 Hey, Hawaii State of Clean Energy, I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech and to my bottom left, you can see the same way I can see is Peter Rossegg, spokesman for Hawaii Electric. Hi, Peter. Thank you for coming down. Absolutely, Jay. It's virtual. It's virtual and it's on Zoom. Right. So I didn't come anywhere, but that's even better. Yeah. It really works well. Yeah. And you can wash your hands at any time during the program. Thank you. And Mitch, you went down just below me from HNEI, but he's probably also at home. You went home, Mitch? Yes. It was a tough commute to the studio. Well, that's one of the reasons that- I had to walk across the kitchen past the refrigerator without diving into the fridge and getting another snack. That's one of the reasons why Hawaii has been successful, at least to some limited extent here and pushing the curve down because everybody follows the rules and stays at home. I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people do a high percentage. So let me address first, Peter. The email that I got this afternoon from Shannon, and it's all about customers, dozens of them who report that scammers have been called and threatened to shut off electricity. What's going on with the scammers? You know, while many people in Hawaii do the right thing, there are people, and I think I hope most of them are not in the state, but there are people who will take advantage of vulnerabilities and take advantage of uncertainty. I got one of these calls myself, and you know, we're calling from Hawaiian Electric. You got to pay your bill or we're going to disconnect you. And thank you for choosing Hawaiian Electric. So they're out there, and I think, you know, it seems to come in waves. It seems that for whatever reason, we get a bunch, and then it kind of subsides. But as we said again and again, that's not the way Hawaiian Electric does business. We don't call you up. We don't threaten you. Right now, we are doing absolutely no disconnections until the middle of May, May 17th at the earliest. So if anybody says they're going to disconnect you, that's your first clue. It is not Hawaiian Electric. We are not disconnecting anybody, rich or poor, business or a residence. We are not disconnecting anybody until the middle of May at the earliest. And in any case, we don't call, we don't make threats, we don't expect payment through some weird, you know, go down to your corner drugstore and send us something anonymously. We don't operate that way, especially now when people aren't home and people are vulnerable. So all we can say again and again and again is if you get a call like that, hang up. You can't argue with them. There's no point. They're invisible. They all change their phone number in a matter of minutes. So all you do is just ignore it and we beat you. We beg you to ignore it because, you know, if you're going to send money, we believe you should send it to us. Just kidding. Let's talk about, you know, you know, we've been talking to, we've done, oh, something about 120 shows on the coronavirus already and among them are shows where we have interviewed people in the community, small business people, big business people, any kind of business people to find out how the virus, how the crisis has affected them. And today really what it's about is Hawaiian Electric. It's how the crisis has affected you. You know, you are a big company and you are Hawaii's electric company. I mean, most of the islands are on Hawaiian Electric. To the extent that the economy is faltering, that must affect you big time. You are at the center of everything and I wanted to inquire, you know, how are things going, Peter? Well, let me say first of all, from a customer point of view, you've got a lot of things to worry about right now, but your electric service is not one of them. We have plenty of generation capacity more now because demand is low. We've got people working in the plants and in the system operations center. We have, you know, virtual call centers up and running, we're still taking solar applications. We're still helping customers who are construction. We're obviously working at, you know, life so many people, most of our people who can are working from home 1200 to 1300 or our employees are working from home and the others are in the field or in the, you know, in our plants and so forth. So from the customer point of view, this is not something you have to worry about. We are here. We're keeping things up. We are not doing any disconnections till earliest middle of May. We can respond to emergencies. We're not doing, you know, sort of elective work that might require us to shut a customer's power off briefly. That's something that happens in normal times. We're not doing those things, but if you have an emergency, you can call, you can go to our app, you know, we're trying to be as much business as usual as possible. Now, from the company side, of course, it's a little different, but the most important thing is for most people, how does it affect me, the customer? And you're in pretty, you're in good shape for this right now. So now, you know, you have a certain amount of daily, daily, weekly, monthly flow of power that you're selling and people are buying. It must be, it must have been over the past month or so, a huge or at least a substantial drop in the amount of demand because businesses aren't functioning because, you know, any number of things are happening when the economy slows, people don't use power. So can you give us an idea about how dramatic that has been? How much, you know, how much has it dropped over the past, say, month? Well, we're seeing the lowest demand for electricity from the grid that we have ever seen, very frankly, you know, we are now accustomed to a solar, you know, providing a lot of energy in rooftop solar, providing a lot of energy in the middle of the day and demand, whereas it used to be the lowest demand point was at midnight, now the lowest demand point is basically at noon, and that's lower still. So, you know, the numbers don't are hard to figure, but the basic message is like every utility around the country, our demand has dropped off dramatically. Oh, sure. A traditional, you know, midday peak to a month ago, most recent numbers I saw were the last week of March, and, you know, as soon as the quarantine went into effect, as soon as the stay-at-home order went into effect, it began dropping and it continues. As you said, the hotels are not using any power, very much power, schools, University of Hawaii, half the banks are closed, half the bank branches, so like any other utility around the country or any other business, it's very slow right now, but we're not closing our doors, we're still taking care of the people that are depending on us, but there's no question that it's been a dramatic drop, and we're beginning to see people who are calling us or emailing us or going online and filling out a form and saying, I can't pay my bill this month. Just starting, but I think it'll get, you know, because bills tend to lag about a month depending on when your meter is normally red and when you normally get a bill, and, you know, we stopped doing meter readings at residences, so until this is over, until we can get our people out in the field, we're going to be sending bills every month, but they're going to be estimated bills, so the first month you may not see very much of change because it'll be estimated based on March sometime, but as we go forward, I think, you know, bills may change, people are using more electricity at home, and we're advising people to be cautious about that, but we're going through a very uncertain time like we've never done before, so we've never seen the demand being this low, the peaks being this low, even the minimum amount or the lowest amount being taken is lower than it has been before, so we're like a lot of other businesses, we're a lot of other people who experience it, and we're, you know, our main goal is to keep the lights on for everybody that depends on us, and we'll be okay. A footnote to that is, and I can draw from my own life experience here, is my wife and I, we spend time at home, in fact, one day blends into the next day, you know, sunrise, sunset, right? We forgot what we had for lunch, you know, and I come down and do these shows, and it's not a bad life, but we're really cooped up, and we have no sense of when that's going to end, and I can imagine a lot of people in the state, they have no real reserves, they must be getting antsy, they may be worried about the money to buy food, they may worry about the, you know, the availability of food, who knows what, and I think on the mainland there are already disruptions that are of some concern, I mean disruptions by people who are unhappy. Now, in Hawaii, you know, we really need electricity to do what I just described, we're watching television, we're on the internet, I mean, it is high priority item that the lights beyond for us, and you can imagine, I'm sure you've thought about this, what would happen in a given household if their lights went out, when they had nothing else to do, and everything they do depends on having the lights on. Right, right, I mean that's exactly the point, we are committed to keeping those lights on, we are committed to not disconnecting people, even if they are behind what we do say is if you, you know, everybody is going to start making choices about what they can and cannot buy or what they can and cannot pay. If you can't pay your electric bill in full, the easiest thing to do is go online and go to customer options and there is a form and you could fill that out and somebody will send back to you the information, and you can work out a payment arrangement, we understand that people are going through and we're going to try our very best to help people get through this, by, you know, working out payment arrangements, eventually you're going to have to pay up, got to tell you that in front, eventually it's going to catch up, but right now when people are, so many people are out of work, so many people are uncertain and as you say, are hanging around at home with very little to do except watch television or do the electronic thing that we've come to depend on and doing maybe more cooking, if you're working from home, you're probably using more electricity for your computer and printer and whatever else, so we know that the amount of home use is rising and going to continue to rise, not huge, but I think it'll be very significant for some people. Well, I think a lot of people, you know, see this and of course it's kind of you and appropriate through the community to defer any action on delinquencies, but if I were, and I am a customer, I would say this has got to be a high priority item for me, I cannot afford not to pay my electric bill, I really can't and I don't want to put pressure on the electric company because you're a business too and if too many people decide they're going to default because, you know, they're just being complacent about things and they think you're a bottomless pit and you can keep on producing no matter who pays the bill, they might be in for a bad surprise. So anyway, I wanted to ask you about expenses, you know, when we talk to some of these companies, we say, well, what, how have you changed? One thing you mentioned a minute ago is people working from home and that's for health purposes. I'm sure if you're talking about linemen or women, they're going to be out, they got to be out, but a lot of people can work from home. So are you doing anything to cut back on fixed expenses? Are you doing anything to reduce your own nut? Well, there's not a lot we can actually do in that regard. We've got to buy fuel. Right now, fuel is relatively inexpensive and have been for a period and we're going through a period of low oil, but we can't say, we can't miss a delivery of oil or we can't produce electricity. The good news in this bill's equation is that in about a month and a half or two months when today's oil goes into the into the boilers and starts providing electricity, the cost would be much lower. Not a great, you know, there's one small silver lining on the cloud of oil and that is that when it's very inexpensive, the that index that lack of cost gets passed on to so some people who are using more electricity at home right now are not are not going to see a great bill increase because the bill increase would come and the price of a kilowatt hour of electricity will be going down at the same time. So not can't put a number on it right now, but I think that will leaven out the impact in terms of our company. As I said, we're not doing, you know, what might be called elective surgery. We're not, you know, we're, we are, we're still doing most of everything that's that we do and we're pushing ahead on long term projects and all the rest, but we're not out in the field doing elective work, things that we would like to do to harden the system, things that we would like to upgrade and so forth. We're doing very little, if any of that, because we are, we're trying not to be in a situation where we might have to shut people's power off or where there's a chance that they would be shut off due to the work we're doing. What about changing your workforce? I mean, is there any possibility you would change your workforce furlough? What have you? We are not furloughing people. We need, you know, we're not, we're a big company with a lot of people, but we're not, we don't have an excess and we don't furlough people. You know, right now the meter readers are not going out, but we're not furloughing people because we made a company choice to not put those people out in the community for their own safety and because they were, frankly, you know, people in the community were nervous. I mean, they see these guys walking around, even though they have masks on, even though they have protective equipment, we were getting calls saying, you know, how come I have to stay home and we explain, you know, it's an essential service, but maybe the meter reading is not essential. So we've cut that back way back. We've cut back elective projects, but we're not, you know, this company doesn't furlough on that, on that basis. So people are being paid, people are working if they're not in the field, you know, and we can find other things for them to do. We're not like, you know, very frankly, we're not like the city or the state where people are staying home and really don't have a lot that they can do because their job kind of disappeared. Most of our people have a job to do and they're continuing to do it. And we're reinforcing that with, you know, with some of the people whose job has changed a little bit. But overall, you know, we don't have a lot of leeway in terms of, you know, through all I know, we may be purchasing a few fewer wooden poles right now or whatever, but that's also a process that takes months. So, you know, we can't, you know, if we want something today, we have to have ordered it three months ago, six months ago, it has to get fabricated and get trucked to California and then get put on the boat and so forth. So we have a flow situation that we can't just disrupt. And if we disrupt it today, six months from now when we need that stuff, we're not going to have it. Yeah, you pay a price then. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we probably have slowed down procurement in some small areas. Obviously, we're not using so many pencils in the office and stuff like that. You know, that's manini obvious. So, you know, if we are going to keep the power on, even to the low demand, even with the fact that we're not getting paid by a lot of people, we still have the expenses of, you know, making sure that that next shipment of oil arrives are the one after that. Paying our renewable, you know, we have a lot of companies now, wind farms and solar farms and so forth that are providing electricity to the system. And we got to pay them. They are small businesses by and large, although it may be hard. You don't want them to fail. We don't want them to fail. That would set us back. And I will say one other thing, you know, we're looking at this as an opportunity in a way. As you know, we're hoping in a month or so to announce a new set of renewable energy projects. We're looking at helping the solar contractors, the guys who do rooftop solar and seeing if there are ways we can speed things up. Because we can that way do two good things. We can get renewable energy and we can also feed into the economy. I mean, if we can order up a new power, a new solar plan, and soon we can get the panels and so forth, they're always going to be questions. But if we can infuse into the community some, you know, some infrastructure improvements on people's roofs or on larger scale in the long term, that will help the economy come back. Well, that takes me to a suggestion I want to make to Mitch. I like to suggest that Mitch ask you about, you know, and this is happening all over the economy. It's probably due in large part to the fact that Trump has been talking about it, but, you know, making plans to recover, to start up again, making plans to, you know, start the bubble machine again, which is very hard to do when you don't even know when the virus is going to be over. But Mitch, you know, do you think you might fashion a question along those lines to Peter about the plan for recovery and start up? Well, it's, you know, it depends, like you say, on the strategy and what the politicos decide. And it's kind of a risk management thing. When do we think it's safe to come off this thing? And you can't just immediately snap your fingers and have the whole economy go. So I guess the question would be for like a graceful re-energization of the economy, you know, what kind of talks have you had with the government people, the state? I mean, because they're, you know, the big power users. Have they shared any kind of start-up plans with you yet? And what's the progress on that? Well, I think most of those discussions are above my pay grade, very frankly. But I'll tell you, we also have the fact that Alan Oshima, our former president and CEO. Oh, sure, yeah. Is the is the head of EGAs, you know, recovery, Governor EGAs Recovery Task Force. And the understanding we have is, you know, he's not going to make any special deals for Hawaiian Electric. I'm sure, you know, there are other people in the committee and he will recuse himself, but he certainly knows very intimately what are the importance of what we do and the, you know, what our limitations are. And, you know, so I think nothing, as again, I'm sure he's not going to show any favoritism because that's not the kind of guy he is. He's a guy, you know, he is a guy of the greatest integrity that I know, not going to finagle a deal for us. But he certainly knows what we can do. He knows how if, you know, if the hotels begin to reopen, for example, or if the university or the state government begins to reopen, they'll be an up-surge in demand for electricity. And he knows how we deal with those things. He knows what we can do. And, you know, because demand is very low now, we have a lot of generation capacity. Nothing about the distribution system has changed. So we can handle a, you know, a gradual return to service. I don't think it's going to be anything but a gradual return. So it's not like somebody's going to say, well, next Monday, everybody go back and turn on all your electrical devices. That's not going to happen. But, you know, so it's going to be that some businesses are going to reopen and some state government offices and essential and then things will go further and further and like a pebble and, you know, ripples going out. And we have, you know, we know how to deal with that. We know how we've had, unfortunately, in the past, we've had complete island-wide blackouts, as you may remember. And when you do that, what you have to do is you have to build up slowly because you have to have your generation and your demand equal. So we know how to gradually ease up as just as we've eased down. And, you know, it's the customers that control this because they're the ones who create, they set the demand. All we do is meet it. But we know how to respond to a gradually increasing demand. And we're ready to do that. We would love to do that, but not at the expense of health and safety. So I don't think we're going to be a big problem. We've are, you know, we're still at work. It's not like we have to recall people, not like, you know, we don't have to send out a please come back to work notice because we're all still working in one form or another. So I think the electric company part of it is going to be the least worrisome part of it. It's going to be much more, you know, out of the world where, for example, retailers, it's one thing to say, my store is open, but how do your customers feel about coming back to your shopping center? How do they feel about, you know, buying your product? Again, if it's not something that they absolutely, you know, if it's not something absolutely neat, if it's not groceries, you may have a little trouble. And you made a lot of people, I think, are going to be deciding, well, I don't need a new Aloha shirt, you know, this month or next month. And so even if you open the store, that doesn't mean people are going to come rushing in to buy things from you. And that's where the hardship is going to be, I believe. It's not going to be at the electric company. We are staffed. We're using all our staff and we're not, you know, we're not worried about a return to higher demand. We're ready for it. Oh, Mitch, you want to follow up and run back on that? Sorry? Go ahead. I have a question of my own, actually. So, you know, with all the people out here working from home, and like you said, all the electronics are on. People are like, probably watching TV as well as working on their computer. You know, are there any kind of tips? I mean, do residents have demand charges for certain times of day? Is there any strategy, apart from turning everything off and being a little bit more cautious about your electricity use, that they can implement to try and keep a handle on their domestic electricity costs? Well, first of all, I can tell you nobody that works for Hawaiian Electric is watching television at home while they work. No one. I can just tell you that that's, well, maybe one person. Anyway, absolutely right. There are a lot of people out there. They have a lot of stuff on. We've put out tips. You know, if you are already on a time of use rate, that gives you a lower rate during the middle of the day and a higher rate during the peak period from 5 to 9 p.m. So, and you can still get on that if you want to go to hawaiolecord.com. And, you know, if you all of a sudden realize I'm doing all my work from 10 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, I'd like to pay a lower rate during that time. That's one thing you can do and it is available to anybody. You know, there are various different arrangements and there may need to be a meter change out, so it may not take, you know, it may not be able to get into effect instantly. But, and people who have solar, you know, ought to take advantage of the fact that they're generating their own power from 9 or 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon and they are, so they're not as dependent on the utility as other people. And, in general, the best advice is kind of, as you say, don't have everything on. You know, it's easy in the middle of the day to forget, to forget to turn off the lights. You don't need the lights. You've got natural light. So, leave the lights off, except for the one light you may need to work at your desk. If you can avoid using the air conditioning and weather's been pretty good, so, you know, use a fan or use 1AC and, you know, use the windows and you can do that sort of thing. And it's not necessary to refrigerate all 25 bedrooms in your house to, you know, to some fist here. And, you know, get a power strip, check your computer for sleep mode so that it'll turn off when you're not using it when you are watching television. And, you know, be smart. But these are tips. We want people to use every bit of power they need to be comfortable to be safe, but we don't want to use any more than that. And, you know, people are going to have to learn to be a little smarter in this kind of situation if they want to avoid. What about on the inside, Peter, concern that, you know, a lot of the interviews we've done, we found that Hawaii companies have taken steps of one kind or another, one degree or another, to protect their staff, their employees. Whenever you, for example, deal with the public, these days, there's really a concern, a legitimate concern that you have aerosol, you know, micro droplets out there, and you can pick it up anywhere, touch any surface. How can you can't afford to lose your staff? You've got to hold on to them. They're all special. They're all trained. They're all committed. So how do you protect them in a time of such danger? First of all, we are not, there's no more walking in to any kind of Hawaiian electric facility, the bill payment offices that we have, no more walking in. If you're a contractor who needs to, you know, get some electrical work to support your construction, you don't walk in anymore, you email, you call, and you may, you, you snail mail. So we are, you know, customer services are always been a call in system. You know, we don't have anybody coming in off the street. So that protects our people who are, if they're in the office, they're being, they're, they're being careful, they're being, they're observing social distance, they're wearing masks and so forth. If they're working from home, then we hope they're secure and that they realize, you know, even a relative can give you the virus if they are infected, if they have been traveling to, you know, bad places and so forth. So, and people, you know, for people in the field, especially the linemen, they are used to not doing anything without their protective equipment. So in the past, protective equipment meant, you know, gloves and vests and, and helmets and hard hats. Now they also mean masks and, you know, screens if you're going to be close to people and just keeping your distance. So we have a workforce. Safety has always been our number one priority. Just that the threat has changed a little bit. The threat is not just the typical things you think of with electricity, but they're out there dealing with heavy equipment and, and, you know, locking their trucks so they can get the boom up to the top and so forth. So checklists for safety have always been a part of what we do at Hawaiian Electric. And so this is in addition to that, and we just have to be a little, a little more careful. And we have, you know, we have a very active custom employee information service within the company. And they, they are very good about putting out reminders and warnings, and they're good about telling us of any kind of safety problem. I mean, we get memos that say, here's a safety problem you may not be aware of. And, you know, here's an accident that didn't happen, but you should be aware of that. So they're, they have daily, they're out there daily. Are they going to be covered if they catch the disease? Well, we've all got healthcare, you know, through our employer and, and I'm sure we'll be covered in the event that were to happen. It's just, it's in that respect, you know, Hawaii again, lucky that we have a pretty good employer based healthcare system. We're not, you know, and Hawaiian Electric is certainly a good company in terms of the benefits it provides its employees. And we have a company health director who is, you know, constantly reminding us of all, you know, eat fruit, do yoga and, and don't sneeze on other people. I gotta say, Are you making notes? We're very, we're very lucky in that respect is in that, you know, we have a history of being very concerned about safety. It's just that the threat has changed. We've been moving, you know, more and more to teleconferencing, for example, as we've gone from three separate companies to one company. So, you know, we have a lot of experience now with, you know, with things like teleconferencing and with Zoom now. And we already know how to do this. So, and we do have a very, you know, a lot of companies, a lot of companies I have noticed in Hawaii are learning by all this teleconferencing, they're learning about, you know, Zoom and the like, and they're fully, fully anticipating that when we come out of this, they'll be doing more of it because it's efficient. And so I'm asking you really whether you see anything happening now that suggests long-term changes afterward. I think you're absolutely right. I think we're, I think many group, many departments or many working teams that before might have held a teleconference occasionally, but would meet whenever they could, are now meeting with Zoom or Webex or one of the other systems that allow this kind of face-to-face participation. And, you know, obviously it's not quite the same as being in the same room with people, but a video is better than just, you know, a voice on the, on the phone. And it requires, it'll enable you to see people and catch the drift of their conversation better. So I'm absolutely certain that any team that before was meeting with a teleconference because they had people on the neighbor islands, you know, what used to happen is that a team would consist of 10 people from Oahu, three people from Maui, four people from Hawaii Island. And so of course the Oahu people got together in the same room and we have a teleconference system even then. And so we would, you know, either by phone or by video, we would bring in people from the neighbor islands. Well, we're all in the neighbor islands now, we're all, you know, isolated. So these meetings are taking place, you know, with people in their homes. And I think I'm absolutely sure that's going to continue even when this is over, be used more and more. I think the stuff that can be done virtually and over-electronics are going to be increasingly done that way. And, you know, we're, eventually, I got to say also it's a long-term thing, but, you know, we're going to be installing more and more advanced meters. Advanced meters don't need a meter reader to go out and look at them. They use some other kind of a communication system to send their data back to the mainframe to the mainframe. And so we're going in that direction anyway. And we have people, you know, that's the goal eventually. You know, eventually we'll have a system that allows us, the system operator guys, to see an outage before the people who are living. Right. So, you know, the necessity breeds invention. You know, there's all these technological and system changes out there. Let me ask you one more thing, because before we run out of time, and that is, you know, this is going to be for a while. Nobody knows how long. I mean, I don't care what they say in the White House. It's going to be a while before we can feel comfortable about going outdoors and doing business. And over time, you know, this is going to be hard on the utility. And I'm wondering, you know, and the legislature is not in session, so it's not likely that you could get relief or, you know, action that would, you know, help resolve problems at surface. But what about the PUC? You foresee a time when, you know, because you're close to the PUC. I mean, in terms of the operating function of providing electrical service, they're your closest ones in my perception, anyway. You foresee a time when you would go to them and say, look, we need to change a few things here. We need some relief from existing rules. Can you give us a break in a hard time? Do you foresee that possibility? I think it's more, it's already happening in one respect. We've got a couple of approvals, DNOs we're calling, you know, last week. And because they want, as I mentioned before, they want the utility to be part of the recovery. And they want projects to go forward more quickly. They are dispensing with the requirements that we had for certain kinds of approvals for smaller projects that don't necessarily, you know, have a huge impact, but could put a number of people to work. And they've already made it clear to us in these in these orders that they have decision and order. It's called, do you know, when they say, here's, here's our, our ruling on this, they've made it clear to us that they want to, they want us to move faster on getting some of these things going and they're willing to, you know, suspend or, or, you know, allow things to go forward without the approval. So we might have had back in the day, whatever. That's great. That's great. And they, they're very, I got to say they are very, they're being very proactive. We're constant contact with them. They're, they're asking us all the questions that you've been asking for this last half hour of us. How are you going to deal with this? What's your cash flow going to be like? You, you know, what, will you have any, any impacts that have been a result of service? They've been asking these questions for, for several weeks now. Very good. Meetings and, you know, over the telephone. So there, I got to give Jay Griffin and the other two commissioners a lot of credit. They're, they're moving faster generally, and they're very, very aware of, of the implications of this for, for the health of our, of our utility. And they understand that the health of the utility is everything. So it is very important. So now we get to the best part. Okay. We get to Mitch, who is going to summarize the discussion over the past half hour. You're really cruel to Mitch. I don't know what, I don't know why you're so cruel. It's no problem. I have big shoulders. I can handle it. I think the summary is that Hawaiian Electric continues to keep the lights on and thank God they do. And I just sounded it like you're doing a wonderful job on it. Watch out for the scammers. Don't believe them. We're not going to shut your lights off and keep up the good work. And with that, quick ending aloha.