 Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here at 4 p.m. 4 o'clock rock here on think tech think tech now think tech live think tech forever Think tech community. Yeah, okay, and this is Hawaii the state of clean energy off flagship energy show Every Wednesday at 4 p.m. And today on the show. We have George St. John raise your hand if you're George St. John Okay, okay, and he is an engineer a licensed engineer. We like that and he's gonna talk about She biomass and hydro power is very important and sitting next to him Is Lisa Harman of Hawaii energy? I'm gonna actually start with her Because she has something to tell us about the clean energy program that Hawaii energy is doing on July 27th Lisa all yours. Okay. Thank you so much Well, we are having a kickoff breakfast for our clean energy allies to tell them all about the new program year That's just started on July 1st for us at Hawaii energy It's going to be at the Alamo on a hotel on Wednesday, July 27th at 7 30 in the morning They can sign up via our website Just go to Hawaii energy comm and we do have a front page slider that says click here to register and they can follow that link Oh, great. What am I going to find when I go? Well at the breakfast We're going to be giving a presentation on our business and residential programs What's happening this year and update on all our new incentive amounts and technologies that we incentivize And we're also going to be talking about the clean energy ally program Which is how we engage with those market players that bring us these energy efficiency projects We're very grateful to them for Involving us in the projects to being able to help their customers So we'll be doing an update on that program as well and asking for some feedback about what they'd like to see How we can support them better in the marketplace. Yeah, great So is it cost anything to get in? You have to be registered as a clean energy ally So again, you can find that on our home page as well Clean Hawaii energy comm and says registered to become a clean energy ally And once they're officially registered as an ally they can register and come to the breakfast at no charge great And there'll be other breakfasts too, of course lunches breakfast We have a lot of good information to share with them. Okay, George cross examination George St. John. What do you got? You mean with regard to this yeah, well, it sounds interesting What are some of the examples of the things you guys are pushing well are one of our biggest categories is lighting, of course That's one of the easiest simplest retrofits. Yes, that Electricity customers can do so we incentivize LED lighting Absolutely, are they doing anything with the street lights? I think that's out under the city and county. They're putting an RFP out for that But that isn't a big opportunity in the state to retrofit this. Yeah, absolutely So we have we have incentive funding for that greatly said thank you for coming down Hey, you're welcome to just to reiterate that's July 27th a Wednesday Yes At 7 30 in the morning at the Alamo on a hotel And if you want to sign up go to Hawaii energy dot dot com and then on our front page There's a link to register so all of the trade allies the engineers the architects the contractors the lighting distributors We invite all of those folks to please sign up for our program and come to the breakfast and find out more Okay, we'll see you there. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot to appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show Thank you for coming down. We take a short break and we come back Ray Starling will join us as my co-host and we will find out what's going on with George St. John. We'll be right back Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas host of Hawaii is my mainland here on think-tok Hawaii every Friday afternoon at 3 p.m Start your powhuna weekend off with the show where I talked to people about issues pertinent to Hawaii You can see my previous shows at my blog Kaui Lucas comm and also on think-taks Aloha everybody, my name is Mark Shklav. I'd like you to join me for my program Law across the sea on think-tok Hawaii comm Aloha Hey, you stand the energy man here. I know you're bored this summer You're just sitting at home figure out what to do go to the beach Spend some time with think-tok Hawaii spend the time thinking about how you can contribute to Hawaii and making it a better place to live and Start watching some of the programs on think-tok including stand energy man Well, you'll learn all about everything energy especially hydrogen and transportation So we'll see you every Friday at 12 o'clock noon stand energy man here on think-tok Hawaii. Aloha The back and Ray Starling has joined us and it's Ray and George st John licensed engineer and me and I'm going to give Ray the the Distinction of being able to introduce George. What do you think Ray? All right? Well, George? George actually is a friend of mine that a colleague that I've worked with over many years here in Hawaii In fact, I think when we first came in contact with each other We were on opposite ends of a contract negotiation with actually h-power the h-power contract So I was working for Hawaiian Electric and he was working for the city and County I think and When I got to know George, I realized that he was more knowledgeable about Renewable energy and this was what 25 years ago Then anybody it was at least we didn't talk about renewable energy We just talked about biomass and and hydroelectric and that's that's why Suggested that we have George in today to talk to us about What's what's been going on in Hawaii for a long time? Everybody else thinks it's renewable and it's new But it's it's renewable and it's not so new here in the world. It's been here for a while Well, George you were on the plantations you were working in a plantation an engineer I take it in the plantation. We're right. Well, I started on a plantation and then I worked right down the street at Amphact We had five plantations, but Ray is right. It's it's kind of funny to hear some of this Green energy called renewable and new We didn't know it was worth so much and as you're aware Most of the neighbor island utilities didn't exist Pioneer mill was lying the light and power and of course they burned the gas residue from the sugarcane to fire their boilers and that ran the mill and In the case of place like pioneer That was irrigated when run all the irrigation pumps Places that didn't need to be irrigated like Puna. It was supplied to the grid and That's where the wars began With guys like Ray on that company he was working for and sugar mills and eventually Act 102 was passed which mandated that the power company buy power it didn't met certain criteria, so if you and I built the power plant and We could then go to the utility and say all right. We want to sell you power and They really didn't have a choice as long as it wasn't Displacing something you know times have changed Rather drastically They also almost all of the sugar mills had a small hydroelectric plants Some in excess of a megawatt most smaller than that And in fact Ray and I worked restored one on Maui 500 kilowatt half a megawatt way up Mountains above Lahaina It was hard to get ready to stop taking photographs of the beautiful scenery And machinery to ensure. Yeah, we had this very old old machine and we completely rebuilt it put it back online and As far as I know as it's still running and that's the case. There's about Every island except the Wahoo probably has half a dozen and just how old was this particular facility? We know it's at least a hundred years old early 1900s and it was abandoned and and actually George found it and we went up and kicked the tires a little bit and Figured that we might be able to put it back together and Talked to the landowner and any eventually hooked it back up, but that's the case. There's hydro. They were they used to be hydros here on a walk in fact there's Lake Wilson all all associated with with the sugar mills sugar plantations I don't know if they all were but all the ones I was familiar with were the one that's below Lake Wilson Was why Lua? But I think the border water supply had a couple I think they had some operated off the new one of reservoir and the beauty of them is that they just last forever there's no There's no high-tech involved and doesn't require a lot of maintenance either No, they can run for days and days and days the interesting though the thing that can be done is If you have two reservoirs at different elevations Then the hydro can be a hydro when the water is running down But at night if you have surplus energy like from a windmill because pump it back up again pump it back up and Since you would be using wind or wave or solar No machine is perfect most of them about 80% so when you pump it up 80% going up 80% come down you only get 60% back But you didn't pay for the fuel and the beauty of that is that when you have surplus energy now at Night almost well most of solar plants shut down at night as you're well But the wind and wave gets shut down at night Because the grid can't absorb it at night. They have to keep their large So at night you can absorb all that power and then give it back to the grid during the day So it's the perfect storage system and it starts and stops fast It has no thermal requirements a steam plant a Shutdown steam plant a cold at night Can take hours to get back online Hydros it's almost fast here is yeah Well, you know a point about the plantations is they were they were independent communities Yep, and by by the requirement of independent communities. They had to have their own water systems They had to have a lot of things that communities need to have and when we lost them we lost all those things We lost that the ditches, you know the water irrigation systems Well, no, no, no, we didn't lose them a lot of them are in disrepair right now They're not only ditches still supplying water. That's how they have a plane is able to stay holla ditches not always not Anyway, one of the things is you know these these pumps hydro or hydro facilities And they're I agree we talked before they're all around the place We made that we made a movie of one in Wailuku River In the big island, which is northwest of Hilo pump. I know not pump hydro, but a hydro facility generator And we we made a trip also into kawai in near-amount Ali Ali there Which is really something at the top of the hill and wow It's very impressive and they run easily all the time no sweat and they look good Yeah, I guess you can paint them up. So they last a thousand years Actually, Elko has three Maybe four they used to have four one of them got one of them wrecked But just outside of Hilo the river there and then there's two more Privately on a little further upstream. So there's a lots of hydros in Hawaii and there could be more We have melon that's that's the question that I'm going to pose to you directly And rail back me up on this right after the break. Okay, we're going to ask you George Why there aren't more when it's so good. How come we don't have it everywhere right now, okay? Fair enough think of that question, you know tick tick tick tick would be right back after this short break You Hi, my name is Kim Lau and I'm the host of Hawaii rising you can watch me live every other Monday at 4 p.m. Aloha Aloha, this is Reg Baker with business in Hawaii. We're a show that broadcasts every Thursday at 2 o'clock We would love to hear from you and you can reach us in several different ways We have a hotline that you can call in at 415 871-2474 or you can email us at think tech Hawaii calm or you can tweet us at think tech Hi Looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you on our next show. Aloha We're back George made us come back That's That's George St. John. He's a licensed engineer my co-host is Ray Starling and we left We left George with this pregnant question. Why aren't there more, you know Clean energy hydro power plants around the state. What happened? Well, there's probably about a half a dozen answers You of course, you know what a a nimby is. Yeah, and a pit me. Yeah, I know I know what a colloquial dam is too Okay. Well now that's that's a good lady question That's a dam where there was a notch in it and somebody filled it up with dirt That was the safety device You would throw the book at a guy that disconnected the brakes on your car And we should have thrown the book at the guy that put the dirt in the notch. That is an absolutely Full proof. It's harder to think of something that's simpler than a notch in a dam That's why that failed and Unfortunately, that story's got repeated repeated over and over without explaining what went wrong But it gave hydro power a black eye. It did. Well, it gave dams a backup black guy Yeah, now we have many many many reservoirs still in the state in use and a lot of them Were built high up in the mountains So they could store some water overnight and irrigate at the high levels and then other times they could irrigate low levels We can use those now from one to the other as a hydro and Like you say, they're very easy to maintain. They're very cheap Regulations are difficult whose regulations mostly mostly things like Land ownership One time Ray and I were working on not closely related, but we were working on wave energy so we went to the Corp of engineers to talk about it and it was going to be offshore Well offshore owned somebody belong one come one outfit the dam the breakwater belong to another outfit Inside the harbor was another you reach a certain level in the bureaucracy and it's better to go have a beer You heard it here the multi-level And then it it has in the past been difficult to negotiate a power contract You need one where you can rely No, once it's done once the power contract is done in operation. It's it's quite it's quite quite good The little Hydra that Ray and I worked on it was only half a megawatt but there was a situation where The power the load goes down the plants have to go down so you can keep them online well That plant had been online before the utility existed But when the sugar mill shut down and we went back to put it back Well now it was a new one then in the meantime the windmills had come online But the windmills had to shut down at line But since we were newer they had seniority so this tiny little Hydro had to shut down at night So somebody got to go up the top of the mountain Oh How do you shut how do you shut it down? You close this engage. No you close the valve So there's no water coming in on it. Oh That seems like too bad doesn't it because it's so it's what do you call it dispatchable? It's dispatchable Well, it's even it's even it's even if you'd go to the pump pump storage a 10 megawatt Hydro Can have a 20 megawatt impact on the grid if you've got too much power It can absorb 10 if you're short it can produce 20 10 giving you a total swing For that one facility. That's a big swing On almost all the neighborhoods, so I you know I'm only have trouble about colloquial because people are nervous about you know retaining water behind the dam But but what about the yield EIS problem? What about the effect on the environment in that area if you want to build one of these things from scratch one thing We have six or eight of them from you know years gone by a hundred years plus and they're beautiful I know I can tell you the one at Wailuku is like it's beautiful. It's painted bright colors It's a big room clean as a pin and it you know it runs all the time generating power But if you want to build one from scratch you'd have to get an EIS wouldn't you be a big deal? I don't think so We wouldn't build a new one you'd use the existing reservoirs that are there. Are you doing is adding a pipe? And a generator. Yeah, what a generator. Yeah at the bottom. Oh, Lake Wilson would work fine In fact, there used to be one that ran off like Wilson. In fact, the little building is still there We could do this all around the state. Yes, we can do a lot more. You know Hawaii has is rich Hopefully I mean we had a show on Monday this week about how we're running out of water But let's assume we you know at least for the next few years. We have adequate water to run all these hydro plants We could do a lot of energy with these hydro do you realize that we're not even close to running out of course I expected you with you with a licensed engineer And and if you're doing pumped hydro you pump the same water up and down I mean you're gonna lose a little bit in the process, but it's no consumption It's not like this water is gone forever Yeah, just turn it around and use the energy that you generate with it and then run it up to the top again, right? You know, there's so many brilliant solutions out there just along the same lines We had a show where earlier this week by a guy named Lynn Muller and he's in Vancouver and He's invented a system where you take the heat off sewage and wastewater in a given condominium building and you save that and you use it to Heat up the fresh water that's coming in and so you save an enormous amount of energy that way We're the completely inside system and it runs on its own power. I mean, oh, wow We're very little external Electric and apparently this heat exchanger idea And heat pump idea, you know can be extremely and it's the same idea here It sort of works by itself it feeds itself And so this would be a very efficient way of producing energy if we could do this Well, I'd put the same questions here George Why don't we do pump tight row using these reservoirs or maybe building one on top the other are you resident ready to invest I? Go the way Wall Street goes I'd say and you know how Wall Street is going this past week. I love it Wait for next week No, I mean I think the thing is that people are not going to invest big bucks in this kind of thing And it's very expensive and you got to have the land and the construction to build reservoirs and that she well But we don't really have to build reservoirs. They exist All of the kind of tool them from time to time and you know what usually there's two available. Ah They have a reservoir here. They store the high-level water when it comes in We have another one down here and it was used to distribute for irrigation so frequently There was two on Maui near this one little one that we were working on So you don't have to build a whole bunch and they don't have to be on top of each other either They can be at some distance. No, well closer. They are the better Yeah, and if you want a lot of distance between the top and out the bottom Yeah, yeah, and as we call it feet different, but actually there's one where you've only got to build one To have a pumped storage system. How do you do that? The other one is readily available. It's a huge one It's called the Pacific Ocean So right above on the cliff you have a totally vertical system and Then above it just in land a little bit you build one reservoir salt water It's a salt water reservoir. Yes, you don't mind using salt water that works well works fine I mean there are places in Japan. I believe that are doing exactly that So what is not bad every ship on the face of the earth deals with a lot of salt water So it's very easy to deal with. Yeah, in fact the M-fact building is cooled with salt water Directly direct an exchanger. You know, it's an exchanger So they take water out of the well that's in where you go into the parking lot. It goes through a titanium heat exchanger That's better than a cooling tower and cheaper. Well much cheaper and not only that they don't use Portable water and they don't dispose of the blowdown. So it relieves the aquifer and the Honolulu aquifer It's you know, that's one that stress the system that does not use local water supply, right? And then the disposal goes straight back into the harbor Ray you wanted to say something Thank you. I think George has said it all let me let me put it this way though if I made you king or Maybe chief engineer of the state. I don't think we have one chief engineer of the state Maybe we should have one. What would you do to enjoy? You know these technologies that you found years ago on the plantations. Just build them just like we did H-Power Just like we did the fake new power plant at Lee Hui Like restored the thing with little hydro ray and I did there's a lot of things and You've got enough small ones it adds up Just ones that are going Water is going down now To the lower elevations where a lot of farming is going on on the North Shore a whole other story, too Well on the North Shore, there's a lot of farms that are only former Sugarlands, but the water comes from above and on the way down just enclose it Don't put it in a ditch or put the pipe in the old ditch Well, I think I it's got to be a future for it But you know you mentioned earlier this what you call a seniority now of other renewable sources so if you start building and You know activating these hydro plants you're going to run into that problem, right? And then you have to turn the valve off once in a while Then you're reducing the benefit of having gone through the well now I've got a solution to that, but you need an hour and a half program for that Maybe one minute change the way that we qualify these plants Don't go through what we're doing now How exactly just like we did when the first law was passed Act 102 red was called avoided cost That was what you got paid no negotiations now that if you didn't like it don't build a plan if you do like it utility buys Act 102 think that would work worked fine And it wouldn't matter what what your source was and you didn't everybody reviewed by anybody else if it was efficient fine If it was not if you got you got it. Well, it's not efficient. It's your fault Yeah, if I build a plan and it's not efficient. That's not the government's problem That's not the county's capitalism at work free enterprise shock a baby shock a baby So Ray, I mean can you kind of synergize this for us? What is George really saying? He's really saying that there's a lot of opportunity out here And we sit around and scratch your heads and wonder why we're not getting to a hundred percent clean energy sooner And and I think we can and it's just a matter of going back and taking a look at what's out there and and maybe Trying to think of different ways to get there from the way we've been Getting there in the past it took so long it cost so much if you could expedite things and particular where you've got existing Reservoirs where all you're doing is putting a pipe in between with a pumping station and a generator and it seems to me that that could be done fairly easily without a whole lot of environmental impact and You know if if you really want to get there and I think climate change is dictating that we need to get there sooner rather than later Then I think we need to put our heads together and find out how we can best do it Yeah, it's actually a very elegant solution isn't it? Even they say the best solutions are the ones right there in front of you Yeah, that you hadn't been thinking of and this would be one of them Well the way to get it. What's the shoe company? It says just do it. Yeah Well, yeah, we say that all the time just do it but then there are reasons why people can't just do it We're with you George Okay, we're gonna call it a wrap on this Thank you very much for coming down. Thank you, sir. I hope something happens on this I hope somebody watches this and gets the idea. It's out there. It's for the taking. It's something we know how to do Good night, George. Good night. Thank you so much for coming. My pleasure and Jake. Thank you for having us on