 Hey, welcome to Stan the Energy Man, Stan Osterman here from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies and we're off and running with another show on your lunch hour and my lunch hour and try to learn some more about energy and what's going on in Hawaii with a little bit of different tact on the energy this time. Our guest today is Brandon Haashi from Aptera Energy, they're a company that's got some local roots here, done a lot of work in the last couple of years in the energy market and done some projects and is currently working on some projects with the Department of Education and we're going to talk about you know what his company does and the kind of things that Hawaii can look forward to in the world of decarbonizing and what we can do to get away from fossil fuels. So Brandon thanks for joining us. Thank you very much for being on the air with us today and talk a little bit about what you do so how'd you get started in in the kind of work that you're doing and then tell us a little bit about Aptera. Sure sure I'll make a very long story as short as possible. Prior to 2005 everything had done pretty much was it within the realm of Japanese related things and in 2005 I had my first son and then shortly thereafter Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth came out and being a new father and trying to think ahead what I want for my son in the kind of world that he's going to be growing up in that really shook me to my core and what I didn't know a whole lot about the science that was displayed and talked about in the movie it certainly encouraged me to do my own research and essentially about a year after really going down that path of looking into the data the statistics the science itself behind climate change I decided to make a major shift in myself and went to graduate school in the UK and with the intention of actually working for Toyota Europe and hopefully working on the Prius line but again through through life right interesting things happen the exact or C or D whatever you want to call it right but things kind of coalesced together and basically ended up moving down under to New Zealand and together with a gentleman from South Africa we got a bunch of equity partners together and from there basically tried to create New Zealand's first energy service company which is what I did my master's dissertation on and then from there came back here and started working in the local environment here within the energy sector and the rest is history. Then you got started working with Uptara? Yeah so actually worked originally with energy industries cut my teeth really on the mechanical and lighting efficiency side of work within the private sector commercial industrial sectors and then came to Uptara about two years ago. So your background is engineering? No no so actually mine was on the business side okay so really when we're looking at things from energy service company which I did the dissertation on of course I was really looking at it from a business perspective okay how does energy make sense to those who have the ability to make the financial decision to move forward on the technical solution? That's great because you know one of the things that and I think about two shows ago I talked about critical thinking and really a lot of people just go into these energy projects or energy challenges and and they just look at the first the first impacts and they don't really look at the economic the bigger the macro economic scale impacts like where are you getting your supply from is it the only place you get it what if it's not available and then you know does it because most big companies they're looking for at least three supply chains in their operations or they're not going to go there because it's too much risk they won't take the risk so you know what are some of the business aspects of you know as you go into energy projects you know how deep does a company like Uptara think about the business side of not just the technology side? Sure sure absolutely so I mean to your point you know when you're looking at things in many cases what folks are looking at if they're not really in tune and digging down into the energy side of things right their first introduction is many times they're just looking at first cost right what is the potential cost savings? Return investment right very simple return investment or simple payback period which is just an inversion of the other right and they're looking at that first cost only calculation and not factoring other aspects such as the ongoing cost of energy and where that's potentially trending as well as the operations and maintenance costs or cost savings. The technology you're buying. Exactly and then to your point about looking at supply chains you have to look at many cases manufacturers do matter because you have to factor in warranties available to quit men right who on the island again there are certain constraints on our islands with respect to warranty honoring that warranty who can actually do the work and so forth so that's that's at that general level we're talking to almost any kind of customer basically elevating their understanding and awareness of what you should be looking at and there's a lot of things regarding energy that don't have to necessarily do with financing or the financial impact of it but really what is the business impact right and that's really where I think the biggest component or components need to be examined so for example you mentioned right we're working with the Department of Education here at the end of the day the Department of Education is not here to have more efficient buildings they're here to educate our future leaders and so you're trying to create a learning environment that is optimal so that those students can absorb as much as possible and have the critical thinking so that when they're dealing with the challenges that are and the generation before it's created through climate change they can solve for that and that's really what we're talking about when we drive towards energy projects you know you're looking at everything on the renewable side the efficiency side as we move forward certainly on the microgrid natural energy campuses with energy storage systems but really what you're looking at is a solution that fits the needs for the client right so that's how we generally approach most of our clients that's good to hear because that's really critical I mean I see too many folks that just look at you know when am I gonna turn my first profit or you know what's my return on investment and and a lot of times a cursory look at is like I've done pencil out and they move on and really like you say the more critical thing is what's the requirement what's the real need you know I deal with the military a lot and they'll pay a premium price because it's a no-fail mission they've got to do the mission and so if the technology costs a little bit more then it costs a little bit more but it's got to be able to work all the time right right the reliability aspect right is very very key so it's that customer support what they're really they're really after that's important to in the business? Absolutely you know people oftentimes are talking about efficiency and efficiency is good all aspects from energy efficiency to business efficiency but I think really we should be migrating the discussion to be about efficiency in all aspects of it to effectiveness and I think that's what you're talking about on the military side because even for the schools right we're talking about the impact to the classrooms that's effectiveness when we can help the students learn more and better that's the effectiveness that we're driving for you can save tons of money and totally mission mission yes you can save lots of money and not and fail right so that's great to hear what are some of the kinds of things that that up terrace worked on in the past here in Hawaii mentioned some things about Kamehameha schools right right so here in the islands itself up there Hawaii has done past work with Kamehameha schools with Oceanic Time Warner some work also with Maui excuse me Kaua'i Community College as well as Kahimuhala and what kind of projects were those? A lot of those projects were based on photovoltaic systems some rooftop some canopy systems and then some energy efficiency works as well yeah and then a little bit of consulting in the process as well okay yeah and you say that a lot of your focus now is on Department of Education correct and the Department of Education program itself is called the Kaua'i program and what the Kau'i program is really about originally was called the energy efficiency and sustainability master plan but you know having worked with the military ESMP is not such a sexy word so thanks to the Hawaiian immersion program they came up with Kau'i and the reason why that that really resonates and is relevant for the program is the hey when referred to as a noun is that snare or that net that Maui used to capture the sound right and when used as a verb it refers to being able to absorb as in knowledge or skill and that's exactly what this program is so it's a four pillar program how I oftentimes describe it you have energy efficiency renewable energy energy storage systems and natural energy campuses and then importantly standards-aligned curriculum so it is that curriculum that ties all the dots together on the return on investment side of energy work so that it actually becomes relevant for the students themselves and it is from those energy cost savings that are delivered from the first three of the four pillars that financially sustainably support the education this is societal benefit and return on investment and these are financial return on investment as well together it allows for a very comprehensive program I'm certain that you have a lot of the engineers at DOE and and probably administrators involved in your decision-making do you ever involve any of the students as part of their their personal development to be involved in your program right so a lot of so we actually ran a local contest earlier this is back in 2015 ran a local contest so really to talk about what stem is and I know stem can be interpreted a number of different ways beyond just what the four acronyms of science technology and math stand for we interpreted basically as using an interdisciplinary approach to solving real-world problems and there's a lot of push in the mainland as well too to have stem really becomes steam and that a that's put in there is really about the arts because when we talk about comprehensiveness we talk about creativity entrepreneurship there's absolutely an art to it not just a science degree and so that's where the local contest came in as well too is to really bring in that other dynamic of creativity to the stem curriculum so that's one example of how we involve the students but importantly the model we have for the educational deliverables is really about train the trainer so we've engaged more than 400 teachers across the all the islands not just the four major islands and we train them in this curriculum and we also have a web based platform that they can pull from all teachers 11,000 plus teachers across the 256 campuses can pull from this website and be able to educate and they energize the students absolutely thinking you know I'm really I'm really happy that you talked about the art side of it because a lot of times when we talk stem we're really talking about just the pure science side and the technology side and and I have a personal bent against just that approach because I'm a fine arts major number one really and what I find in my work every day is that I understand the technology pieces because of my military background but I'll oftentimes talk to an engineer and they've got the engineering down but they have no creativity I mean they can design you a very efficient effective you know piece of equipment but they can't apply it to where it really makes sense and it's marrying that art and the science and the technology all together where you actually start to make some really big changes I'm really I'm really excited to hear that that's part of your whole no that is a big part of it and you you hit it right on the nose so when we talk about the curriculum that the teachers get it's not just curriculum by way of paper the vast majority of the lessons that the students are involved in is hands-on project-based learning opportunities so as an example some of the projects that they do you'll actually have many PV modules that the students get they'll go outside and they'll actually have a container tube some water and that module will power a small little pump so all depending upon the azimuth and you know the direction that the module itself is facing will obviously create a current or less exactly right that'll either increase or decrease the pumps capacity so that's one way which they're learning about just a placement for example on that but really as you expand upon and all of our curriculum is is segmented out so you have curriculum that is absolutely appropriate for K to K to 3 4 to 6 and then you have 7 8 and the 9 through 12 so you have this kind of segmenting up so that's appropriate right it's not one-size-fits-all by way of education and when you get to the upper levels when we have the academies that are being done at some of the schools across the 256 campuses where they're focusing on certain things you take Waipahu High School as an example that is engineering focused so some of the things that they can do is they can take that right and then to your point about creativity marrying and an interdisciplinary approach to engineering when you're looking at that sort of thing what you're able to do is also along with the engineering is marry what is the business case right and you understand the numbers from a financing not just a technical perspective but importantly again you can have the best design line up the best financing but if you can't actually persuade someone to say yep that's the way we're gonna go so then there's the business aspect right there's the social there's a presentation skills the confidence that goes along with that right making your case exactly just simple things like learning how to put together an effective PowerPoint and that's that sort of students in their career their whole life no matter where they go communication is cool yeah great well what are when it comes to efficiency in the in the DOE projects what are some of the efficiency initiatives that you've put in place or to help the DOE get more energy efficient in their building so the specific thing sure some of the things that we've done just most recently at some of the campuses so certainly when we talk about lighting right lighting meeting dials LED systems for sure and controls and mobility functionality as well but going beyond that as well too we're looking at what are the 24-hour loads clearly rich refrigeration would come up to the top sure right and so you're looking at that you're looking at the kinds of those that are non controllable that we can add controls or variability to you so you talk about variable frequency drives and just putting in more efficient pieces of equipment such as electronically commutated motors EC motors in your evaps right in your walk-in refers and freezers your kitchen hood exhaust fans your ventilation fans so a number of different types of efficiencies where we're just a by itself maybe is not that impactful but when you aggregate together and then go beyond across the 256 campuses can have huge impact how about some low-tech things like maybe agriculture planting more trees around the buildings to cool them down or or maybe roof coatings on the roof to cool them down absolutely so for example as a part of the renewable side of the program when we're putting you know photovoltaic systems up on the roof we're making sure that what we're doing is providing a better roof obviously has to last a bit of 20 years in some cases the system the roofing system itself can be recoded so that that can last another 20 years in some case we have to do a full reroof and in many cases on those buildings were right below the AC classroom we will actually put in additional installation so there are other ways in which we're doing efficiency work by with building envelope as well as hard-wired efficiency technologies okay great well we've hit a break time right now and we're gonna we're gonna take a quick break and talk about some of the other shows here on Think Tech and we'll be back with Brandon in a few seconds Aloha my name is John Wahee and I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today served actually in public office but if you don't already know that here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for talk story with John Wahee every other Monday thank you and I look forward to your seeing us in the future hello I'm Marianne Sasaki welcome to think tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called life in the law where we discuss legal issues politics governmental topics and a whole host of issues I hope you'll join me almost caught me catching a swig of Gatorade there's welcome back to my lunch hour stand energy man here with Brandon actually from up Tara and we're actually talking about some of the things that up Tara is doing in the schools right now we're gonna pick up right there where we left off and we're talking about some of the efficiencies of things that you can do in the building we talked about roof coatings and just you know making sure you design the right things into the systems that you put into the building and and as a rule and they've heard me say this before I always go for the efficiencies in the building first before you go and add on the PV or anything else you try and get the building as efficient as you can insulate it right window films whatever you can do to make the building efficient then start looking at your renewable energy so absolutely it's that's going through the pyramid there you know energy pyramid yep so what are some of the other things that we're doing at DOE to help not only the curriculum side which I thought I totally missed the first time we met and talked in your office but you know that's huge it is that's great but what are some of the other more technical things that you're doing with the department energy yeah help them out sure happy to talk a little bit about that so certainly in the renewable side for our islands and our schools here full of all takes makes a lot of sense but as as you know last October the NEM program was discontinued and the financiers who have been essentially almost helping our economy creating almost the fourth leg of economy through energy are used to a particular model and that model obviously was what the NEM had so it's a different set of economics going forward and given some of the constraints that are currently under the existing program which is going to expire next October it's it's PV is not the area where we're focused on right now but having said that we have 81 NEM systems net energy meeting systems up to a hundred KW AC that we're in the process of constructing some of it's already completed but we're in the process of doing that and those are across 74 schools on the island of Oahu and so together when you aggregate up those 81 NEMs we're looking at just about 9.3 megawatts DC or excuse me yeah DC and then I think that equates to just about 7 megawatts AC so that sounds to me like then you're probably interfacing a lot with Hawaiian Electric in terms of you know managing load and things like that and that would tie into micro gridding and things like that so are you guys looking at micro grids or islanding absolutely absolutely looking at micro grids out we're we're we tend to call them net zero energy campuses and the the model here is basically what we're looking at is to be grid connected micro grids right there's I think there's value there absolutely for the utility as much as there is for the jury itself you know we talk about ancillary benefit that can be benefiting the utility that's just one level you know of which the energy storage system can provide to the utility and the surrounding community that's with on that same circuit as the school and you do you find that he goes open to those notions you know we engage with Hiko and I think to be fair to the utility during the majority of our engagement around we were trying to create a demonstration project at Kamaki Middle School which made a lot of sense for both the DOE as well as Hiko itself but during that time it was right during the next their acquisition we're kind of distracted yeah I would say I would say distraction is is probably a good explanation but you know we continue to want to work with them and you know certain folks from the utility are open to moving forward in that in fact we have already received three standard interconnection agreements on Maui so working with the Miko folks we're at three schools there one high school and two elementary schools where we're essentially creating a micro grid for those campuses and the idea there is to be able to take them to where they stand right now and into the future the near future be able to make them essentially produce all of their on-site generation needs and to strategically be able to support through an energy storage system and how that benefit could happen going forward because the utilities are already putting forth their first pilot program on the residential level with time of use rates so again be able to see would it make sense in Hawaii's environment going forward for energy arbitrage utilizing the battery strategically I know in some of our early discussions we talked a little bit about because you're working with department education the fact that civil defense county civil defense they have shelters they're co-located at some of the schools do you can you guys envision any ways where those may couple up at some point where that islanding capability or the micro grid capability even though you're grid connected you could have essentially island yourself during a disaster and keep that shelter up and running using renewables yes viable yes so that's what we're looking to do exactly now there are certain schools so there are roughly two hundred and fifteen of the two hundred and fifty six schools are hurricane evacuation centers and then less than two hundred arts numbing evacuation centers but we're looking at those schools and there are certain schools for example in certain geographical locations I'm from the winter side of Oahu so for example castle is one that is an evacuation center that meets a lot of needs on that particular part of the winter side because a lot of the other elementary schools when you talk about the when you go you know north of Kaneohe you start going it becomes ocean road mountain so those are all no longer evacuation centers so they either got to go all the way up North Shore or they come down to Kaneohe so castles a key one as an example so that's one that you know we would be looking at to see how does this make sense and certainly when you're looking at an environment such as Castle High School it makes a lot of sense because there are different types of shelters right there are shelters that are just simply hardened shells where people go to in times of disaster there are other ones that are designated for medical purposes right they're more of a triage type of center there are others that are designated for pets as well so looking and there's more than just those three segmentations but as a general rule looking at those three there are ways that we can look for that and that's where I think when working with the utilities for example we can find ways that makes sense for them and the DOE and it makes sense for the community itself that's where there's absolutely ways that we can work together and that's where I would I would like to you know essentially state that going forward that's the areas that we're gonna be focusing on because it essentially takes a number of different boxes it's not just about energy efficiency or renewable energy it really is about resiliency at the end of the day and and potentially saving human lives when we talk about those triage centers so they have to get my old buddies at the National Garden Civil Defense to talk to you a little bit we'll do that I'll drag him in kicking in the screen this sounds I think it's a good idea too yeah I mean you know resiliency is a big part of getting through a disaster and the more you can simplify Hawaiian electrics challenges in a community and the more you can support the community with a shelter that's up and running viable making its own energy and sustaining itself yeah just seems to make a lot of sense it does it does and you know when you go to the next level going deeper is it begs the question okay so if you have enough on-site renewable generation which for Hawaii the vast majority is going to be renewables such as photovoltaics and then you get a category 3 storm coming in that has sustained winds of over 140 miles an hour or so that has a likelihood of ripping those panels right off so then you have to start examining how do we have a backup to that right so that's where we're looking as well too the energy storage system provided by the fed by the PV systems will only last for so many days or hours right so what's gonna back that up and so that's what we're looking at as well too when we talk about them being strategic resiliency centers beyond just the discharge charge cycle that you would have for a normal type of microgrid system that is really not looking at disastrous time frames in case we hadn't discussed it I'm a hydrogen fanatic so have you have you included hydrogen in your energy storage thought process you know right now so we've done the work that we're doing right now for the microgrids themselves is really looking at the bigger picture but when we're looking at that backup or the backup to the backup that's where I think hydrogen comes in long term yeah more long term and again the cost curve to is really important right now because we have to be able to finance these so to a certain extent it's a mixture of making sure technologies that are essentially here today for example we know things such as PV are here and very very cost-effective marrying that with things that are more towards the beginning part or some who are already starting to get onto the Moore's law curve and that's where through that strategic combination that's where we can get things financed and then test different things out because they're different geographical locations that provide different challenges different technologies that provide different cost benefits so that's really where I think the DOE has an opportunity because there's 256 campuses you can really start to look at different types of models feeding different kinds of needs yeah know how hosted the energy storage conference a lot two months ago in the Kona and that was one of the most critical parts of that whole discussion was picking the right energy storage the right battery system or capacitors or or hydrogen or some other compressed air pump tide or whatever yeah to match the need and that fits financially for the scale that you're working on and there's some really good models out there that the national labs have come up with to that and help you weed through that decision process yeah and a lot of it unfortunately just gets down to dollars but I tend to the day it often does yeah gotta work out there yeah well what are some of the things you know I mean your company's grounded here in Hawaii and does a lot here but what are some of the larger scale things that you do worldwide because I know it's not just a Hawaii company yeah what are some of the things that you keep in touch with what's going on in Europe and technologies and techniques in Europe that maybe maybe you could work here in Hawaii mm-hmm so I should probably explain so OPTERRA itself which had roughly just a little under 400 employees nationally so from Honolulu to Boston we had offices across the country earlier this year we were acquired by NG a power space global energy company and that now makes us 400 employees or so of a larger 153,000 global employee company and so there's a lot of resources that you can imagine to go along with that and obviously coming from the EU itself and just as a general rule of thumb the European Union is tending to be a little bit more advanced compared to the US and Hawaii when we talk about energy and energy yeah so there's a lot of projects that are going on there that are of significant learning opportunities for us and they've also set up our own company itself has set up programs that they'll focus on so micro goods for example and they've actually segmented out different types of micro residential versus commercial versus districts and so forth and they have a number of working groups which we're learning from as well too and it's not just in the EU they're working throughout South America as well and not just in the US North America also includes Canada they're doing a lot of work over there and they have different areas across the world that they're working in and Asia as well Africa for sure so there again I'm still learning it's not even been a year since we were acquired by NG so I'm still learning about the vast number of resources that we can tap into and the goal absolutely is to learn from those who've already done it both successfully and not successfully so that we can take those lessons understand things technically and financially find out what works and is culturally acceptable and apply that model here not very different from what we do really well in Hawaii across the board right our first Fridays that happened it was straight out of San Francisco we just Hawaiianized it so using those kind of things we can absolutely do and make sure that we don't do the same things and avoid the pitfalls of the past I like when we Hawaiianize things it always works out better are you from the ITM out of UK power company no my guest last week was Steven Joseph or Steven Jones from ITM and they're a big electrolyzer company that's doing power to gas and and they're starting to build hydrogen stations in the UK that run off electrolysis and are feeding the transportation sector and they're looking at their building they put in bins for five stations in California hydrogen stations but again like you say they're they're European based and and really anxious to see if they can play a role in the United States and in our market over here right and being that we're the world's largest per capita guzzler of energy I think you can make the case here obviously this is where there's a lot of market opportunity for the companies and that's you know very much what NG is looking at as well to write how how can we use the US as a model that makes sense like even these guys right who use the world's most energy per capita if it makes sense to them clearly should make sense to everybody else well Brenda believe or not we blasted clean through 30 minutes and we're at the end of our time here but I want to thank you for coming out and talking to us oh thank you and obviously we've got some more to talk about down the road for sure well we'll get you back on the stand energy man which by the way stands stem is our acronym to stand energy man like it but we're artsy stem just the science got it we'll get it we'll put a stand stand the alternate energy matters yeah something but thanks for being here and thanks for your insight on what up terror is doing in here in Hawaii and you know and how big you are actually around the world because oftentimes we get our best ideas from outside but we do Hawaii nice them and we make them better and then we give them back to the world in a better state and they actually make make a big a big improvement just because they came here and they got worked on here yeah thanks for your time thanks for coming out today and good luck with up terror thank you very much all the things you're doing for the DOE and until next week we'll sign off for now and come back and visit me on my lunch hour next time yeah who do I have next time oh I have a friend from the big island coming in we'll be a big surprise team we'll talk about what's going on in the big island so until next Friday aloha