 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Nicole Horry. In our show this time we'll take a trip to Maui and see some of the energy facilities there. We'll visit the Oahi Wind Farm at Ulu Palakua, a Pacific biodiesel sunflower field in central Maui and the Maui Electric Control Center that monitors power throughout the island. Fred Riddell, Energy Commissioner of Maui, organized the itinerary. Thanks Fred. We were also joined by Todd Kanja of Hawaiian Electric Companies and Chris Reynolds of Maui Electric. They were all great and all were very knowledgeable and experienced in the generation and distribution of electrical energy and renewables on Maui. After an early flight and of course a stop at Krispy Kreme Donuts, we drove to the Oahi Wind Farm on the Ulu Palakua Ranch near the southeast corner of Maui. The area is remote and spectacular. The wind turbines were beautiful to watch in design, function and in their harmony with the landscape. Right here we have a large wind farm supplying energy to Maui Electric and then to the citizens of Maui County. It's about 21 megawatts of wind currently operated by CEMPRA. A significant portion of the renewable portfolio standards met by wind on Maui. Let's talk about the RFP that the Hawaiian Electric has, 400 megawatts and that's not limited to Oahu, that's all over the state. The RFP is really designed to take advantage of the available federal tax credits and try to take what renewables we can on our grid. The technologies have continued to get more and more cost effective and we continue to see more lower prices. The thing that we're also seeing now is really a piece that is going to be a part of our energy future which is energy storage and we're encouraged by how the prices have come down very rapidly in the near term. Part of what we're doing with this RFP is to ask developers to look into storage and give us pricing for storage. Hawaii Island is already, I think they're over 56 percent if I'm not mistaken as of today. Maui's well over 30 percent, I think closer to about 35 percent. Oahu's just over 20 percent. We do have a goal. We want to start and put a little emphasis on Molokai. We think there's a great opportunity. Batteries can do multiple functions, one of which is to smooth the output of the wind farm. The other thing it can do is, for example, it can store energy in periods when there may be an excess and discharge those batteries when there's peak demand. How do you pick your moment to get the technology that fits you without having anxiety about it being replaced in the near term? What we try to do in our part supply improvement plan is to come up plans where we're not betting the farm all at one time. We develop plans that and actions where if we take these actions that we're going to have very low regrets and that's what we're trying to do. The one thing that we know for sure at least at this point is that federal tax credits are available and that's certainly what we're interested in and trying to take advantage of and if they do not get renewed it's something that is going to disappear. Wind turbines have gotten larger and can actually produce more you know out of a larger wind turbine. These wind turbines here are three megawatts but they do go up as much as for example seven megawatts per wind turbine. Solar is pretty predictable but like anything too much of one thing makes it challenging. For example, if a portfolio were entirely solar you can only use so much energy that as solar is being produced which means you end up with a lot of energy storage. Wind on the other hand is something that could be available around the clock so the amount of storage that you actually need would win is going to be less. I'm the technical manager for Sempra and we support the Hawaii wind farm out here. As it connects up to the grid it connects with a battery. What's the purpose of that battery and how does that help the grid? Because the wind is as you know it comes and goes as it likes right there's no control over them. If the wind comes in then we can control how fast power is getting to the grid but if the wind goes away then there's really no way to mitigate for it. So you lot the loss of power or intermittency generated from loss of wind can wreak havoc on the grid. So the purpose of the battery is to so when the wind dies down we can actually control how fast the power actually falls. So we have a ramp rate limitation approximately one megawatt per minute and so that way Maui Electric can actually bring up their generators fast enough to catch it to minimize the impact on the grid. How does the interconnection work from here to where you get it? So basically the power is generated here. They have a transmission line that goes up over the mountains. It connects into a substation where the energy is stepped up in voltage connected to our 69 kV transmission system and distributed to Maui. If you feed this in with all the other sources is this above or below the other sources? The other sources are conventionally the fossil fuel generation. It's in a constant flux based on fuel pricing. What this really offers is is a price stabilization. So we're on a fixed contract with with fixed pricing. That's tremendous benefit in that because you know exactly what it's going to be for a period of years. Yes, exactly. Have you had to curtail them in recent years? Unfortunately, yes. We are an island system so there's no way to export this excess energy. So we need to meet our customers needs at any given time. So right now if there's really no demand for electricity and there's excess generation, there is curtailment. If I had more batteries, if I were them and I had more batteries, I could just pump it all into the batteries during that period of time and not lose anything. That is an option. Batteries still are quite expensive and they're a big capital investment. Looks like a booth up there with windows. Can a person be there? Is there a control room there or something? Not so much as the control room is there is an access for maintenance to be done. There's a couple of landings that you go up to the top certain a couple of you know probably I think there's two landings on the way up and that's where you can rest if you need to. I'm sure I would have to. They're very spacious inside. Some of the other turbines like that has gearboxes in them is very cramped space. There's actually a wind vane up top and through the wind vane measures where the predominant wind direction is or the average wind direction is and actually there's what they call yaw motors that kicks in and actually turns the whole turbine to face the wind at all times. It constantly adjusts itself as the wind direction changes to constantly trying to face the wind to maximize the power from the wind. So we're standing here on this point of land right under the turbines and it's blowing up a storm and it's consistent when it's strong wind. I hope it doesn't affect our sound too much actually. Is it like this all the time? Yes sir that's why we're here. From there we drove back to Central Maui to see one of the Pacific biodiesel sunflower fields in that area at the Maui Tropical Plantation Center and we caught up with Bob King of Pacific Biodiesel. So what can you tell me about this field here? It looks like a young field of sunflowers. Can you tell us a little bit more about what Pacific Biodiesel has going on here? Well here at Maui Tropical Plantation we wanted to do a little small planting for people to just come and enjoy and see what's going on at the bigger fields which are across the street and down the road a little ways. So this is the kind of sunflower, the same variety that we're planting in our big fields but it's a little field. How is this sunflower any different than say another one? Is this one specific for creating fuel, creating other products? What can you make out of this and how would it be perhaps different than the sunflower seeds that I might get from the grocery store? There's two main types of sunflower seed or sunflower plants. One grows the large confectionary sunflowers and that's what we use for the package you buy in the store. It's also the preferred one for bird feed and things like that. It's the large seed. This is what they call black oil sunflower which is it's not black oil it's black sunflower seeds that makes oil. So they're smaller they do make bird feed out of it as well but most of it is made for the oil industry for cooking oil and biofuel. What other products can you use say the stock other things how much of it is actually going towards that and are there derivative products something extra that you can make out of it? It's interesting every part of the sunflower is edible so you can actually talk to some folks that as kids on the mainland would peel the the stalks apart and chew on the kind of foamy inside core like popcorn. Not for me but it's it is edible every part of the plant is edible. I've done chips out of the leaves kind of like kale chips you can make sunflower chips and then of course the the seed once we once we crush the oil out of the seed the what's left over the meal sunflower meal is a very high quality animal feed. Tell me a little bit about the water use and how you actually you know farm sunflowers is it much different than other farming on Maui? Irrigation has been is is little is quite a bit different. So they for this small field Grant put it in with drip because it's manageable and you don't have to have water spraying around when people are walking around. For our fields we don't use drip and and it's mainly there's enough drip tape in the ground out there we have you'd have to peel it up for me you have to take it out every time you use it. We go with above ground sprinkler irrigation in the summertime but our real what we're really finding is that to use the weather so some of our we're going in with a lot of acres in the winter time here when as soon as we get rain and we'll call what's what we call dryland cropping which is where most crops are grown in the world it doesn't mean it's dry it just means you're not adding irrigation. How about for you know the county and for the for jobs and resiliency it seems like there's a lot of benefit to actually growing a product whether it results in a fuel or another product a chip or or a cosmetic who knows what it might you know ultimately be it really seems like there's a lot of benefit to having smart agriculture in the county. When you make products from ag it's basically labor there's not that many inputs into it's the sun it's the earth so it really does create jobs and and payroll so and it goes on and on you know you quit quit hiring people you quit farming so it's there's no end to it and we think they're good jobs when you get to I mean the parts that we're trying to do are big mechanized farms and that means that rather than you know bending over and pulling stuff out of the ground the hard way which is I gotta thank people for doing that because I love my lattice and things but we're doing it with big equipment that's got air conditioning and biodiesel engines and so they're good jobs they're technical jobs and I think there's thousands of jobs that can be created and and dawn down the line so the cosmetics the food grade oils the the co-products and and not all of these are going to be oil bearing they're going to be other similarly farmed food products you're selling sunflower products what do you sell and to whom well we on the sunflower product side we're developing a few few different things right now we're we're really thinking that the food grade oil for you know for salad oil or cooking is is going to be up was going to be our big product but then we realize that the cosmetic industry is really likes it so right now we're selling everything into the cosmetic market to close out our visit to Maui we went to the Maui Electric Control Center it's in the Miko yard in Kahului it monitors the sources and distribution points on the Maui grid the display design is modular so when the grid changes it's easy to change the wall sized real time display you start in energy and then you find something out and you use that for some other completely unrelated purpose and and the whole thing is a kind of continuum it's whatever you can innovate you innovate absolutely I think farmers are the original innovators I really like the idea of locally sourced products ag continuing the ag business on and in Maui so it just seems like a win-win solution where we can keep the agricultural business going and and still can support our energy needs here on Maui I think just the innovation aspect is just fantastic you know and just to see people willing to try to innovate and and try to create value out of agriculture that's that's that's very creative and very innovative to make it you know work out the economics have to pan out in the end and you know the more derivative products and the more value that you can extract out of that the better off you are this is our dispatch room for Maui Electric so basically this is offices man 24 hours a day seven days a week holidays weekends all the time we usually have at least three persons on staff at all time we have the supervisor we have a dispatcher and we have the system generation operator so basically this half of the room primarily looks after the transmission distribution side and in this seat over here is the system generation operator so basically he handles the the coordination of the power plant generators at Kallui Malaya along with the wind farms and the PV facilities on Maui there's constant this isn't being made about making sure that we're maintaining frequency and voltage across the system making sure there's power and we're delivering it safely to our customers so meanwhile you know there's big roles in trying to coordinate as available generation so when the wind's up and blowing and the sun is out shining we're making sure that we can accept as much as that energy as we can by regulating our our diesel generators down and that board tells the whole story for frequency of 60 hertz and right there we're at 60.00 hertz so right now we are we are perfectly balanced between generation and customer usage when anything changes on here the lights start flashing we get audible alarms so we know we can address that situation as quickly as possible so where is Ula Palakua where we just visited where is that on the board that's right down it says awahi right there and there's a digital readout is minus 16.8 that means they're feeding into the system 16 megawatts close to 17 megawatts so basically we actually have visibility over all three islands we're responsible for so we have SCADA control and visibility for Maui Molokai Lenai this is much more complex than I would have imagined actually it gets easier after 20 years doesn't it but it looks like to me is a whole bunch of micro grids waiting to happen micro grids that's certainly possibility but again it all comes down to ensuring that we're able to provide reliable cost-effective service to our customers whether or not a micro grid is able to achieve that is probably the biggest questions yeah looking out in that direction there it looks like it's almost its own micro grid or could be islanded on the island currently we do have ability to actually service HANA through transmission or sub transmission lines it's one of those things that if we were to convert it to micro grid in doing so what benefits are we able to provide the customer I think in certain cases and there are some cases that we're looking at not actually on Maui right now that we do have older transmission infrastructure that needs to be replaced and then the question then becomes is it cheaper to replace transmission type equipment or is it cheaper to do a micro grid we're looking towards the electrification of transportation a lot of electric vehicles it would seem to me that given the power demand of a lot of those vehicles let's just say that we're talking about the charging aspect not maybe other values that might bring that you're going to need quite an expansion of that or other technology what do you see is the best way to bring more electric vehicles into onto the island what we want to do is basically avoid the peak usage periods so what we don't want to do is have charging of EVs at a time where customers are using electricity for other uses whether it be for business purposes or when you first get home when our when our peaks usually occur so I think in terms of charging we want to do it when there's excess energy available typically that happens in the midday when there's a lot of solar generation or perhaps in the early morning where we have our units turned down to minimum and there could be instances where we have excess wind energy available so what we want to do is take advantage of those time frames and basically charge those vehicles then perhaps workplace charging then or something where where you had the ability or I could come with my phone and my car and I could say I'm going to leave by five o'clock let the utility charge my car sometime between nine and five exactly right so I think what we want to do is be smart about the times that we're charging the vehicles and have the ability to actually in programs that will incent customers to charge when energy is abundant and especially from renewable resources. We talked with Fred Riddell by Skype later on one of our talk shows for a retrospective on the trip. From an electrical generation standpoint and from the RPS which is relates to sales by the utility you know Maui County is about you know average in that field I believe the big island is ahead on that and producing more renewable energy in other areas you know where we're really trying to look for is is changing the economy in general right it's not not having such a reliance on fossil fuel and that big portion of that actually is in the transportation sector and this is where Maui is actually a little head of the other islands you know with the JumpSmart Maui program that happened with the Japanese government and Hitachi that brought a lot of electric vehicles on to the island which is now an opportunity right for for the county to continue moving those those ideas forward so so you know I think we're all working towards the same goal yeah coordinate with the other counties we come up with other ideas and at the moment we're all going to get together at the end of November to work on our climate adaptation plan and see where we should go what practices we should do and make sure that we're all looking at it in the same way so it's it's perfectly clear I think it's great that you're having that program and it's it's an opportunity not only discuss climate and sustainability vis-a-vis climate but also to compare notes on what what each of the islands is doing which each of the utility facilities is doing on those islands so that you can learn from each other and raise all the boats pretty much hopefully at the same time so how how will that how will that play I mean who will be there and will they have opportunity for that discussion and what discussion do you contemplate all the counties will be there and so many of the stakeholders throughout out to Hawaii will also be there and it'll be facilitated and what we're trying to get to are some goals of defining our climate action plan to come up with what are the things that we're doing with respect to the state's commitment to portions of the climate of the Paris climate agreement and you know how are we all moving in that direction clearly renewables are alive and well on Maui as we march forward to our 100% renewables goal in our trip to Maui we also visited Molokai we'll show you what we learned in Molokai next time so stay tuned for more about neighbor island energy on think tech we love to cover the neighbor islands we've also recently visited kawai and the big island and videos of those trips are also in spectrum oc 16 and think tech kawaii.com and now let's check out our think tech schedule of events going forward think tech broadcasts its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m to 5 p.m on weekdays then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends and some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends if you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows they're all archived on demand on think tech kawaii.com and youtube for our 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and for supporting our open discussion of tech energy diversification and global awareness in hawaii and of course the ongoing search for renewable energy however and wherever we can find it you can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next sunday evening for our next important weekly episode i'm jay fidel and i'm nicole hori aloha everyone