Hawaiian Electric's doing to help our fellow citizens on the mainland. Yeah, we're responding. We're answering a call for help from our member utility of the Western Region Mutual Assistance Group. So what it is is a lot of utilities in the Western Region of the United States that really answer the call when one utility is having issues as far as it is. Right now, California is recovering from a deadly and most destructive fire, the campfire. So we've sent 30 employees, crews from Hawaiian Electric, Maui Electric, and Hawaii Electric Light, our linemen. And so they're up there now. They arrived Monday. They arrived Monday and got through orientation and getting set up. And today I think they're actually doing work out there to help with rebuild infrastructure. That's really great. So what other benefits accrue to Hawaii? What's some of the benefits that by our sitting apart from helping our fellow citizens in need? Well, we're definitely bringing Aloha to California, to Butte County. We're also gaining valuable experience. The crews are learning a lot. They're going to be working in conditions that they don't experience here. And so that's always a good thing to experience and learn new skills. We're also, what it does for us is we're answering the call when California needs help. So if we ever, God forbid, have a catastrophic event here, we know that we can count on utilities such as PG&E to also help us in return. That's really great. So what's the projected, how long do we think they're going to be over there? They agreed to three weeks, but at that point we'll just have to assess whether they still need help, whether we'll rotate crews out. It's still unclear, but they've committed to three weeks. So that's going to be pretty hot and potentially, that might be even a little bit of danger still there, yes? Actually, it's more the cold. Yeah, because it's Northern California. So it's conditions that our crews aren't necessarily used to. So they had to be outfitted with cold weather gear. Wouldn't even have thought of that. Exactly. Let's go to the beach today. Exactly. So they're getting used to a lot of different experiences. So is there anything else that you want to say or is that pretty well the message? I think that's the message. I mean, we wanted to answer the call for help and we're getting a lot of good response from our community as well. Because we are bringing the Aloha Spirit to Buchanan. So many people have lost so much there. So we're trying to help them recover, rebuild, try to get them back to some kind of normalcy. Good. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you, Hawaii Electric, for doing that. Thanks. And also the other island, neighbor island electric utilities. Definitely. Great to hear we're doing that kind of thing. So thank you. So Kevin, first of all, where are you from and why are you here? Why do you kind of mean by here? I know why you're here is because I put the arm on the show. But why are you in Hawaii and what's your background? Well, I've had a long journey through engineering. I grew up in Virginia. I went to school in Pennsylvania. Worked for four years at Ford Motor Company in Detroit. Really? On alternative fuel vehicles. So I had product development type background there. And then I felt like I wanted to really dig in more in the research. And I always wanted my career to be about renewable energy. And I've had an opportunity to work with Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. Along the way, I got a PhD at Georgia Tech. I've been now in the grid integration group at H&EI. So we deal with trying to support the integration of more renewable energy from a research angle to help achieve Hawaii's goals towards that. So how long have you been here, Kevin? For five years. And you got that little break when you went off to get your PhD. I remember when you left. Did you call that a break? I said, man, this is a really good guy. I sure hope he comes back. Thank you for coming back and helping us out. We'll talk a little bit more. I think we're going to head for a break right now. And when we come back from the break, you can tell us about all the great things you're doing here in Hawaii at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. So here we go. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hi, I'm Dave Stevens, the host of Cyber Underground. Every Friday here at 1 p.m. on ThinkTechHawaii.com. And then every episode is uploaded to the Cyber Underground. That library of shows that you can see of mine on YouTube.com. And I hope you'll join us here every Friday. We have some topical discussions about why security matters and what could scare the absolute bejesus out of you. If you just try to watch my show all the way through. Hope to see you next time on the Cyber Underground. Stay safe. Aloha again. Here we are back from our short break. And I'll have with me Kevin Davies from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. He works on microgrid projects. And he's going to tell us potentially how we can get more PV onto our grid, which is something we want to do to meet Hawaii's clean energy goal. So Kevin, tell us about some of your projects and your progress. Thank you. So for the last two years or so within our group at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, we've been focusing on better data acquisition. So part of our research, of course, is gathering data that allows us to do analysis that we need to do to help integrate more renewable energy. And so along the way, we used a lot of commercial off the shelf technology. We saw gaps in what we could achieve with that. We had deployments to Maui for years, gathering data. But some of the data didn't come back the way it should have. And at that point, we realized how much cost was going into acquiring this equipment. And it still wasn't doing what we wanted it to do. So at that point, two years ago, we decided, hey, let's try to build something ourselves. What I'm talking about is gather more data from the grid at the distribution level. So the neighborhood type level, more information on the voltage and current and electrical parameters of what's going on when there's lots of PV. And so that kind of developed as its own project along the way. Now we've had the opportunity to go for more funding from federal government to help develop that more. There's been more commercial interest in what we're doing. So it's kind of getting some of its own momentum. And along the way, we've had a lot of good work to be able to work on electrical engineering, the programming. We involved a lot of students from the University of Hawaii. So it's been a real learning experience and I think it's been valuable. But the end game is that we're trying to gather more information about the state of the grid in a very fast manner so that we can do our research, but then also support the utility with integrating more rooftop PV. And how did you do that? What trends? I mean, you saw the gap and the need. And so what did you develop to fill that gap and meet the need? Yeah, so we ended up developing a device that circuit board level, integrated circuits, the full range of electrical engineering and computer engineering and all that to develop the device. So it has a barless communications, it has data acquisition, it has GPS timing. All in that little device? Yeah, it's amazing the amount of technology that now is coming about that you have availability. And one of the sort of trends right now is this Internet of Things sort of revolution where right now we have computers that are all on the Internet, our cell phones are all on the Internet, but now it's going down more to the smaller devices that now can be connected to the Internet. So there's a lot of hardware technology that's out there for that. There's a lot of software that's open source. It's amazing how much has come about so that allows us to make a really small device a really amazing amount of computational ability. So now we're going, our research is always to take it to the next level and not just monitoring the information, but actually do computation on site to do certain analysis at high speed, report back the analyzed data, not just the raw data, but then also eventually go into the area of control. So if this device is out there at the utility poles, it's right there where it can eventually communicate with EV inverters, batteries, EVs, things that are on the grid and allow better connectivity. So will the homeowner see any of this data, or is it all come back to the grid? I think that, well right now we have our own website from within H&EI that is publicly available, but from a research standpoint, our data will probably come out as publications, as journal, that sort of thing, but then with some projects that we're proposing now with the government, we would more than likely have a public facing website that allows you to at least see some of the data coming in. There is an issue with balancing between confidentiality and our data is not at the home level, it's at the transformer level, but you have five to ten houses on that transformer, so it's a little bit of sensitivity that if you're publishing that real time information, there could be information that people don't want to have disclosed. So what's the status right now? I would have called it a black box, except it's not, it's a white box. First of all, can that be shrunk more, do you think? This is like a brass board or a working prototype, is that correct? Yeah, it could be shrunk more, that's not our major emphasis at this point, because our major target is to install this on the transformers, right? So the big metal cans that you sell on the telephone poles, that's where we're putting it, and at that point the size of something like this is not a big issue. The bigger issue is making sure it's easy to install and reliable, it handles the weather properly, it handles the temperature properly, utility doesn't have to go up and maintain it, because that's a really expensive thing. Those sorts of things are more the stuff we're working on now, like making sure all that is tested out well. Along with that, the thing has a lot of software in it, so for instance, we program that software, we test it in a lab, what's to say that in a month, we might want to do something a little different with it, program it a little differently, grab a little bit of different data, all kinds of things, or we might find a bug in our software. So we need the capability to remotely configure and adjust that software, do updates, as well as maintain security. There's a whole area of cybersecurity concerns, especially with the grid, now that more and more connected devices are on the grid, on one hand that allows more controllability, which is good, but it brings with it more risk, right? So have you deployed any of these in the field yet? Are they up and running? Yeah, we have a few running, one's on the University of Hawaii campus in a zero net energy building, another is at Arizona State University, we have a research program with them, we have one running with them, we'll be delivering 10 in all. We have interest that soon we'll be working with Alaska, University of Alaska. So in a cold climate? Yeah, they're very interested in, up there, there's a bunch of remote villages, right, that have power outages due to weather conditions, due to lack of fuel, due to all kinds of things, and they developed their own device to monitor some things, and they're kind of going this direction with their technology, but we realized that, hey, we could give what we have to them and work with them and develop it further, so the next couple of months we plan to get it there. We're beginning to talk to utility more and more, so it looks like there could be some possibilities for pilot projects there. And of course, through to the University of Hawaii, we look at technology transfer, right, because the University of Hawaii owns this technology, they'd like to get it out there. So have you applied for any patents? Yeah, we now have a patent pending as of about a week ago, so of course that's a long process as the patent office reviews it and infuse the claims, and they're back and forth, but we'll get some sort of patent out of that. So potentially you have a product that you could sell, or the University could sell, and have a royalty stream coming back to the University? Yeah, the way it usually works is the University is not in the business of building or manufacturing things, and we typically do the front-end research, so we might be developing the core technology, but then it usually would get, almost always would get spun off to another outside company. It could be a startup, it could be a large company, but there's some agreement through the technology transfer office at the University of Hawaii that they're maybe paying some upfront money for that ability to exclusive or non-exclusive license to that technology, as well as some ongoing royalties out of... And that all depends on case-to-by-case basis. Sure, but the bottom line is the University can recoup some expenses, and if it really takes off, actually make money, I mean the University would like to make money to support the University research program and just all the infrastructure we have up at the University, so that's a really good thing that researchers like you are being entrepreneurial and are looking at products that are marketable, there's a market for them out there in the marketplace, so that's really good. It's pretty neat to be able to bridge the gap between something that's useful for research, which is our main business, and then be able to see that it does meet a need in the real world, which is kind of my goal with it all along and it looks like it has some traction, of course, a long way to go, but it's going to need to be exploring that. So talk to us about your initial results. Is that something you can talk about? Yeah, well we have a graphic there, I think it's the second graphic on, I think I called it interface, and that's just showing some screenshots from our website basically. So which graphic would you want? Do you want to show that one now? Yeah, if they have available the interface slide, and it basically shows where we have our web portal that then allows us to see which devices are connected, and then... Let's have a look at that slide. That slide too, correct? Yeah, so this is just some screen captures of what we have going on, it's just up in the upper left is sort of an index page of which devices we have connected and their status, whether they're green or red, meaning connected or disconnected, and of course right now we're in a lot of research stage, so we break things a lot and they get disconnected and whatever. And this is not live, but this is a screen capture. The upper right you have sort of a dashboard type mode where it shows the frequency and the voltage in this case and many other things off the screen there. So it says frog, what's that? The frog is the name of a building on the UH campus. There's two buildings that were, I believe the manufacturer is actually named frog, and they are zero net energy buildings installed by the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, and so our colleague was able to allow us to install the device there and prove it out. Yeah, on a previous show we highlighted the frog buildings, the soft frog, like what's that mean? Yeah, so each device has a name or a tag associated with it. And so we're able to get data that's both historical as well as real-time updated in a lot higher fidelity than what we could otherwise get, meaning it's sampled a lot quicker, it has a lot more information behind it about harmonic information as well as fundamental. It allows us to do a lot more research out of it, and we believe that's valuable ultimately to the utility because as they try to integrate more rooftop PV, they need to have that information to know the state of the grid better. So specifically, if you can get a little bit more specific, without going too high tech on it, how do they actually do that? What's the process, the utility sees this information, what do they do? How do they respond to that? Can we add more PV based on the information that's coming out of your device? Right, right. So right now, when people applied to have rooftop PV installed, of course they have to follow one of the interconnection agreements, CGS Plus or one of the agreements that's worked out between Hawaiian Electric and the PUC. And then there's a study by the Hawaiian Electric to make sure that that installation is not going to cause issues with the grid in terms of voltage issues or overloading too much current through the wires that are there. And then if it's approved, the customer can go ahead and install that PV. Without more information, the utility needs to be a bit more conservative about that, right? So typically the university, the Hawaiian Electric, does not have monitors on the transformers to know whether they're violating their limits or not. They have to know by the engineering specs of what's been installed and the specs of the transformer. They do have information on it, but it's not real time high fidelity information on the actual conditions. So they have to build in a big safety wire. So you could imagine that if there's more information there, higher fidelity information, then those margins can be reduced. If we start to do controls through this system, then there's the concept of non-wires alternative in the grid. So the utility has a lot of infrastructure, right? Wires and transformers and poles. And that wiring was in large part developed way before there's PV on the grid. And so as people want more PV, I guess it's options on the table, do you upgrade all that? But that's enormous money, right? The idea of non-wires alternatives is that you're using smart devices that are controllable to help reroute power and defer power transfer so that it maintains within the limits without needing to have costly new copper and new transformers installed. So it's going to save a lot of money. It's going to allow more PV on the grid once everybody builds up a confidence level that this really works. So do you have any feel for... I know this is a tough question. This ballpark, how much extra PV do you think we could put on the grid? That's a really tough one. I might give it some trouble too. But I mean flip side, right? I look at when you fly in and out in Hawaii, you see that there's a lot of PV roofs, right? But think about how many roofs don't have PV and how many people want to have it. I see all these warehouses around the airport that don't have any PV on them. And when you look at our goals in Hawaii are to achieve 100% renewable energy, do we want to do that by using up land with more and more central PV or do we want to at least first try to maximize what we can get out of our rooftops which has already developed, already built up infrastructure that is to me waiting for more PV. But the other side is utility struggles with that because the grid wasn't designed for that. And so we're kind of stuck in technology like this. I think at least provides an option to... No one technology is going to break, fix that, but every little piece helps. That's our contribution at this point that we're working on. Have you had an interface with some of the solar installation companies to see what their read is on this? We scoped out a proposal with Sun Run as one of the installers and they definitely were interested in our technology, that particular proposal didn't go through but we definitely have those connections in that dialogue and everybody has their own technology take on exactly what infrastructure to go where and which new vices and that's research, that's science, that's engineering that nobody knows that one path but everybody tries and it all kind of eventually goes the right direction but it's kind of a messy process sometimes. So we have about three minutes remaining of the show, I told you it was going to go fast. So are there any other things that I haven't asked the right question about that you think we need to know? Yeah. Or that you wanted to talk about? I just want to emphasize that, you know, why Natural Energy Institute, we're really trying to focus on the right issues to really push renewable energy in a way and we work really hard at it. We're trying to be innovative, pulling new technology and it's an exciting time for a while with all the need that we have to try to achieve our penetration of renewable energy. Right. It's a difficult, multifaceted problem we got, you know, the engineering, the social aspects, the business, you know, all coming together with utility research, you know, government, it's a really complicated problem. So it's exciting to be able to be an engineer in the middle of that, you know. And the expense, I mean, you know, we have limited budget, everybody's got a limited budget and so if you can save a lot of money and that translates back to the rate payers by not having to replace all the wires, I mean that's a really good thing. Yeah. Well Kevin, we're at the end of the show, told you it would go fast. So I really appreciate you coming down. Thank you so much. And that's it for our show today and I thank all of you out there in TV Land for your attention to this and I hope you found it worthwhile. Aloha everyone.