 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Bingo, we're back for the four o'clock rock here on a Wednesday. And of course, we're talking about energy. And today we have two energy stars among us, Maria Tomei, energy star, Michiu and energy star. You guys are great. Thanks for coming down. Thanks for coming back. You may be asking why I say coming back, because they were both away. They went to the Nelha conference on trends and opportunities in energy storage. And if you didn't know, this would be a final exam. If you didn't know, Nelha stands for the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. Perfect. There you go. Okay. And that's in Kona, just near the airport. Okay. And so they went to a conference there. And this show is to report the guys in Oahu who didn't go to the conference about the conference. Okay. So why did you go? Well, first of all, I had to go because I was a panel chair for the hydrogen panel. Fair enough. And put the whole panel together. And so I had to moderate the panel. But also, it's a great opportunity to network and tell people what you're doing. And of course, I was also able to give them a tour of my hydrogen station at Nelha. Which is at Nelha. Correct. Yeah. A moment about Nelha. I was on the board of Nelha back in the early 2000s, and I saw a lot of action there, a lot of development action, science about it. So it was organized back in the Ariyoshi days, I think, to be an energy laboratory. And Dan in no way supported it a lot and caused certain projects, including the Gateway Energy Center there on the Mamahua Highway to be built. And it has a thousand acres of leaseable land, state land, which can be used as a kind of energy park. There are things that are not completely energy in there. But it's clearly a worthy adventure for the state to be running a kind of tech park like that. Yeah. Okay. Why did you go, Maria? Well, energy storage is an important part of our energy future. And there are all sorts of interesting things happening, and they have some excellent speakers, not just from Hawaii. And of course, Hawaii is where a lot of the good things are happening, but also from the national labs. So there were, NREL was represented, Sandhya, Argonne, and one more. The big companies coming in there. Yeah. So the national labs are doing a lot of this research, and so they're busy figuring out the details of how to make the technologies better. And there are other parts of the labs that are looking at the big picture internationally, what's happening where, and how can it all come together. And those folks were here in Hawaii, so I kind of had to go. NREL, it sounds like sort of a national version of HNEI. Yeah. Some people confuse the same kinds of things. Exactly. Except they have a lot more budget and a lot more people than we do. You should talk to them every time. They don't have to fight as hard for their budgets as we do. Okay, so let's talk about your panel, Mitch. The panel on hydrogen. And obviously, Nelha would be very interested in hydrogen. It's all about energy. You have a facility there. Who did you have on the panel? First of all, I had Steve Samanski from NEL Hydrogen. They used to be proton energy, but they got acquired by NEL out of Norway. So now they're the world's largest electrolyzer company. And it was really great that he was able to come out here to Hawaii, and all our electrolyzers that we are using in Hawaii are from now NEL Hydrogen. Tell them what an electrolyzer is. Oh, great. It's an electrochemical device. You put electricity in, water in, and hydrogen and oxygen comes out, and it does it all quietly. Makes it sound so simple. It's pretty simple. You do it in your lab at high school. They always have a hydrogen experiment where they put a pencil in on each side, and they use the lead as a conductor, and then you make hydrogen and oxygen with it. So what new came up in this panel? I mean, what were the takeaways? What was the revelation? Yeah, sure. So first of all, just keying in on the NEL presentation, they've managed to reduce the cost of an electrolyzer by 40%. Think about that. We fight for improvements in efficiency of 1% or 2%, but on the other hand, because they got this huge monster, multi-billion dollar order from Nikolai Motors, who are buying all these big class 8 tractor trailer trucks to move beer around the country, what a good thing. So part of that deal is to set up hydrogen stations, a network of hydrogen stations around the country, and so they've contracted NEL hydrogen to do that. So in order to meet the demand, they had to go and build a new factory, and because now you're starting to get volume production kicking in, that's where you get your economics get a lot better. So they've knocked 40% off of their electrolyzer. And this isn't necessarily the technology in the electrolyzer. It's the manufacturing process to build the electrolyzer. Yeah, because they basically build it in a production line, just like building a car and put in automation, because they're building multiple units. So that was a huge deal. And then we had Stan Osserman came in and talked about the microgrids, they're putting in a joint-based Pearl Harbor Hickam, which is really innovative technology. So this is all front-end stuff. We had Paul Pontheo from Blue Planet Research and Development talking about their battery development and how it's integrated with hydrogen. So you're using your hydrogen fuel cells to keep your battery at a safe level, so you improve the durability of your battery over time, because you're not working it as hard. And so it's a perfect marriage. And in a vehicle, for example, you use the battery to absorb regenerative braking power. You can't use it to generate more hydrogen. So this is a really good fit. And they have such an awesome program over at Blue Planet on the big island at Hecken Rogers Ranch. I mean, it's just like world-class. I mean, everybody just loves going there. And then finally, we had a, I mean, so Blue Planet actually markets the Sony battery, right? They use the Sony battery, correct. And so was Tesla there? What's the comparison? Well, it was a great show about Elon Musk on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. He's really something. Anyway, the Tesla battery is competing with the Sony battery. So was there a discussion of that? Well, the batteries that Blue Planet are making are for stationary applications. So you don't need the power. You just need the energy storage part of it. And so it's a totally different lithium ion chemistry. And it's far safer, actually. It doesn't overheat. Well, it doesn't overheat. Like, you know, full charging to discharge it maybe goes up like two degrees, whereas other batteries, you have to actually actively cool it to keep it from overheating. But, you know, they don't get worked quite as hard. And the other issue is just straight safety. Paul Ponthio loves to put on the nail test where they drive a nail through a lithium ion battery. One through the Sony battery, we'll call it, as you characterize it. And the other one is through the Tesla battery. The Tesla battery catches on fire and it eventually explodes. You can't put it out. Whereas the Sony battery does not catch on fire. It just releases the lithium, has a little valve actually in the cell. And it's very, very safe. What one point of curiosity here is that every time you see these batteries, in fact, Paul brought some down here at this table a year ago, is that they're relatively small. And if you go to Kauai and look at the facilities that K-I-U-C with batteries, you see the batteries for Tesla, for example, they're no bigger than a desktop. They're small. That's why you've got to strap together a lot of them. Well, that might have been a module. But I mean, they look like flashlight batteries, almost. Yeah. But the question I have thousands of them. Are they going to get bigger? Are they getting bigger? Has the technology evolved? You know about this group? Yeah. The technology evolves around this, does it? Are we going to get bigger batteries? Or are we going to strap together a lot of little ones? I don't know if they really talked about trying to change the design of basic units. Well, as much as they talked about the chemistry and improving the chemistry and the efficiencies and the management of the batteries and how they're used and how they're dispatched, I assume that if it was more cost-effective, safer, or easier to manufacture different sizes, they would. But you can also have a downside of that, is then how do you standardize the whole thing? So there tends to be differentiation, and then there's a consolidation again into some basic sizes. But they didn't get into that at this conference, so I hesitate to say anything about that. The Blue Planet guys are using a larger format lithium-ion battery now for their big stationary storage product that they're using now. So yeah, they will get into larger format because smaller ones take that much more work to assemble them. So you eventually want to scale it up so you don't have to make as many assembly operations and fewer points of failure. Yeah, I know it wasn't at the conference, but we had a show about wind last week. Peter Brosek came down with some guys from the new wind facility that's in RFB shape now, and they're trying to make a purchase power agreement on that. Yeah, they have a PPA. It's really $0.10, make that $10. And you get this right. It's like not quite $0.11. There it is. It's not quite $0.11 for a kilowatt hour. Pretty good for renewables. And what's interesting about it is a particular site. This is interesting because I thought that you always needed batteries, hence the importance of this conference. You always needed batteries for wind as well as photovoltaic because wind goes down at night and you can't get firm power. But in fact, this project is not going to have batteries. This project is in a location. This is in Cahey Point where you don't need it and they're not having it. And they're going to deliver the energy directly to the generation station there. You know about this? Yeah, I think I don't want to talk about it too much. For one thing, it's intermittent power and batteries can be added to support the intermittent power, especially if the ramping is too fast and whatnot. So just because there aren't batteries or some other mechanism on site to support. Oh, so there will be batteries anyway. At some point, something needs to be dispatchable to handle the fluctuations, right? So it's a little bit oversimplifying to say it's unique in that sense. That's what I do. That's OK, that's OK. But you were making a point about something else, I think, about the batteries or the energy storage? Well, the larger size batteries, they're new from the technology of batteries. And after all, that's what this is all about. It's on trends and opportunities and energy savings with storage. So and I would imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, you guys went over there and spent a couple of days. Storage means batteries. Not only batteries. We're not talking about it. Batteries are part of storage. So batteries are a part of storage. And there were so many different slides on where batteries fit in the storage options matrix. Because you've got pumped hydro, right? You've got batteries. You've got capacitors and flywheels. You talking about all that? Yeah. And hydrogen. And hydrogen. Don't forget hydrogen. Hydrogen is a storage mechanism. There you go. I sometimes forget that. That's it. And then they had a flow battery. That's why you're so important in this conversation. So one of the features was they were introducing a new flow battery that was just being commissioned at Nelha with funding from the Office of Electricity. It's kind of similar to a fuel cell, except it has two big tanks of electrolyte. And so you can disassociate your power from your energy storage. And so basically you have this electrolyte, which is a chemical, and it can be regenerated. And I thought the really unique thing about this was because this electrolyte does not degrade over time, what the company is doing is leasing you the electrolyte so that your capital acquisition cost is significantly reduced. And plus, once at end of life, whatever that is, 20, 30 years, they'll take the electrolyte back and recycle it with somebody else or in some other battery. That was pretty innovative, I thought. Leasing you electrolytes. Yeah, exactly. OK. New business models coming up all the time. Because it deals at least a part of it and have electrolytes. Yeah, exactly. So what were you there for, what were you looking at? What was your point of interest? Well, we need to have some idea of what all is going on and what the various technologies are. And not only what's happening right now in the developmental side, but also how things are being used. And they had a lot of case studies. There was discussion of everything from the battery technology to the electrolytes and how to improve those to what's happening with microgrids. And also, how are you pricing things? How are the regulatory issues being addressed? Because there's a whole bunch of new development happening. So that's kind of what I was there to hear. And I found it very, very interesting in a little while. Were there young Turks there who would try to build software to make the grid more efficient? I mean, I would imagine their queries around those guys. Yeah, those software people are busy with everything. Do they have any good products to talk about? Yeah, it wasn't really a sales conference. So you didn't see too much of that aspect. It was more, this is being done. And these are some of the companies active in the area. Good, good, good to see you. And it was, undoubtedly, it was a network experience. Am I right? Yeah, actually, it was a network experience. I met some really interesting new people. And there's a benefit, correct me if I'm wrong, to having it in Kona at Nelha instead of in Oahu. I mean, what would you have preferred here or there? Oh, me? Well, the benefit was, from my point of view, I was able to show off my new hydrogen station that I just put into a lot of work. You had two worse than everything. Well, we had a formal tour of it and talk about it. And they could actually go down and see it. And they were surprised at how big it was. And what that equipment actually looks like was a pretty novel to them. And even while I was giving a presentation to a group, there was one guy who was putting in a wind farm. And he said, wow, he says, we could really look at hydrogen and tie something like this in with our wind farm. So he gave me his car and said, let's talk. So that's a typical how networking works. So yeah, there was a lot of that going on. Well, as part of the industry, isn't it? Does everybody talk to each other? Because there are new ideas fomenting all the time. And you want to find out what affects you. Yeah, you don't want to stay in your cubicle behind your computer screen. It's good to go out and meet people and talk ideas, both during the conference and at night, the networking sessions we have, and develop relationships. You meet people who are interesting. You get that one-on-one relationship with them. And then you phone them back in a couple of weeks. And then you start thinking about, well, how can I use what this guy was telling me in some of my projects? And you have your own network where you know this guy's interested in that particular thing. And so you can help them out. Like say, hey, I just saw this great flow battery technology. I know you're kind of interested in that. Here's the guy's card. I've already done that twice. Here's the guy's card and some of his brochures I picked up. So it helps them want to come to Hawaii if they get a little piece of business out of it at the very end, otherwise, why come to Hawaii? So it's good for Hawaii. It's good for the economy. It's good to get this new technology exposed. And we're the perfect test site because our electricity here is so expensive that this emerging technology is still not volume produced. So they can be competitive. In Hawaii, on the mainland, they might not be able to compete against two or three cents a kilowatt hour hydropower. So that's all part of it. And hopefully, they also want to invest in doing projects here, like on the R&D side, development projects. So I was able to tell them about our labs, our capability that HNEI has, and all the different areas we operate in so that we can try and attract project money to help HNEI and the state develop this technology in state and get our kids trained up. It's reaching out. Reaching out. You can't just sit there passively and let life go by. You've got to go out and grab it and apply it and be a little bit aggressive, market ourselves, like brag a bit and talk about our achievements. And be in a sharing kind of relationship. Aloha means a lot in this kind of conference, especially when you're trying to establish relationships. Wanchi with people from other places. Let's take a short break. When we come back, I want to ask you to compare this conference with the Germany-Hawaii Clean Energy Symposium about three weeks ago and see what you think. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, Raising Public Awareness. Living in this crazy world, so caught up in the confusion. Nothing is making sense for me and you. Hey, Aloha, standing energy man here on Think Tech Hawaii where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy and transportation, energy in maritime, energy and aviation. We have all kinds of things on our show, but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii. Because it's my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. But we talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. And we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Stand the Energy Man and take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. OK, we're back with Mitch Ewan and Maria Tome. We're talking about the NELA conference on trends and opportunities in energy storage. And I wanted to ask you the cliffhanger question before the break was, how would you compare this conference with the conference three weeks a month ago with the Germans, the Germany-Hawaii Clean Energy Symposium, as a matter of fact? They were slightly different, but actually the quality of the presentations and the people that we're presenting was like equal about the same. We had really quality people over at the NELA conference and the same with the German ones. I was really impressed. And a lot of people were with the caliber of the presentations and the information that came out of it. So they were very good, both of them. And what both of them say is that we have a leadership position. We can squander it if we want, but we do have a leadership position. People come from far away to see what's going on here. Maybe learn about it, participate in it, share about it. In both of the cases, the NELA conference and the German conference, they were coming from far away. They were trying to figure out what we do. They see us as leaders. But we have to keep up the momentum. Absolutely. We can't just talk the talk. We actually have to walk the talk and we have to get things done. I mean, at the front end, when you first start things out, it's maybe relatively easy. But now we're getting through the low-hanging fruit phase where things were relatively easy because we're inefficient. We haven't changed all our light bulbs. We didn't know better. We didn't know better. But now as we know, the light bulbs are changing out. We're getting a lot harder. And we all know that budgets are constrained. But at some point, we're going to have to start spending real money on this kind of stuff to make those next steps. Because it's not free. And when you're talking about changing your infrastructure, like your grid, that's all expensive stuff. I mean, it's not free. And people, the federal government is not throwing a lot of money out there like we used to have. I mean, not that they threw it out there. We don't have a center anyway out there fighting for us. And because of the seniority, you was able to get lots of things happening at Y. But the new administration, there's been a real change in how the Department of Energy now is managing their money. Because their budgets got constrained, now they're focusing on the national lab. Because of course, the national labs are the priority. I mean, they're the crown jewels for the country to maintain this level of expertise and infrastructure. So they don't want that to go away. So the majority of their money is going into that. And it's harder for universities like us here in Hawaii now to get any of this money to support our program. So things are getting tight. We've got to show them the goods. We've got to show them the goods. Like I said, you have to walk the talk. So how much of what Mitch said you agree with? Well, I didn't go to the German Energy Conference all the way, so. It was great. OK. Yeah, yeah. The other part. But yeah, and as far as getting the funding, I'm not involved directly in that. But as far as the momentum being important and the things getting more difficult, I think in retrospect, it always seems the successes appear almost inevitable. Unless you were there working hard to make it happen, you don't realize how much effort went into it. And so you look back and you're like, oh, well, that stuff was easy. And someday some will look back and all the stuff we're doing now that we're working so hard on, they're going to say, that was easy. That's real low hanging fruit. Now we really got it. So I think it's a constant struggle because you've got the new and the untested and resource constraints. But the important things to stick with it. And to remember. Yeah, so Hawaii has a couple of aspects, I think, that are unique in one way. What would be a demonstration or somewhere else to us is big enough to actually be commercial and important. And we really want it because it makes a difference to us because we are constrained. We do have to be self-sufficient. We need to be reliable and resilient in a way that other places don't. And so we're taking it more seriously, perhaps. And we're not only further ahead in a lot of the penetration levels that we're seeing. But we also have an aggressive goal. And so we are taking it much more seriously, I think, than some other places that are just beginning to think, oh, wouldn't it be nice to do that? And so bringing that level of commitment from the Hawaii side to the people who, on the outside, are looking for some place to demonstrate what it is that they've developed, I think, is a natural marriage. But we have to get out there and we have to make those connections. So I'm glad that we have an opportunity. You guys are referred to companies that come here, big companies that deal in energy. I mean, there's capital concentrations who have achieved a lot of capital. And they do things that require a lot of capital. But where is the local entrepreneur fit? The guy who has an engineering degree, the guy who knows about electrical engineering, knows about solar, he knows about grid development, he knows about all the equipment. They're hanging around at these conferences. If I'm studying this and I want to get in on it, I can't compete head-on with these big companies that come from far away. I've got to find my niche. What is my niche? Can you tell me with that? There was one thing that hasn't been mentioned and wasn't actually on the agenda, but was in a side conversation. And so Hawaii has a special purpose revenue bond matching program. And so if someone is developing the new technology and they can get the federal government through the SBIR program or STTR program to commit, Hawaii will provide matching funds. And so that's a state program that doesn't get mentioned much. And then, of course, the energy accelerator, which is doing a really good, sorry, elemental accelerator, that is doing a really good job of encouraging the companies that are at a certain stage of development. And then, of course, there's whatever Mitch was going to add to that. Yeah, I was going to add a couple of other things. Another accelerator that's very good is AccelerateUH, which takes either UH alumni or UH technology and helps to bring it to market. And what they do is they teach you. They give you a course. Actually, I took the course. It took like three months. And they teach you all this entrepreneurial stuff. Then they bring in outside experts like lawyers and marketers. They teach you how to write a business plan, how to tune your pitch up, and to validate your technology. That's the first thing you do in the first week. It's like, you think there's a market, but you go out and prove to me there's a market. They're going to test you on it. Yeah, you go out and have to interview 30, 40 people a week and come back with the results. And in my cohort, as they call it, I mean, several people actually made major changes to their business plan because some of them found out nobody wants what I think is great and neat. They want something else. So back to the drawing board. That's so important. It's really important. Design thinking, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's called Lean Startups, you know, in business cavvis model. They use a very, very good quality program. I mean, I come out of industry. I'm not an academic. I mean, I run some publicly traded companies in my time. And I went in there pretty arrogantly. What can they teach me that I haven't already known? Well, they taught me a heck of a lot. But I didn't know. So I'm a big fan. And they're just upstairs here on the 18th floor. Great organization. Sultan Ventures runs it on contract at the university. Great program. But I just want to make one other comment to follow up on what Maria was saying. It's like, the harder it gets to get money and funding, the more innovative you have to be. You have to think of other angles. And it forces you to be innovative, like the guy who's going to lease you his electrolyte instead of sell it to you because it helps him sell his market. And so it actually forces you to think, oh, well, gee, I got this cash cow. And they're just going to sprinkle money on me. I don't have to work too hard. It's the same old, same old. Now I've got to go out and think harder and make a better business value proposition and maybe have to change my product so that everybody's excited about it. That's real resilience. That's real resilience. Yeah, that's resilience in the marketplace. You have to go out there and attract it. Change the way you do business. So Maria, what were the panels you liked best? And what were the subjects that you bring back from this conference that you think will change the way we do business? She loved the hydrogen panel. Of course. Great panel. But it's already been talked about. I was very encouraged to see the local media there. West Hawaii today came to cover there was a panel in the afternoon on the Wednesday. Resiliency and force majeure situations such as lava and hurricanes. You know, the folks on Big Island were actually very interested in that and they got a great write up. And they had followed what had been said by the panelists and they reported it in the paper. And that's always encouraging because it's where the public is interested in what is happening in the technical and academic and regulatory areas. It doesn't happen all the time. Yeah, yeah. So that was something I thought was very fruitful in the outcome of this conference. I also liked the offers of the modeling. You know, they've developed these modeling software. How do you quantify the value of these services? The batteries can provide ancillary services and what? How do you quantify that? What are you talking about? So what is an outage worth? If the power goes out, what is it worth? To avoid an outage, what is that worth? One minute an hour to find it out. Yeah, we gotta figure this stuff out, right? So the services that are provided by whatever it is on the grid, whether it's batteries, pump storage, the available energy, the base load units, we have to value what they're providing because it's different. And so they're modeling these things in a way and those models are public domain and free and I was jotting down the links and we have some of them and we're gonna go keep an eye on some of the others because those resources, we don't have to develop them. They've been developed, we can use them. And if we have additional questions, the national labs, you know, they may be able to help us with the next phase and those questions as well. So you came out of this conference. I'm wondering if you came out with any new ideas about storage, about batteries, about whether the batteries fit in the grid and the renewables going forward. Is there anything that you took away? My enthusiasm for the energy, the stored energy piece and how it's going to be a really effective part of our transition to renewables was confirmed. You know, there's so much work being done and improvements being made, not just on the new technologies and the new chemistries but even on how to use the older technology. You know, one of the batteries that was on display at Nelha is a lead acid battery basically but they've got new stuff in it and so they're calling it an ultra battery because it's an ultra capacitor in that, you know. And so there are so many new things that are being done that it's very encouraging. And one last thing, liquids are a form of energy, of stored energy. And so very often liquid fuels, you know, are a form of stored energy that need to be added into the discussions and when you have those charts showing different types of energy storage, I was glad to see that they had a variety of those options in there because we have to look at the costs and impacts of all of them. Okay, how about you, Mitch? Well, one new technology I didn't know much about going in was what they call forward osmosis as opposed to reverse osmosis. So they can use like low-grade heat. The guy was saying, I'll take any heat you're willing to give me to run this system. And it's like, you know, 70, 80% more efficient. What does the heat do? It draws the fluid through a membrane and that separates the membrane from salt water. No, it's not a fuel cell. This is just desalination technology. But desalination costs a lot of money. And uses a lot of energy. And uses a lot of energy. And because water is starting to get more and more precious here in Hawaii, we don't have as much of it freely available as we used to have. So we're gonna have to start looking in some areas of Hawaii where we're gonna have to start desalinating sea water. So this is a really interesting technology and they're setting it up at Nelha at the old soapagee site which generates heat with their little parabolic mirrors. And they can run at 24-7 because now they can run this heating oil and have a big bulk of heat stored like overnight. So you can run at 24-7. And they're gonna use the water that they produce to support cyanotech who, you know, they have like five- So connected. They have a huge amount of fresh water that evaporates every day, like three or 400,000 gallons. I mean, think about that. And that's almost like depleting the allocation to Nelha. So very interesting technology, interesting pitch. So that was new. So Mark, have a good conference. So you let your mind fly. You come for one thing and you get much more than that. You get all kinds of thought process and other things. I'm glad you went. And I'm sorry I didn't go. You gotta go. Yeah. Next time. Next year, or in two years, we're gonna do it again. Thank you, Maria. Thank you. I know you're too vocal today. Yeah. Thank you. Aloha, you guys. Aloha.