 Inside Hawaii Real Estate, I'm Will Tanaka, and I wanted to introduce you to my wife and co-host, Leonie Lam. Thank you, Will. Well, it is a full-time Hawaii Real Estate professional and a licensed attorney in the state of Hawaii. And Leonie and I actually work together as a husband and wife real estate team. Leonie is actually a Hawaii State Real Estate broker and a 20-year veteran in the Hawaii's real estate industry. You know, we actually love real estate because we get to help clients right at the front lines with buying and selling their homes. And that's who we are. But our real mission, our true mission on this show is to share inside our real estate information with you by having amazing guests to provide you with resources, perspectives, everything about Hawaii Real Estate. Well, today we actually have a very special guest, Kayu Lani Shinsato, affectionately known as Lani Shinsato. She's the director of customer energy resources program at Hawaiian Electric. She's responsible for overseeing Hawaiian Electric's rooftop solar and battery programs for residential and commercial customers. So that's a lot of homes, that's a lot of people. And she's also in charge of strategy and policy for customer energy resources. So Lani is passionate about solar, clean energy, renewable energy. So when you're talking about solar and PV and rooftops, batteries, she's the go-to person for HIKO. She actually has her law degree from the William S. Richardson School of Law. And she actually works with stakeholders, very important people to design new solar programs to improve the interconnection process throughout the island. So with Lani and her team, Hawaii continues to lead the nation in customer adoption of rooftop solar. That is like fantastic. Welcome Lani. Welcome Lani. And we are just so excited to have you and representing Hawaiian Electric Company here on our show, Inside Hawaii Real Estate. And just to kind of kick things off, we're gonna start with a really challenging question. Is that okay? Of course, I love challenges. So when it comes to energy in Hawaii, kind of straight up, does Hawaiian Electric Company want Hawaii residents to have solar? Or does HIKO not want Hawaii residents to have solar? What is Hawaiian Electric's position on this? Well, thank you for the question and thank you, Will and Leone, for the opportunity to be here. I really value and appreciate any time we get a chance to talk to an audience with customers. So I'm so happy to be here. And the answer to your question is absolutely yes, we want our customers to have solar. Solar is a big part of our plans to move to renewable energy and decarbonize. And so we're gonna need our customers to help us get there. It's gonna be a journey for everybody. So it's important if customers have solar already, thank you. If you don't have solar yet, please come check out our website there. There's still opportunities for customers to enroll. So we encourage everybody to consider it. Okay, that's great to know, Lani. And you know, in terms of, you talked about decarbonization. Hey, can you just, you know, what that is? What? I know. And for me too, you know what I mean. It's a fancy word, yes. So decarbonization is trying to limit, bring down the amount of carbon that we use as a state. This is actually a global problem or challenge for everybody. But we as a state in Hawaii have set some of the most ambitious renewable and decarbonization goals. So we're really a leader here. And it's exciting to be working in this space. So whatever we can do to bring down our carbon emissions is what decarbonization means. Ah, got it, got it. Okay. So you know, in terms of renewable energy and, you know, we hear the term like fossil fuels. And you're, I know you're all about clean energy and renewable energy. And can you take it, dig into that a little bit deeper? Yeah, fossil fuels, they're kind of the bad stuff that we're trying to mitigate and reduce as much as possible. Fossil fuels come from coal and they will contribute to, you know more and more carbon in our environment and in our atmosphere. So rather than fossil fuels that we use to power up our bigger generating units we want to move to clean renewable energy. And what that means is we have lots of different sources of renewable energy. Solar, of course, that, you know what I promote a lot is one and wind is another one. And we have like in Hawaii, we're so rich in resources. We're really, really blessed to live here because we have so many renewable resources. And I should do a call out also to geothermal. So if you live on Hawaii Island we have a geothermal plant there as well. And that's a form of renewable energy. So cool. So one of the benefits for HIKO if homeowners get solar like for their homes or for their businesses I mean does HIKO still make money if people get their own solar systems? Thanks for that question. So as I mentioned earlier we need customers rooftops to help us reach our renewable goals. So for example on Oahu we have the densest population but smaller land area as compared to another island like Hawaii Island, right? So we're very land constrained and because of that we're gonna need to have our customers roofs to put solar on to help us get to the renewable goals. We can't get there just by building big solar farms or wind farms just because we don't have enough space. So that's definitely how we benefit at the utility. And then another way we benefit is and this is definitely like a paradigm shift from how it was in the past we're trying to retire our generators that use fossil fuels and basically our customers now with more and more batteries that our customers are adopting they can sort of act like those big fossil fuel generating units. So one thing that happens for us in the utility is prior to COVID our typical day would look like customers would go off to work or school they come home around five they start cooking, going in the shower, washing clothes doing all the things we have to do at home when we come home at night. So from the utility side we would see usage go up very high in the night. This is common. And for us supply always has to equal demand real time. So if our customers are demanding electricity and power we have to supply them that exact amount at that time. No more, no less. So that's a big challenge for us. So now if our customers have a battery they can their solar can store that battery and when they come home at night they can draw from the battery rather than from us. And that really helps us because for us to generate electricity at night is the most expensive. So if we can we call it lowering the peak if we can lower the peak that helps all customers because we're lowering the cost of electricity for all of our customers. So that's how we benefit as well getting back to your original question that's how we benefit if customers can sign up for solar and perhaps even a battery. Great, Lani. So you know about the real time supply equaling demand. I want to dig into that a little bit. So let's say hypothetically everyone comes home at 530. Everyone starts turning on the lights turning on their electric stove turning on the AC all at 530. So is there someone like a team manually just turning it on at the same time so that the supply equals demand? Is there is a computer generated? How does that work? This is fascinating. Thankfully that's not my job because it's a really stressful job. But yeah, I have to thank the hardworking men and women in our system operations area whose job is to safely run our electric grid. So that's what they're doing. And I think some of it is real time because every day is different. Last weekend we had tons of clouds, heavy rains and so we didn't have as much solar as we would usually see. They have to always monitor that, like what is going on in the weather on a daily basis. But yeah, basically there's a lot of planning involved. So it's not like every day is different and they're just like flying by the seat of their pants. There's a lot of planning involved. And so they can sort of predict what a day is gonna look like. But yeah, when it comes time to that 5.30 or 5 o'clock to 9 o'clock period, if the usage is really going up they are having to turn on extra generators in order to meet that demand. And usually those generate, we call them the peakers. Usually those generators that we have to turn on at night are expensive. So to the extent we can ask customers to shift their usage during the day because of course the sun is shining during the day and that's when we have so much solar generation we wanna soak that up. So we're trying to find ways to ask our customers to shift their usage as much as they can to daytime so we can lower our peak. That sounds like a pretty intense job though still even though that they have like the ability to kind of know what their day is gonna look like just having that responsibility. Totally. Pretty, pretty intense right? And then we kind of talked a little bit, I mean, you mentioned about rooftop solar which is kind of what we're discussing and I was saying like the Ticlo somic money and all of that and you kind of were explaining the benefits. But I think, so we're probably familiar with rooftop solar which is like having panels on your roof and everything but can you kind of explain what is NEM or net energy metering? Just kind of a basic definition if you could. Sure, the net energy metering it's probably well known by a lot of people because we have a lot of customers on net energy metering. So NEM actually started I think in 2001, long time ago and it was our first solar program. It was made to incense customers to invest in solar. So we got a lot of customers on through net energy metering. I think we have a lot of 60,000 customers enrolled in NEM. It was a very good program. So what happens is if you have solar on your roof you use what you can but if you can't use all of it it's gonna export that generation back to the utility. And whatever is exported back to us we will pay that customer retail rates which is high. So basically what the customer buys from us that retail rate we will pay them for their exported generation to us. So it's a really good program. It was closed in 2015 though so we've moved on and now we have new programs that customers can enroll in. So how would someone know if they have a net meter system or not or some other program? Let's say a buyer is looking to buy a house and they're like, is this net metered or is this under some other solar program? It would show on their bill. So it would say net energy metering signed agreement or something along those lines. So if someone is curious as to whether or not they're net energy metered they can just look on their point electric bill and it will tell them. And then along those lines too if they have questions about how to read their bill we have a really good resource on our website that takes customers step by step what is being shown in their bill so that they can better understand what they're receiving every month from us. So once a home is net metered does that mean that even if it transfers to a new owner it just stays with the home? That's correct. So if you are potentially thinking about selling your house and you have a NEM system I would think that that NEM system is extra, extra special and you should tell your your realtor that you are a NEM customer because it's a really good program to be enrolled in. And like I mentioned earlier it's close to new customers. Very cool. You said the program ended in 2015. So what would a homeowner do if they didn't get solar before then? Should they still get roofed up solar? And you know how does he incentivize people to help with the cost? Yes they should. I mean solar isn't gonna be right for everyone. So we tell people to consider it. You know if you're if you're living by yourself somewhere and your usage is already low and you're doing a lot of energy efficiency it might not make sense for you to make a big investment and put panels on your roof. But that could look different if you're a big family you have a lot of usage. Let's say you have an electric vehicle I mean there are lots of good reasons to invest in solar and we have a lot of options for customers to enroll in solar lots of different programs. So we have like customer grid supply plus we have a self-supply type of program and that's more focused on if you're just gonna use the solar yourself and not ever send anything back to us. We have a program just like that. And you know I looked on my electric bill and I saw that I am a NEM customer or we are NEM customers. All right. Awesome. I'm excited and feel like one of the special 60,000 people and we're like one of them. We're sure. So what for our house for example like if we wanted to add on more panels because you know it's time or whatever are we restricted from doing that as a existing NEM customer or is it something that we would be able to do? You can you can add on even if you're a NEM customer which is closed we have a program called NEM plus. And so you're able to add on to your system. So the addition, the caveat is the additional part of your system that you add on cannot export back to us and that's for technical reasons. We didn't want like tons of export coming back to us uncontrolled because like I mentioned supply always has to equal demand. So we're really trying to manage that as best as we can because we have so much customer-cited solar now we're trying to manage that as best we can from a technical standpoint from the system operator side that we don't want to stress them out anymore. So we're trying to manage that uncontrolled export coming back to the utility. So in short, yes, you can add on to your system and still stay a NEM customer but that extra part that you add on can't export back to us. If you talk to your contractor your contractor will know all those rules and they'll set up your system to be in compliance with our requirements. Awesome, so looking to NEM plus if you're an existing NEM customer and we are fortunate to be one of those. Correct, you are. Awesome. But if you're not a NEM customer there's all these other programs. Oh, definitely. Yeah, that you were talking about. Yes, yes, including for myself I wasn't able to be NEM but I was able to get into another one of our programs, customer grid supply plus. So that's available and like I mentioned, customer self supply we have another one called smart export and that's where customers really aren't incentivized to export during the day because that's when we have tons of solar, right? So they're incentivized to use that solar up during the day and then at night they get compensated if they send anything back to us. Yeah, so lots of different programs they are set to end, I should note. These programs are considered interim so they were always considered kind of temporary until we moved on to more long-term programs. And so by the end of this year all of the interim programs are set to expire and we're going on to, yeah. Yeah, so if you want to get on to the ones we have now now's the time to do it. Wow, that creates some level of urgency when you know things are gonna be kind of cycling out, right? So now is the time. Correct, correct. That's right. And then you know, we talked about batteries so we hear a lot about whether Tesla batteries or batteries provided by other solar companies. How does, is there programs for that for HECO and can you tell us a little bit more about how batteries work? So you have, so we have solar but how does batteries support the consumer and also work hand in hand with your team? So that's a super important and loaded question. Well, batteries are really important to us right now and we're definitely leading the nation here too with the adoption of customer batteries. So batteries really help the grid, like I mentioned the solar is only gonna come out during the day. And so if you want to have something that's powering your home at night that came from the solar, you kind of need a battery. So once the customer gets that battery first they're gonna use it up during the day. The generation from the house or from the roof is gonna feed the house but whatever they don't need it's gonna go into that battery. And so that way at night that battery can then be the house but we actually have a program where we're incentivizing customers to adopt a new battery. It's called Battery Bonus that is also gonna expire this year. So if anybody's been on the fence about getting a battery now's the time to get off the fence and invest in a battery. So we're paying customers on Oahu and Maui a one-time incentive to invest in the battery. And then we also give them monthly incentives as well. And that really is like I mentioned earlier we wanna bring down that peak in the nighttime. So between five and nine when it's the most expensive for us to serve all of our customers we wanna incentivize customers to bring down their usage or send energy back to us so that we can have that serve all customers. So that's kind of the objective behind the program. And it's also a means for us to just get more and more renewable energy out there. We're trying to retire the fossil fuel power plants that I talked about earlier those are associated with carbon. We're trying to decarbonize, right? So we're bringing down the fossil fuel we're adding more renewable. And so that's pretty much the high level objective of the program. But the really neat thing about it is we're asking our customers to do this for us. So before everything were these big fossil fuel plants which we still need but everything was kind of like big centralized and then we would push power out to customers. And now it looks totally different because we're asking our customers to kind of act like that power plant. And so what they can provide back to us whether it's the energy they give us or we call it grid services which is like a fancy term for all these other services we need to provide in order to provide safe power to our customers. They can now provide that to us and we will compensate customers for that. So it's kind of this whole new like future that we're walking into. It's a really exciting time for customers to adopt solar and storage. Wow. It totally sounds like it. Yeah. That's a lot. Yeah. We've covered so much ground already but then you know so you are like in leadership with Hawaiian Electric Company you're the director of community resources. You know when you're looking at 2023 I know we're in February now so we're still in Q1 but what's on your plate this year? What are your main objectives or what do you need to accomplish this year? Oh that it's gonna be a huge year. Huge year for us. One of the things that we're really excited about is our program called Shared Solar. And so we've done really, really well with customer adoption of solar but it's mainly been customers who live in single family homes but we wanna expand access to renewables to more of our customers. Including we have a lot of customers living in condominiums. We have a lot of customers who rent. We have a lot of customers who are on fixed income or low to moderate income. We care about all of our customers and so we wanna expand access to them. And so Shared Solar is one way for us to do that. And so this is kind of different because you don't put solar on your roof. You can't really do that if you live in a condo or if you rent you can't put it on your roof. So what happens instead is you buy a portion of a bigger solar project that's maybe in your neighborhood and then you get bill credits on your bill just like you would if you were Will and Leonie and you have a NEM system. You get the monthly credits on your bill but you don't have to have solar on your roof. So we're really excited about this program. So that's what's coming up I think in 2023. And then we're also gonna be launching our new programs that I mentioned a little bit earlier. So we're getting all of that implemented ready for launch by August of 2023. Wow, that is a lot on your fleet for 2023. Good stuff, good work. Very good. Real quick, you know just going back to the town home or condo owners. So you're seeing those programs will be coming out sometime later this year. Yes, well in fact, I mean, they're already going it's just we're getting more systems actually installed. So it's taken us some time to get systems installed that customers can buy a portion of. So that's what's gonna be happening more in 2023. And for the next couple of years we're gonna have more shared solar systems in the ground where customers can go and we actually will have a portal where customers can go to the portal, they can look at the different systems, they can shop around, they can get quotes from different developers and say, okay, how much is this gonna cost me if I were to buy a portion of this solar farm. So we're hoping to make it really easy for customers to shop around and then also to enroll in shared solar. And that's starting up this year. That is next level, wow. Yeah, it is, it really is. You know, we talked about people's renewable goals and facts, you know, for Hawaii. And do you have a sense of like, where does Hawaii, like how is Hawaii doing in terms of all the other states, you know, across the nation in terms of renewable energy? We are leading the nation for renewable energy and especially for customer renewable energy. And I think we should be really proud of that as a state. And I think for everybody who lives here, I think we all love Hawaii. My ask is to, if you haven't done it yet, you know, get engaged with energy, think about, you know, what goes on behind just the lights turning on every day and it's, you know, really easy to kind of get used to that and not think about it. But we're moving into this really exciting space and we should be really proud of where we've come, but also, you know, let's all get in the canoe together and make sure that we're on this journey and we can reach the big goals that we set for ourselves. So true, so true. And a lot of it has to do with just kind of being mindful of our consumption, right? Is that? Absolutely, absolutely. How much you use? Yeah, we can all probably conserve in some ways or do energy efficiency, get better appliances. There's something that everyone can do. Well, Lani, that was fantastic. I mean, that was like a wealth of information, so much energy and experience and, you know, a lot of takeaways and programs to share with our viewers. So thank you so much for all your time and energy. No pun intended. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.