 We're welcome to stand the energy man here in Think Tech, Hawaii, going live from Honolulu, Hawaii, and kind of a weird weather day, a little bit calm, a little bit of what we call Kona winds, but otherwise, probably better than the snow they've been having in Colorado last week, and then the Midwest and all the flooding and stuff, the rest of the place isn't going on the mainland, so lucky we live Hawaii and wish you were here. Our guest today is coming in from New Jersey, so I think the weather is still okay in New Jersey. It hasn't gotten too bad yet, but before we get together with our guest, I'd like to say get well soon to Jay Fidel, the head of Think Tech here who is recouping, and I'm sure watching my show live because he's always loves to watch down there. And we hope he's doing pretty good, and thanks to some friends on the big island last week who took good care of me while I was over there working hard, and appreciate their efforts. But today, coming to you live from New Jersey is Mike Strisky, a long time Allen guest, and he's more fanatical about hydrogen than I am, so we're going to be inundating you with hydrogen news today. So Mike, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining us this morning. Thanks, Stan. Good to see you as always. Hey, so tell us, tell the audience a little bit about you because they don't always watch me every time, and that you've been on a few times, but give us a little intro to how you got into hydrogen, and then let's talk a little bit about what's going on in your world. Well, I've been in the hydrogen for over 30 years. I've built more hydrogen vehicles than anyone in the world, boats, cars, airplanes, and I live in a hydrogen house. It's called the hydrogen house project. We've been off grid now going on 14 years. Everything in the home is run on solar or hydrogen, so cooking gas, heating gas, fuel for the vehicle has all been converted to run on solar or hydrogen. We make all our energy here in three months of the year, and we store enough in hydrogen to last the rest of the year. I have a complete shop here where we have a hydrogen refueling station. I'm in the process of upgrading to higher pressure. We went from 2,500 to 5,000, 6,000 pounds, and we have two Toyota Mirais here. We have the New Jersey Genesis. I have a hydrogen fuel cell, Duffy Electric boat here, along with many other appliances like lawn mowers and motorcycles and stuff that you would see at a conventional home. If I can do this with no funding, then the whole world can adapt this technology. You don't have to have a large Poga book, and the bigger the numbers get as far as sales, you know, we got a vote where our checkbooks, the technology would become more and more viable. No one ever thought they could afford the first computer or the first cell phone. They thought it was just out of reach, and here we are today. You know, computers are in every home. I've been doing this, like I said, for 30 years, and hydrogen's time has come. We have, you know, countries all over the world adopting this technology, and I'm no longer the village idiot that they classified me as, you know, 20 years ago, jousting in windmills. The hydrogen age is just a little bit ahead of my time. Well, you've got three months of summertime there, approximately, to make all your hydrogen. How much do you actually store in kilograms? Kilogram storage here, I have about 90 kilograms worth of storage. Okay, and you say you're up to 6,000 psi for your storage pressure? 6,000 psi for the storage. So I only make hydrogen three months of the year, and that's in the spring time. Okay. So during the spring time, from about April to the first week in June, I turned my 27 kilowatts of solar into hydrogen gas and filled my 12 1000 gallon propane tanks. Okay. So that's two to three times more storage than I've ever used. Wow. Keep trying to find more ways of using it. Well, you start with efficiency, right? It's all about efficiency. This house uses about 75 kilowatt hours a day in the wintertime to power the geothermal. But I only use about five kilowatt hours a day during the summertime because the geothermal doesn't have to make anything up. And I have all this extra solar available during the summertime where I can actually pump it back into the grid, you know, and actually get paid for it. So it's a win-win for everybody. So I generate the most amount of excess electricity during peak hours from June till September. Right. And I find myself neutral during the fall. And then I pull off the hydrogen I made the season before during the wintertime. The fuel cell only runs at night. I have enough solar during the day even with the short solar days to make it through the daytime. I run four or five hours at night. And you mentioned geothermal. What kind of component is that? You have some way of generating from geothermal? Yeah. On the front of my house, I dug a hole 46 by 46 feet and you're looking at it being about eight feet deep. I laid down a mile of thick wall copper tube in the bottom of the hole. And in the bottom of the hole, we connected up 56 loops. So those loops we run refrigerant through. We extract the 56 degree ground temperature. So if we're heating the house, I have a 12 degree differential to work at, not a 70 degree. So it takes less energy. During the summer months, I'm working with 56 degrees. I'm just paying to bring it into the house and transfer it. So I don't have to make up anything. So anything that's left over from that cycle, I convert into heat from the hot gas and it does all my hot tub, swimming pool and domestic hot water. So I get free hot water whenever the geothermal is running. In addition to that, I'm getting the biggest heat sink in the world, which is the ground. Yeah. And this is most of America is like this. And we've done it on islands. I did it in the Cayman Islands. We put the first geothermal system that was ever on the island there and another hydrogen house that we built. Okay. I'm going to shift gears on you, and we didn't talk about this before, but I know you designed and built an emergency vehicle for Europe, right? Didn't you build them a custom vehicle once upon a time? Say that again, Sam. Didn't you build the folks over in Europe, a custom hydrogen response emergency response vehicle? Yeah. I was part of the team that built the H2O firefighting vehicle for Pujo. It won all kinds of awards at the Paris Auto Show, and it's the only vehicle capable of going in and out of the channel several times without having to be refueled or needing any oxygen. If you remember right, they had a big fire in the channel and a lot of people lost their lives, and they couldn't turn the fans on because they just feed the fire. So the people who went in with the fire trucks didn't have enough oxygen to run the engines, and when their oxygen ran out, they died. It's like being under the ocean, you know, nobody's going to be able to get to them. So this car was built like a submarine and had enough range where the batteries didn't to go in and out of the channel several times and be able to refuel quickly, not needing a 12-hour charge to recharge batteries. So this was a groundbreaking project, and they actually turned it into a tonkatoi. It's not everything you build, they turn it into a tonkatoi, but it was pretty interesting. And the reason I'm asking is because when we were meeting in DC a couple weeks ago with the hydrogen folks at the Department of Energy, they said one of the biggest local problems they're having in New York City and around your area is that the folks who certify the tunnels refuse to let hydrogen vehicles in the tunnels because of safety issues they declare. And they said, well, you ought to talk to Mike Strisky because he made a safety vehicle that ran on hydrogen just because it was going into a tunnel, and they should talk to you about it. So I don't know, you might begin to call one of these days from those folks. In 2000, when we did the American tour to the soul, I had built two hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that New Jersey Genesis and New Jersey Venturer were the two vehicles that we entered in the American tour to the soul. We had explained to them that we were carrying less than three gallons of gasoline and energy, and at the time the MTA had no problem allowing them into the tunnels. You know, people are driving through the tunnels with natural gas in their car that has five times more energy in it than the hydrogen that we had in the vehicle. So, you know, hydrogen's safer than any other fuel we know. I think this is just a ploy to try to slow this thing down. You know, when you need to make stuff happen, you can make it happen. When you need to stop it, that's what they do. And right now they're putting the brakes on this technology in the northeast because we're all about natural gas pipelines, you know, to move shale oil. We're all about, well, New Jersey's an oil refining state. We're bordered next to a coal and natural gas producing state Pennsylvania. You know, less than 45 minutes is the capital of oil, which is Wall Street, and then you have Washington DC that is the oil company. So I'm in the belly of the beast here, you know, trying to get these things done, and they're fighting it. California's a little different. California sees their air, and it's seven days for the air in China to get to them. So it's a much more concern when it's your health. You know, money is not as important there as it is here. But eventually this is going to win out because we're going to find ourselves behind the eight ball where the whole other country is doing it and where we're last the market. And we're going to lose all of our competitive advantages. If you don't adopt new technology, you become extinct just like the dinosaurs. You've got to continue to evolve. If you don't, that's what happens to you, you end up dying. How many companies have created technologies, other companies have adopted, and you know, they've thrived where others have died. Perfect example is hybrid electric vehicles. We built them here. All those patents were all U.S. patents. We decided not to go out root, sold it all to all the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean companies, and they became the largest automakers in the world as our factories died and our jobs became exported. If you don't adopt the latest thing, you're going to be left behind. It's like saying, I'm never going to use a computer. No, you're exactly right, Mike. And it's really interesting. I had on my show last week, Professor from Minnesota, who he has some, of course, he teaches and it focuses on a term he coined called energy blindness. And in it, he points out the huge economic component that energy in particular fossil fuel energy has on every decision made and every other commodity produced in our country. And he says, people are blind to the fact that we have no alternative in the marketplace right now other than natural gas and oil. And all it takes is either that to get expensive, which is going to happen the more fracking and stuff we have to do, or we have a natural disaster or crisis somewhere in the world that taps the oil supply side and all of a sudden the price spikes up and you don't have any other choices besides natural gas oil. And he's saying it's going to kill our whole economy if we don't start having a choice in something other than natural gas and oil. And he's exactly right. Natural gas and oil are the only things that are on the menu. Yeah, well, that's they don't want you to know that there's another choice other than what they sell. Yep, you're exactly right. So, you know, I have and actually when I got into my job here in Hawaii, I was talking to one of my relatives who lives in Pennsylvania, and they said one of my uncles or great uncles had a hydrogen patent and I thought that was kind of interesting. So I said what happened to it? And they said, Oh, one of the car companies bought the patent up and made it so it never saw the light of day. And I was really shocked. And then I did some more homework and found that that actually happens quite a bit in industry, where if you have a competing technology, the competition buys up the patents and keeps the licensing kind of in the dark. And it doesn't ever get built. And it doesn't ever happen. And if you try and build it, they've got the licensing on it. They shut you down in court with their team of lawyers. And that's the way they do business. And that's not good. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, Toyota would have never gone into this industry unless Fukushima happened. When Fukushima happened, they realized that nuclear is not the answer. Years of recycling batteries has destroyed all their water and soil. And that, you know, anything they've done besides this, you know, is not curing the disease. It's just treating it forever. You keep dispoiling the environment. If you can't draw a complete circle on any product from beginning to end and know that that's a safe use and reusable use, we shouldn't be using it. Plastic right now is decimating the world. It's in our food. It's in our water. It's in our air. It's everywhere. And, you know, it's in everything we eat. You wonder why we're having all these problems with cancers. We're dispoiling our nest. You know, we're a spaceship traveling at 60,000 miles through the universe. And we're a closed environment. Yeah, you have your first class and you have your steerage. But, you know, if there's a hole in the boat, you may not hear it coming in, but it's definitely sinking. You know, and it's up to us to fix it. We're going to take a quick break here, Mike, and come back within. We're going to continue this discussion. I want to focus a little bit more on, you know, what you've got going on and some of the things that we want to push forward in the U.S., so we'll be back in 60 seconds. Aloha. I'm Gwen Harris, the host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of the supporters to keep ongoing. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Aloha. I'm Lauren Pear, a host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Hey, welcome back to Stand the Energy Man and Mike Stritsky over in New Jersey, and we're talking about what's new in New Jersey and on the East Coast. For those of you that don't know, the kind of hot beds of hydrogen technology right now are California and their state dumps an awful lot of money into subsidizing, putting new stations in and things. The California kind of leads away with a little over 6,000 hydrogen vehicles right now and a lot of plug-in electrics. The Northeast Corridor we call it, which is a bunch of the states surrounding New Jersey, including New Jersey, are putting together hydrogen. And then, believe it or not, the Department of Energy lists the state of Hawaii as number 10 in the U.S. for hydrogen technology advancement, and I think we're actually moving up a little bit. I've been working a lot with our legislature and some private investors, and I think you're going to start to see a lot more happening here in Hawaii. We just signed an $8.3 million contract with a local, not a local construction company, an international construction company who's going to be helping us build a microgrid that's based on hydrogen energy storage for the Air Force out of Hickam Air Force Base. So look forward to all that. Mike, let's get back to the Northeast. What's going on in the Northeast Corridor that's exciting about hydrogen? Well, I mean, there are a lot of stations that are planned in the Northeast. Some of them have opened up already in Boston, Massachusetts area. We're still at a standstill here in New Jersey as they keep fighting it with the codes. Obviously, we have a vested interest because we're an oil-requining state. Connecticut is moving forward because they have a lot of fuel cell companies there. That's where Nell and Proton are. New York City already is starting to put stations in New York City and Long Island. The big hold up right now is the tunnels. The MTA, Mass Transit Authority, of a number of the states is actually fighting, allowing hydrogen into the tunnels, which is crazy. Like I said, I had done it before during the American tour to Seoul and that is the big hold up. Toyota doesn't want to move any further until it's assured that it can connect all the dots for the largest interstate highway in the world, which is the Northeast, and New Jersey, which is the most densely populated state in the nation. Five stations here will do the same as almost 60 in California because our land mask is so concentrated. Exactly. Just like Hawaii. When I talked to DOE originally, they wanted to put eight or ten stations on this island. I said, all he needs is three. You don't need a whole lot. It's the transportation sector is set up so we're a big circle. You're not more than 30 or so miles from any point from point to point. It's interesting. You mean to tell me that they have natural gas trucks running through those tunnels, but they won't let a hydrogen vehicle run through the tunnels? Absolutely. That's insanity. They understand natural gas. They think hydrogen. They think hydrogen bomb. They think of splitting atoms. They don't think of electrochemical reaction for a gas. They think of a Hindenburg. They think of the Hindenburg, but the Hindenburg was a tribute and a success for hydrogen rather than the way the media spun it as a disaster. Skin of the airship was covered with aluminum oxide, which is rocket fuel. It was 10 million cubic feet of hydrogen in the dirigible that didn't explode. Hydrogen only goes straight up. Most of the people live because they were below the flash point, which is the 10th of a second. I agree. All the history I've read on it, the folks that were killed or injured jumped out of the gondola because they were too high off the ground. They were afraid of the fire and the folks that stayed with the gondola till they got near the ground survived. You're right. It's a big myth about the Hindenburg. We got to dispel. The good news on that is I've been talking to a lot of students and the first question I ask them is how many of you know what the Hindenburg is and only about four of them in every class have ever heard of it. Our education system is failing. That's the bad news, but the good news is they don't know anything about hydrogen Hindenburg stuff. I think we're doing good. When I mentioned fuel cells to these students, they think it's a gas tank. Yeah, exactly. Unless we can get them to understand what this is and do an education and outreach program, the only thing on the menu is going to be oil, coal, natural gas. I'm trying to do the education all by myself here at the hydrogen house and getting these students. I'm doing five internships right now. We're doing with the PSENG Sustainable Internship Program. I'm starting right from scratch with these guys. None of them know what a fuel cell is. They see the car and say, why aren't we driving these things? I said we could be. The United States rather than spending billions of dollars on war should put money into infrastructure like we did during the last recession to build the interstate highway system. This stuff makes sense now. The technology is here now. It's like having to cure for cancer and say, well, we have to treat it for a few more years. We're not ready to cure it. We tell the kids out here that a fuel cell is a battery. It's just a self-charging battery. You have different kinds. You have a wet cell battery like in your car. You have dry cell batteries like in your flashlight. And you have a fuel cell battery in this in this car. And it's a self-charging battery that you just put hydrogen and air together, and it makes electricity. And that's how we kind of get them to get off of the fuel cell being some kind of storage tank. We're seeing hydrogen in the news every single day. When I was doing this 30 years ago, you couldn't get a story out to save your life. But now Wall Street is starting to take notice. And a lot of the countries like France has got over 100 taxis out there running on hydrogen. You've got 267,000 homes, like mine, running on hydrogen in Japan. Japan is turning sewage into hydrogen so that they can run their vehicles. If they can do it, you're telling us America can't or America won't. We've got to get our heads stuck out of the sand. I can't for the life of me imagine why Texas, with all its natural, all of its wind resources and all of its solar resources, is not taking that and converting it to hydrogen, making high things, sticking it in the pipeline, and shipping it throughout the whole country. There are powered gas plants in Germany, and there's one in California. But Texas who should be leading the ship is not. It's amazing. Gigawatts of wind go to waste every day that could be converted into hydrogen and sold. Yep, I hear you. Hey, did I hear right that I know you bought a Toyota Mirai in California and shipped it back to New Jersey to drive around. You also made it so it could export power, correct? Yes, we turned the Toyota Mirai into a drivable generator. And my understanding is you actually charged a Tesla from your car, right? Yeah, I bet now I've got to be ready for the repercussions for me on Musk. But yes, we put 26 kilowatt hours into the car a couple of weeks ago. As far as I know, it's the first time it's ever been done. Okay, well, it's on the record now, so Elon's coming to get you, but... Oh boy, story of my life. It's always going to get me. No, but you're right. And you know, we're talking about the way other countries, Asia and Europe are way ahead of the U.S. And most people don't realize that GM sells more cars in China than they do in the United States. And that should get people's attention. It's now two years wait for any kind of electric bus, whether it's hydrogen or plug-in. We don't have enough production of electric vehicles, electric buses to meet world demand. That should be sending huge signals to our industry here. I mean, we've got people that can make cars better than anybody. And you're right, we're falling behind. And it's an economic mistake of just huge proportions that we got to wake up that we can't just sit there and listen to oil and gas. And sometimes even the car industry, who's wedded to oil and gas, and start making sure we have some other choices. Yeah, we got to have some more things on the menu. It's going to take everything we have to turn the ship around and go the other way. And if we don't do it, there's going to be no planet to spend all that money on. And there's going to be no future for our children and our grandchildren. It's the reason I'm doing this. Exactly. Whatever gas is left in my tank, it's going to be about energy and it's going to be about water because those are the two things we can't live without. And it's two-thirds of the planet. We've got to stop polluting it. Just think what happens if we use one hour worth of sunlight and can power the planet for two years? The big nuclear ball in the sky shows up for work every single day. It's not like Texas that you ever drill a dry hole. If the big nuclear ball fails to show up, we got bigger problems because then we can't grow. You're exactly right. People are not realizing that right now, they can't grow oranges in Florida anymore. Because of all the coal burning and all the acid rain, it's changed the pH of the soil to such an extent that you can't grow food anymore. And this is happening from the sulfur dioxide. I go out and I look at my buildings that are white metal are covered with acid rain. It's all black streaks. All my hydrogen tanks are full of acid rain. That's why the tops of this 100-year-old forest, all the trees are dying. These are so many things that are all a chain reaction of a result from not doing the right thing. And I could understand if we didn't have the technology, we 100% absolutely have it to do it. All we need is the support of government, which government should do, to go out there and do this like we were fighting a war. We'll make stuff happen. We'll do it like we did during the Great Depression when we needed to build an interstate highway system or a Hoover Dam. There's no doubt in my mind the military could do this. But like I said, too many vested interests are at the wheel. The people have to basically start voting with their checkbooks and say, I want this. Then nobody's going to be able to stop it. Capitalism is the ultimate weapon. Well, we have a word in Hawaii. Everybody's familiar with aloha. We have another word in Hawaiian called, it's Pono. And Pono is doing what's right. And a lot of people think that means not making any waves and not making any trouble or not being a pain, but it's actually doing what's right for the good of everyone and not just for the good of a few. And I think that in this state, we have two big advantages. We have a lot of people that understand the concept of Pono. And we have to buy all of our fuel that comes in here, whether it's natural gas or oil, we're paying for it and all that money's leaving our state. So we're kind of a microcosm of where the US could be if we ever have an oil shortage out in the future or if oil gets expensive. But that's probably why Hawaii stands a good chance of being a leader in hydrogen. We've got about 25 seconds left. I'm going to leave the last 25 to you to talk about what you need to talk about. Well, listen, you know, if anybody can help start voting with your checkbook to make things happen. We have a hydrogen house nonprofit that I'd like to put hydrogen houses in Hawaii. Anybody wants one, give me a call, go to my website hydrogenhouseproject.org. If anybody wants to invest in what I'm doing, they can go to my public company, which is HcellEnergy.com and we're HN3Cs on the stock market. But we have to start investing in what we want if we expect to get changed. If you're going to do same old, same old, you know, you reap what you sell. They call us pioneers because we have arrows in our back and all of us have to be the pioneers to affect change. And if we don't fix this problem, there's no tomorrow for our children and our grandchildren. I'll leave you with that thought. Please visit my website hydrogenhouseproject.org and see you guys on the flip side. Okay, Mike, we put that up on the screen a couple of times so people can copy it down and they can always go on YouTube and check it out when we go to YouTube after the show's over. So thanks again, Mike, for being on the show and thanks everybody for watching and Stand Energy Man signing off until next Friday. Aloha.