 Hey, Lohan, welcome to Stand the Energy Man here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Stan Osserman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies, and I wanted to wish all the veterans out there a happy Veterans Day weekend coming up. And if you know any veterans, give them a big hug or kiss as appropriate. And if you don't know any veterans, go out and find one. They're really neat people. So we have a show. We're starting a little bit early today. We have a show coming up that is fraught with just current events that surprised us. You know, as we came on the air and I started to talk to my guests this afternoon, we got Mike Strisky, who lives in New Jersey, but does a lot of work in California. So he's coming to us from California right now in the midst of all the wildfires that are going on. And he's literally caught up in the middle of all of it, so he's actually calling in from a friend's house. And we can't even get a Zoom connection with him because he doesn't have his computer equipment. It was all part of the casualty of the fires that are going on. So Mike, thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate it, especially with all the stress going on over there and things that have been happening. But thanks for joining us today. You're welcome, Stan. Like I said, this cause is so important even in the face of disaster. The word still needs to get out. Yeah. And you made a comment earlier that the climate change piece is important and that just kind of drives home the importance of clean energy and going carbon free as soon as we can. Yeah. I mean, as the weather patterns are changing right now, we're seeing severe storms and severe droughts. I'm noticing it back in New Jersey and I noticed it here in California. Over the last 10 years, the seasons here in Southern California are drier than they've ever been. In New Jersey, they've wetter. We've had the wettest year in history in New Jersey with all the rain. I didn't see the sunlight for more than a couple of weeks in the Northeast. And the rains, normally we would get light rains. Now we're getting monsoons. In California right now, that's the biggest story for anybody who's been watching the news. Here in Thousand Oaks and Malibu, we had the shootings yesterday and then the compound that we had the fires last night that burned for 14,000 acres, including, you know, my home at the Calamigos Ranch. Never seen anything like this in my entire life. I mean, people are trapped on the Pacific Coast Highway, not able to get out. The fire is being driven by 50 mile an hour winds with zero humidity in it, which means that these fires are very fast moving and they have a lot of fuel to burn on. You know, multimillion dollar homes are all going up in smoke and there's not a firefighter in sight because this fire is so large. Wow. It's just absolutely incredible. The air quality is miserable out here. I can't see the sun from all the smoke that's in the air. But it just goes to show you, you know, we're starting to see that the climate is changing and, you know, the more and more carbon we put up into the air, the more the weather patterns are going to change and wreak havoc, the storms are going to get more powerful and natural disasters are going to become greater, hence we need to start changing our ways, you know, to think that man couldn't do anything to the environment. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. And for the first time in history, you know, we have two of the largest populations in the world, India and China, you know, helping us throw a lot of carbon up there. So we got to get off of fossil fuels. We got to get into renewable sources and use the big nuclear ball in the sky that shines every day. And, you know, the hydrogen economy is the only thing that's going to be able to turn the ship around and send us the other way. And you're only making pure oxygen and water for your energy. The planet will heal itself a lot quicker. You know, I have to comment on California that they are very proactive in figuring out all of the problems with the hydrogen economies by being the pioneers for this. They've gone through a lot of growing pains with the hydrogen fuel cell technology. Not so much as the vehicles, but a lot with the infrastructure. You know, right now they didn't build stations that were big enough and they had a lot of vehicles that, you know, they sold more vehicles than they had fueling stations. Plus, they had some, you know, growing pains with the equipment on how to do it, how to distribute it and, you know, but all of that is being figured out, you know, as we go. And Toyota's playing a huge role in this. Right now, you've got hydrogen refueling stations, five of them opening up in the northeast and some of them are already opened and you'll have some more in the next couple of weeks. So we're starting at both coasts and we're working toward the middle. But the good news is, is it's happening. Everybody's starting to get online and knowing the batteries are not the solution. You know, it's going to be like Betamax and VHS. You know, you're going to find out who's going to win out in the end. You know, when you can fill the car in five minutes and you get the same amount of juice out of it each and every charge for 25 years, you know, it's really the cure for the disease rather than the treatment. Right. But we're working in the right direction. And it's just going to take everybody to start voting with their checkbooks to make this happen. You know, if you go out and you buy a Tesla today, you're spending 140,000. You can go out and buy a Toyota Mirai with free fuel for three years right now for a $300 lease for $56,000, either of which is still, you know, they're giving you a almost a free car when you count in the price of the fuel for three years. So they're putting in some heavy incentives to make this happen and they're getting a lot of feedback from the early adopters on part of the, you know, Toyota Mirai's Facebook pages. So we get to hear what everybody's experiences are, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And that's how you work out problems to get this technology implemented. So far, you know, everybody in the trailblazers and, you know, we're making it happen. You know, I'm doing a lot in New Jersey. I bought a Toyota Mirai that I'm taking around to all the schools and government agencies in the Northeast. They've logoed the car with all the components as where they sit in the Toyota Mirai. So when we take them out to schools and organizations, they can see where all the parts and pieces are located. So we have the fuel cell, which is under the seat, the motor controller, which is under the hood. And you have the battery, which is up above the rear seat headrest. So all of these things are, you know, we're educating the public. Not that people don't know what fuel cell vehicles are and what they can do. So education is obviously the first, you know, place that we're going. And then, you know, implementation will be the second chances are in the next five years, you know, if the guys will be getting their licenses next five years, we'll be driving a fuel cell car or at least have the option to it all the dealerships. Next week I'm going to be going to another conference here in California that is concerned over making renewable hydrogen. So, you know, if we can make it from solar and wind, we're on our way to really starting to change the planet. Right now, Texas is the energy capital of the world as far as renewable energy, let alone fossil fuel. They have one of the best sun exposures for solar. They have a huge amount of landmass and they have the biggest amount of wind, you know, of any other state in the nation. And all of that is going to waste right now because they're not harnessing it. They're shutting the windmills off. If they were making hydrogen with all that, putting it into the pipelines, you know, they could supply the whole entire United States off the existing infrastructure. So all the keys are there, all the solution is there, the will to do it is all we need. Well, we're paralleling you here out in Hawaii. We're doing the same, we've got the same kind of things going. We already have Marais on Island. I just got notified last week that I'm on the list for one of the first Marais. So we're just waiting for that to all step into place. We've got a small consortium started to head up some hydrogen infrastructure here. And so we're right along with you and we're in step with what you're trying to do in New Jersey and in the Northeast. For those stations in the Northeast, are they doing electrolysis or are they steam reforming or are they similar to the stations in California or what? So, you know, Air Lequid is putting these in with Toyota. So right now the short stick and the cost, the most cost effective right now is to do steam reformation. Since New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation, I mean, five stations will do the same as 30 stations in California. Plus we're on the Northeast corridor, which connects all the other states. So basically the whole Northeast corridor is the size of the state of California. So it won't take that many stations in order to put the infrastructure in. In addition to that, since we're an oil refining state, hydrogen has been made there, you know, since the turn of the century. So, you know, they're used to making hydrogen for commercial uses. And, you know, for fuel cell vehicles, it's a quick loop as almost all the refineries have a steam reformation process or a hydrogen process as part of the refining of oil petroleum, natural gas, etc. So they just throw in some pressure swing absorption and clean it up then? Yeah. OK. Yeah, steam reformation. So, you know, what they're also doing here in California is they're building a very large digester system and sin gas where they're actually making hydrogen from biomass. So they're taking all the waste in the garbage and they're going to do something like 2000 kilograms a day hydrogen that's going to be refueling all the ports, all the trucks in the ports. So, you know, we're seeing a lot of things going on in the fuel cell market where you have Nikola, which is the truck manufacturer. They just sold 800 fuel cell trucks to Anheuser-Busch and many other companies, you know, predated sales and they partnered with NEL in order to put the refueling infrastructure in. And they're promising all this by, you know, 2023. So all of this is all in motion on large and small scales. Things like graphene are going to reduce the cost of the fuel cells along with non-noble metal catalysts like nickel and cobalt. All these things are coming as material science is advanced and nanotechnology starts to get integrated into the manufacturing processes. So, you know, unlike batteries that had trillions of dollars invested in it over the last 150 years, the fuel cells at the very beginning of the learning curve. So it's, you know, kind of compared to like the first cell phone that came out and the iPhone of today. There they look nothing alike. So there's a lot of room for improvement. We're going to see it. You know, the big advantages of the fuel cells obviously is the energy density and, you know, you're not paying a weight penalty. You're not carrying around two tons of batteries where if you're doing a semi truck, six tons of batteries and something that goes bad every five years and ends up in the landfill because it's 100% non-recyclable. The fuel cell cars are 96% recyclable and that's a huge advantage. They fill up in five minutes and you're going to get 25 years of use and you're not dragging around two ton battery. The only byproduct of these cars is basically water. Every tank full of hydrogen, you produce 12 gallons of drinking water, same as the space shuttle. So all the right reasons to do this are in place. You know, as far as I'm concerned, you know, going down the path of the electric vehicle, vehicles right now are basically giving oil another 10 years and we don't have another 10 years. You know, I consider the electric vehicles a known failure because you can never put that much copper in the ground and, you know, you're not going to build the electrical grid nine times bigger just to support, you know, one vehicle. Yeah, most of the power is coming from an electric grid that runs off coal or oil and things like that anyway. Right. So, you know, hydrogen is the cure for the disease. The electric vehicles right now, you know, are the treatment. You know, there are certain diseases of the life we have to cure and energy is one of them. Yeah. And, you know, we have to cure in front of us, but we're making too much money on the treatment. It's just like the drug companies. You have to cure for cancer, you know, you're a dead man and if you have the treatment, you're golden. Yeah. Well, I tell you what, we're going to take a quick break here and come back and talk more about the actual, instead of treating the symptoms, going for the full cure in about 60 seconds. All right. All right. I'm Jay Fidel, ThinkTech. ThinkTech loves energy. I'm the host of Mina, Marco and me, which is Mina Morita, former chair of the PUC, former legislator, and Energy Dynamics, a consulting organization in energy. Marco Mangostorf is the CEO of Provision Solar in Hilo. Every two weeks, we talk about energy, everything about energy. Come around and watch us. We're on at noon on Mondays every two weeks on ThinkTech. Aloha. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggled with hunger. And hungry mornings make tired days. Grumpy days. That kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. When we're not hungry for breakfast, we're hungry for more. More ideas. More dreams. More fun. When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more. Go to hungarees.org and lend your time or your voice to make breakfast happen for kids in your neighborhood. Hey, welcome back to Stand Energy Man on my lunch hour with Mike Stritsky. Calling in from California, his second home, at least once he rebuilds a home that he just bought there. Apparently, the wildfires are going crazy again over in California. And it's time that we get our heads wrapped around how to fix that problem. So Mike, what are some of the things in California? I mean, in New Jersey that you've been working on to bring us up to speed since we talked to you last time. Well, the big things that are going on in California is now they're gearing to go to renewable energy for the hydrogen. That's a big push because you've got to pull the carbon out of the picture. Right. So things that are secondary like making it out of biomass, which is carbon that would normally go into the atmosphere anyway, is preferable over virgin carbon, where you pull it out of the ground and steam reform it from natural gas. So that's what a lot of the environmentalists are arguing about. And they're right. But you have to be able to get the machine built with the technology that's most cost-effective because new technologies are expensive until they get mass production in there and enough people behind it. So we're at the point right now where it's going to take everything. I tell all my colleagues that work for different companies that there are no competitors right now unless we start to make money. We all don't win, then nobody wins. So everybody, that's why you're seeing Toyota and Honda and Mercedes and everybody working together to get this out there to take the automobile out of the environmental equation. And we're at the point that we can actually do that. I've been driving this Toyota Mirai. I drove it to Vegas and back. There weren't enough refueling stations. So I brought my own hydrogen with me to fill it. We're using the same hydrogen infrastructure right now that they're using to do the forklift. My personal feeling is that if everything goes down to 5,000 pounds rather than 10,000 pounds, you're going to get this technology out there a lot quicker because it's going to be at a pressure that's much more manageable for the technical, general, gas distribution population that they're used to working with. How open is Toyota for that? Because I know that Chris McWinnie was trying to convince Toyota that his system can do 5,000 PSI and do a half fill for a car. But Toyota was kind of resisting that a little bit. Are they open now? I don't know if they're open now, but I think that this is going to happen with or without whatever Toyota feels because, obviously, because of the cost difference and because they're putting in infrastructure for these forklifts. I mean, really, all you have to do is add one more tank. As far as hydrogen goes, whenever you double the pressure, you double the storage. So yeah, obviously, they want to get as much in there as possible. And they want to keep the refueling infrastructure as a specialty company. And I'm not in total agreement with letting them have a monopoly on that. By going to 5,000 pounds, it opens it up to a lot more players. And it opens it up to home refueling at that point as well. So I'm building a home refueling station at my house right now that we're going to be able to do four Mirage. And it's going to be a portable station off my toolbox technology. So I'm filling all my Toyota Mirage with solar hydrogen from the Hydrogen House project. And that makes a difference. I have the only hydrogen refueling station in New Jersey right now to fill these vehicles. And I probably have the only one in the country that's doing it off of solar hydrogen. With the exception of Stone Edge Farms. Stone Edge Farms does have a solar hydrogen refueling station using Christmas equipment. Hey, so how much solar do you have on your house in New Jersey? And how much battery storage and how much hydrogen storage at what pressure to give us an idea of what a home setup would be like. So yeah, I have 27 kilowatts at the house, which I backfeed quite a bit. I have three or four hydrogen vehicles of various vintages. So I have a hydrogen fuel cell lawnmower. I have a hydrogen fuel cell Polaris Ranger. I have a hydrogen fuel cell boat. And I have two hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, all of which I power off of my 27 kilowatts worth of solar. I have one proton electrolyzer that generates 2.2 kilograms a day. I have 120 days in storage. I store about 125 kilograms in my system at any one time. The house runs on an energy cycle. So during the spring, I use my 27 kilowatts to fill my 12,000 gallon propane tanks with low pressure hydrogen. By the end of June, I'm finished. I backfeed with my solar back to the grid 25 of the 27 kilowatts till the end of September. And then I'm neutral for the fall. And then I siphon off some of the hydrogen at night for my geothermal heat pump that heats the house during the winter time. And then the cycle starts all over again. The battery storage I have is 1 and 1 half days worth of storage. And there's 120 days in hydrogen. So basically, for all the short round trip storage, we use the batteries, which is what batteries does best. They do short high current storage. The fuel cell doesn't kick on until it hits 20% depth of discharge on the battery. So we get very long lives out of the stupid lead-acid batteries, which is what I have in the house. And I've had there since 2004, the exact same battery pack. So if you treat things right, everything works perfect. And it's been 13 years now. My house has been off the grid, and we've done others as well. 2015, we went public. We're the only hydrogen fuel cell company in the world, integrator company in the world that does integration. And we've done celebrity homes and just regular residences for people using our toolbox technology. So all of this is happening in real time. So we're looking for people that are going to vote with their checkbooks, people who can afford to do it, people who want to be energy independent, people who care about the planet. And we need them to purchase this equipment and make a statement. The ones we've sold so far, these are people that want to lead by example and lead by doing something, not talking about doing something. You can have the best ideas in the world, and they're dead brain cells unless you act on them. So this whole life is about what you do, not what you talk about doing or fail to do. Right. So let's spend, we got about a minute or so left. Let's spend the last minute talking about Stonehenge Farms and Craig Wooster's work there. He passed away a few weeks ago and maybe kind of highlighting his contributions to that end. Yeah, Craig was basically another mate. We basically walked along the same lines. I've known Craig for three and a half years and I took a trip with him when we drove the, our Toyota Mirage down to Vegas and back last year for SPI. Your viewers want to check it out. It's a front page on my website. But Craig was a doer. He put together the Stonehenge microgrid project. They had Ford Toyota Mirage. They had a 25 kilogram storage and 12 kilogram electrolyzer driving their hydrogen storage. End of it, they had saltwater batteries. They had a capstone micro turbine. They were experimenting with everything. He operated his nonprofit the same way I operated mine. We made sure that all the projects that we worked on and completed, we taught the student interns so that we passed this technology on. Now, whatever gas that's left in my tank and Craig's tank, he devoted to passing the technology and paying it forward. He was a great pioneer. He was a very unselfish person. He was very smart and he was very devoted to the cause of bringing renewable energy to the next generation and to leave something behind and teach his kids and grandkids the right thing to do in life. He taught people, he showed people how to live. He didn't tell them how to live. And he was lucky enough to have a magic load over at the Stonehenge Farms funding the whole thing which was absolutely great. I was up at the memorial service and said a few words and he was very much loved and he'll be very much missed. Yeah. Well, I'm really proud to have had the chance to meet him and I know we're all gonna miss him and we appreciate his contributions towards effort that all of us are really pushing. And is Stonehenge pretty much safe from the current fires that are going on? I haven't really checked. I know there's been fires in Northern California. I knew they had one of the farms burnt down last year. So, when you live in Southern Caler or Northern California, you're always subject to fires. It's one of the things you live with. It's like living in a hurricane zone. Yeah. So what's your next steps there in California for your hydrogen house? I knew you're kind of at a setback right now. What are your plans for pulling together some funds? We're gonna be opening up a hydrogen house in Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway. We've already secured the building and we're in the process right now of building all of the duplicate equipment I have at my hydrogen house to move out there. We've already been in contact with Pepperdine to get student interns involved in helping me run the nonprofit out here and building some of the equipment that we'll be doing demonstrations in California. So I'm gonna kind of pick up some of the slack that Craig left behind to keep the legacy moving forward. So that's been a big focus. Like I said, back at my home in New Jersey, we're doing student outreach programs. We're working with the public service gas and electric internship program. So we'd like to get 27 interns involved in this type of technology. So we're teaching them how to fish, not how to eat fish. So I'm continuing those programs. So it's gonna be education, outreach, demonstration projects on both coasts. So we're gonna start at either end and work through the middle. And we're incorporating new technology as we go as it becomes available. So we're looking for as many people as we can to sponsor the effort. So if any of your listeners are so inclined, they can go to the hydrogen house project, make a donation or get involved in some of the stuff we're doing. Terrific, Mike. And we appreciate the work you're doing, the work being done at Stone Edge Farms. And we'll keep tracking you and talk to you in a few more months and get caught up on how things are going out there on the West Coast as well as we recover from this. But thanks for your time today. I appreciate it, especially with everything going on out there that you could spend some time with us today. And you'll be in our prayers with all the folks in California on these wildfires. And you're right, we need to be focusing on hydrogen and coming up with a real solution here quick. We need to cure the disease, not treat it forever. Yeah, well, thanks again, Mike. And we're gonna sign off for now and see everybody next week on Stan Energyman. And Allah, until then.