 I'm Jay Fidel. This is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And my co-host today, Mitch Ewan, ordinarily the host of this show. And we have not one, not two, but three guests from Hawaiian Electric today to give you the news, three elements of news from Hawaiian Electric. Shannon Tangunan, Sandy Tabata and Ellie Flores, Effie Flores, thank you very much for coming around, ladies. And now we're going to have Mitch describe what we're going to do here today, ready? Go. Ready, set, go. So the first thing we're going to do is talk about disconnection, the disconnection moratorium, which has been on for a long time. So Shannon's going to give us an update on that and what the latest developments in that program. And then Effie, she won the prize for helping with the Aloha United Way this year at Hawaiian Electric. So she's going to talk to us all about the Hawaiian Electric Aloha United Way program. And then finally, last but not least, Tandy's going to talk to us about the electrification of transportation in particular buses and charging stations. So welcome to the show again, ladies, for my part. So Shannon, are we starting off with you? Yes, we are. So Shannon, we've been talking on and off with one electric about the moratorium on disconnect over the past year and a half already. And now we're in another phase of it. So can you give us the background? Can you tell us what's happening? Sure, we've been in a disconnection moratorium really for over a year. So it ended on May 31st. And so we're entering a different phase. Throughout the pandemic, we've asked customers if you're having difficulty paying, if you have a pass-through balance to really reach out to us so that we can help. And what we've done is offer several different payment plans, payment arrangement plans for customers to really spread out their payments and make it a little more palatable. Every month gain installment. So we're in a phase now where we have about 21,000 customers on payment plans. And it ranges from four months to 18 months. Most recently or in July, what we have is we've automatically enrolled customers. So there are gonna be probably about 16,000 customers the majority of them residential customers who will see installment payments, I mean, installments on their bill because we've automatically enrolled them into a 12 month payment plan. And so in doing so, we're helping them avoid the collection process. And we're hoping this allows them more time to bring their accounts up. Actually, to get rid of the pass-through balance, what we want them to do is if even the 12 month plan does not work for them, we have an 18 month plan. So even if you're on the 12 month, you can call us or you can send us a form, submit a form online. And you can basically ask for more time. So even six more months than you have now. So that makes it a little more manageable for many folks. And it's that 18 month plan is now available for both residential customers and small commercial customers which are on Schedule G, Schedule G rate customers, all right. Yeah, well, that's great. I think that it actually works in all directions. It's a win, win, win. Because if the people are, like they're in the headlights, you know what I mean? And they're nervous, they don't know what to do, they're afraid, and so they go hide somewhere. And that's not a good approach for them. It's not a good approach for them. And it's certainly not a good approach for you. You wanna rebuild those relationships. Definitely. We definitely want all our customers to stay connected. So this automatic involvement is really part of our planning throughout the pandemic. How will we keep customers connected even after the moratorium ends? And so this is part of our long-term planning, our way to just keep customers connected. And even if you're having a difficult time with the payments themselves, the installments, we don't want you to just not contact us and just try to wait it out. That's not gonna help. The best thing you can do is to contact us and reestablish a different type of plan. We'll work with you to make sure that we have you on a plan that works for your family, for your household, for your business. Yeah, and what I heard you say was, if a given plan, say a six-month plan, I'm making that up, it doesn't work. And the individual consumer comes to you and says, look, I need more time. You'll negotiate with that person. And so it won't be a brick wall at the end of six months. No, definitely not. We're definitely hoping our customers will reach out to us either online for the app, call us. We're here to work with them to get through this, any kind of difficulty you might have. Really, it's all about communicating. And if you communicate to us, that there are issues and they wanted to make a switch, we can do that, we can work with our customers. So we just want to make sure everyone is aware that there are options out there. Don't feel like nothing can be done because there is something that can be done if we want to keep everyone connected. Yeah, very important. I mean, there's nobody in the state really that doesn't need electricity at home. You can't really live without it. So you really have to have, you have to be at least on some terms with the electric company. And furthermore, it seems to me that the implicit in this is that if they don't want to come in, if they don't want to talk to you, they do risk getting disconnected. They do risk that. It's a possibility, no? Yes, eventually, if you don't make any attempt to pay or if you don't attempt to call us, then at some point there will be disconnection notices coming. And we want to avoid that. We want everyone to just be able to make payments that work for them and just make sure that all our customers are feeling like they can contact us if they are having any kind of issues, financial difficulties. We definitely want to be a partner. That's great. It's great. It's what I want to call it. It's more than just connecting with their electrical supply. It's connecting in other ways to be remembered. A little kindness goes a long way. That's what I say. This is it. So it's a double entendre is what it is, yeah. Okay, hang around because we're gonna go down the row here and we can all kibitz together. So, Effie, your second. And Mitch is gonna ask you some very incisive questions about the Aloha United Way program. Go ahead, Mitch. Well, here's a very insightful question. Tell us all about the AUW plan for Hawaiian Electric, Effie. What's it all involved? And how are you implementing it? Sure. Thanks, Mitch. Thanks everyone for your time today. So the AUW campaign this year tried to find some fresh and innovative ways to raise funds for AUW. And thinking outside the box, we thought we wanted to work with a local vendor, an organization that's like-minded and share the same values to raise funds for AUW. And we reached out to Manola and they, thankfully, they're so gracious and welcoming and joining forces to help with this effort. So we are running a one-month-long sale of the May Pula Kennekenne collection, which is the first body and bath and body line product from Manola. And this can be purchased or pre-ordered through the website. If you go into www.manola.com or slash AUW, you'll find all the information there. It'll get you to the link where you can pre-order the merchandise. And the proceeds for this sale will go to Alice Pines for AUW. Alice stands for Asset Limited Income Constraint Employee. So these are- My wife and I speak a little else at dinner. She can recite that. As a matter of fact, she can recite it to music. Will you give us the acronym one more time, Effie? Alice. Yeah, standing for- Alice. It stands for Asset Limited Income Constraint Employee. So these are the population who are hard-working both of Hawaii that have a limited income who has very difficult times making us meet. We have two to three jobs and we have an emergency. They don't have a pocket or an extra money to go into. So AUW helps those folks to get by. And pre-pandemic, it was- Alice's population was about 42% post-pandemic. It went up to 59% according to Emily from AUW. So getting together across industries to get into helping the community and supporting it through this sale would be great. So the sale again is through from now till end of July and will be delivered around fall time in October. What's the role of Hawaiian Electric in this? Sure. Just explain how that works. Sure. So, Manola is the brain of what the product would be. We had a couple of brainstorming sessions with them on how we can get this implemented. So they came up with a product and then we had a lot of people to consider the product and then we had Hawaiian Electric help decide what those products would be. That would be also aligned with our company policies and what we stand for. So this product are athletes and sustainable products and Hawaiian Electric also is helping with the publicity of this effort. So, yeah, that's a good question. How do they do that? It could be a little coupon in your electrical bill or what are the nuts and bolts of the publicity campaign? How do you get the word out? Apart from ThinkTec or? Sure. So, our communication team has been working great with, I think they've sent it out through different publishers and local ads and maybe Shannon may know about that as well. But our main contact sharing, Higa, has been awesome in sending us out through ads from what I know. So theoretically, these people, Alice people, I'll call it that, if they can't pay their electric bill then a program like this could maybe help them if they're in dire straits, correct? Yeah. And what have you got to add to that? They have, sorry, what was that? I was asking Shannon if she had anything to add to that. No, well, I mean, all the proceeds of our efforts, you know, isn't basically a year long project that we have to support AUW. So Hawaiian Electric for years, decades now have, has been a huge supporter of AUW. So this, the Mono Ola partnership, that's just one of many ways that we raise funds for AUW. And yes, the funds will eventually go to those who need it most. And, you know, hopefully, you know, they can use whatever proceeds they get through AUW or services they get. That would just better their lives. And what we want to do at Hawaiian Electric also is to make sure though that Alice, the Alice population takes advantage of a lot of the programs that are out there. There's a lot of financial assistance and you can go to kawaiinelect.com slash COVID-19. And there are, there's a listing of all the different programs available there too. But definitely, Effie and her team, you know, we definitely support their efforts to raise funds for AUW. So it's really a company-wide effort. Yeah, we have to pull together these days, don't we? And good for Hawaiian Electric for doing that, for helping us pull together and recover from COVID because we haven't yet recovered. All of this is really about recovering from COVID. So let's go to you, Tandy. You're the technology person here today. You're talking about the EVOS. And I warn you now that Mitch Ewan is a bus man. He's heavily involved in buses. Some say that life for Mitch is just a busman's holiday. That's what they say. Anyway, why don't you tell us a story about EVOS? Sure, thanks, Jay. You know, Hawaiian Electric is really excited that we received approval for a new program which is a make ready program for electric buses. And you might be wondering, what is make ready? The intent of the program is really to simplify, reduce the complexity and the cost of transitioning bus fleets to electric. So of course, as you may imagine, there's costs of buying new vehicles, buying charging stations, and then there's the whole side of charging infrastructure and getting power to your facility, planning that out, designing that out. And this program allows Hawaiian Electric to really take care of that big and technical component and allow bus operators to focus on their vehicles and the charging stations themselves. So you can kind of imagine you have power, either overhead or underground, nearby your facility, and you're looking at putting in charging stations, you need to figure out how to get that power to your site. It may involve putting in a new transformer, conduit, and lines up to a meter, and then it goes into your facility and there's an electrical panel, and then after that you install your charging station and then your bus can pull right up in charge. And so typically, without this program, a bus operator would have to think through a lot of that. Hawaiian Electric, of course, would provide the transformer and the meter, but a lot of that thinking would fall on the shoulders of the bus operator. Through this program, in that image that you see, all the things in purple are things that Hawaiian Electric will now manage. We will own and maintain that infrastructure for this pilot. And then that green charging station is where the bus operator comes in. So a couple of things. So one is, Hawaiian Electric is doing this, is interested in doing this because it is selling the power to the bus. Am I right? We are, yep, they were our customer. And what's, we really wanna help support transition to electric vehicles. Not only is it good for our environment, it helps our state achieve our clean energy goals, but it also can help reduce the cost for bus operators. We've seen on charging with electricity can save on costs. It can be cheaper than refueling. Sure, these buses are expensive anyway. And if you can help avoid further investment by the owner of the bus, you're making it possible to have an electric bus even where there might not be one because of the investment required. Some of these new buses, for example, the city is buying, ho-ho, really expensive. But my question is, what kind of buses qualify? If I have a little weed, little tiny bus, is that qualify? Or how about one of those double section buses that the city is getting? Does that qualify? And how about all the stuff in between? That's a good question, Jay. So the vehicles that are qualified for this program are class five through eight buses. And so class five, it really goes by your vehicle weight. So that starts at 16,000 and then it goes up from there. So we're looking at class five and up. Those are typical, like a class five that might be a shuttle bus. And then upwards of that, that could include a school bus, a transit bus, a motor coach. And this is on Oahu for now? This is actually on Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii Island. Oh, wow, that's pretty ambitious then. Well, okay. It is. And it is a pilot. So it's limited for the next three years and we anticipate up to about 10 sites. So right now we don't have approval to install it everywhere, but we're looking at potentially up to 10 sites and about two ports per site. We'll have to see what applicants come in with and what those costs actually are. So you say approval, is that PUC approval? Yes, yeah, PUC approval. All our programs do go and get reviewed by the Public Utility Commission. So you're testing the water for a couple of years here. You wanna see what the market's like and what people want, what they need, how well you can satisfy whoever is driving. One of those was a class five to class eight buses in. Now, I have to warn you though, Mitch has questions. I know he does. I can see and remember that he is a bus man. He's definitely a bus man. Unfortunately, he's more a hydrogen bus man than an electric bus man, but some people feel that hydrogen is electric anyway. Right, Mitch? Well, it's an electric bus. By definition, we've passed legislation to say an electric hydrogen bus is the same as an electric vehicle. I knew he was gonna say that. So what about cost recovery? I mean, this is not free. I mean, I can see the cost savings because line electric knows exactly what the rules and regulations are and they have the experience behind them putting in this kind of ability. So the operator doesn't have to go out and reinvent the wheel and figure it all out for the first time, whereas you guys will have done it several times, at least 10 times in this pilot project. But at the same time, how do you recon, I mean, it's still costs a lot of money. I mean, transformers and engineering and putting in all the conduit stuff, that's not cheap stuff. So can one assume that that will be recovered in the rate that you still charge for the electricity? They'll be a little, something tacked on the bill to cover the infrastructure. There will be cost recovery for it. We were approved a certain amount, of course, for the pilot. So it's a fixed amount that we have to work with. And it will be cost recovered through existing mechanisms that we have. But with buses, the hope is that this can serve more than just an individual. Buses are used by so many people in our community across different age groups and just different communities. So we're hopeful that this is an investment that's going to benefit a lot of different folks in over a long period of time. Well, I'll tell you what it'll do. It'll incentivize people to buy electric buses. That's got to be a core goal here. You're going to do this. You want to bring more people into the electric bus community and have them bring electric buses here. So they should feel that going forward that these facilities will continue beyond the pilot period and that they will be available in more and more places like charging stations in general and they will buy electric buses and then we will have achieved a very important public goal getting to our targets in 20, what is it? What is it now? 2045, yep. Yep, sorry Mitch, you had something. No, I was just going to say for every person you put it on the bus, you're not putting them in a car. So you're saving, I mean, there is some CO2 generated in generating the electricity but at the same time, people don't maintain their cars or whatever. So there's going to be a considerable carbon dioxide savings by having people take the bus and then you have an electric bus, which is silent and no exhaust. People are going to start really liking the bus and so that will encourage more ridership, I'm sure. So this is a great program and I'm looking forward to leveraging our hydrogen buses off of it as well. So there you go. There you go. I knew Mitch was going to say that and I kind of tipped you off, didn't I? Okay, anything else you want to leave the public with, Tandy? Any message you want to give them now? No, I just wanted to mention as part of this program, we are also offering electric bus rates for anyone that participates in this program and it incentivizes and encourages our bus operators to of course charge their buses during times that are beneficial to everyone, especially during the daytime when there's more renewable energy on the grid. So that just makes the fueling of these vehicles even cleaner if they can charge during the daytime. You see that kind of aqua color, that's the peak between five and 10 p.m. and that's when we don't want folks to charge. So that is why it's a price premium to charge during that time but the other times of day are typically lower than what they would typically get under a commercial rate. And so again, we're really hopeful that programs like this and coupled with rates we're gonna encourage behaviors that are overall good for our community as a whole. I hope, I'm sorry, Mitch, go ahead. I think that between five and 10, most of the buses are gonna be on the road taking people home. So they're not gonna be using your bus to charge during the peak rush hour and everything else like that. So it kind of works out fine, I would think. I hope you come back and talk to us some more as the benchmarks are realized in the pilot program and let us know how it looks and how it's gonna look. I really appreciate you reporting to us on this, Tandy. Oh, thank you. So, Effie, what kind of message would you like to leave with the public about your program with the Aloha United Way? So I wanted to encourage everyone to support this effort. This is the first ever collaboration outside of Point Electric in another organization to raise funds externally for AUW. So this year, as Shannon had mentioned, we had different other events that raised funds, but this is an exciting one. I think this product is a great product for your friend, Ohana, and your friends and family locally and your students. You can send to the mainland. This is out to be delivered in the fall and that would be a great time for you to stack up for gift for the holidays and I hope you support this effort. Again, you can go into www.manola.com or slash AUW or if you have any questions, you can send us an email at 2021fundracer at tohawainelectric.com. So I hope you guys support this. It's Benefit Alice and yeah, it's a great, exciting product. Okay, the operative word is Alice and the second operative word is Emily, right? Emily is the main person, let me just be sure I have this right. She is the VP, Emily Khaled-Farro for AUW. Yeah, I remember that because Emily is the name of my puppy and my whole world revolves around Emily. Okay, Shannon, what message do you want to leave with our viewing audience? This is an important news day for Hawaiian Electric. So let us know your thoughts. Well, we just definitely want our customers to know that we're here to work with them. So don't ever feel like you can't contact us because we have folks that can answer your calls. We have folks that can chat with you online. We have so many different ways for you to reach us and we really wanna work with our customers to keep them connected. Thank you. Thank you, thank you all and Mitch, I hope you're not too nervous about this, Mitch, but this is your big opportunity to summarize the essence, the abiding truth of this show. Go for it. Yeah, sure. First of all, don't ignore Hawaiian Electric, pay your bill or at least talk to them. They're not the enemy, they're the friend and treat them as a friend. So don't hide because that's not a good thing to do. That's a dumb move and support the United Way. They help the people who need the help and it's a really great program that Hawaiian Electric is sponsoring, so well done. And also on the bus side, electrification of transportation, a great first start from a Hawaiian Electric to ease into the shock of infrastructure or charging your electric buses and it looks like a great program. So thank you very much, Tandy and Effie and Shannon. Aloha. Aloha, thank you all to you guys. Let's do it again soon. Thank you guys. Thank you.