 Hey, Aloha, and welcome to Stand Energy Man here on Think Tech Hawaii. Stan Osterman here, and surviving the coronavirus lockdown, as it were, but it's nice to know that the governor is starting to loosen things up and we can get back to normal. I'm really looking forward to it. Anyway, related to disasters, you know, this whole coronavirus thing started me thinking about energy crisis and, you know, things that can happen. So today's guest is my favorite electrical engineer, Ryan Wubbins, who is joining us. He's worked with me a lot on some microgrid, renewable energy microgrid projects and one of the smartest guys I know on the technical end of microgrids and renewable energy microgrids. And we're going to just kind of go through, you know, what you could expect if there was an energy pandemic. So, Ryan, welcome to the show. Good to have you back on again. I used to have you on regularly and you got so busy, it's hard to get back. Hi, Stan. Thanks for having me back. So, you know, we got this pandemic thing going on and most people have kind of gotten pretty much overwhelmed by it in some cases, but we still had food. We still had water. We still had sewer. We still had garbage collection. We still had mail. You know, there's a lot of things that are actually still pretty normal. But most people don't really think about a pandemic level event on the grid. You know, what would happen? So, you know, why don't you kind of give us some of your thoughts on what could cause an event like that? Sure, I think we could go through a number of events that could cause the energy pandemic. I think that's quite the term that you're using there. It's scary to think about in some senses. So, in our current state, you're lucky. We're all lucky that fortunate that we've had those resources, those utility resources that we've come to rely on so well, energy, water, just basic necessities keeping that food chain coming back into our stores and available for use. The current pandemic or a viral pandemic, let's just start with that one. Could that cause or parlay into an energy pandemic? We certainly don't see that happening in our current state or in our current environment, let's say. But if it were worse, we could get to these cases where an energy pandemic starts to happen. And when I say it could happen, let's then start with how? If this was a much worse sickness or something that puts people out of work or out of physical capability for four or five, six weeks and just really kept them at home, and this was, let's say, more contagious, taking people, we're able to keep our essential workers back at work right now. That would include the people that are maintaining, operating the grid, maintaining, operating the power plants, bringing the transmission and distribution lines and substations back up online when they do have faults. If those people then start to become sick and aren't able to get back to work and we could get into an employment shortage to support those efforts, that could cause your energy pandemic. That could be one of them. It's a little bit sneaky how that virus could get into the energy lines in that way just by how we maintain it. Because it is still a level of manual control that it takes to operate this grid. So I'd start with that one. The current environment, be it if it was a lot worse, that could suck the power right out of the lines. Well, what if we had more solar wind intermittent renewables on the grid, you know, Hawaii Electric's kind of nearing a max point here in Oahu with intermittent renewables, as I understand it anyway. Is it possible that with that manpower shortage and the challenges stabilizing the grid with all the renewables on there, could that exacerbate the situation? Yeah, I think it would go in two ways. You would look at your supply chain. If you were to look at a fuel supply chain being disrupted to the point where we could not get diesel fuel to the islands, that would cause it. That would be a big problem because a lot of our fuel, a lot of our energy does come from diesel fuel. So if the supply chain starts to fail and there's a lot of people involved with making that supply chain happen, then that's going to, that will start to have an impact over time. Whereas your solar and your winds, that supply chain for fuel is constant. It's there. Now, when I say exasperated in two different ways, let me go into that a little bit because when you have solar and wind, there is still a level of manual control that is happening, dealing with the reactions of the inadvertent supply of that energy. So we then need to get better. We need to get a little bit more smarter, a little more automated to deal with those in times of a low employment standpoint. And that's not easy to maintain or just all of a sudden turn on. It's not something that we just have. That's when we start talking about upgrading the distribution network and getting smarter technologies on the grid to allow those types of things to happen a little bit more autonomously. So it could be hard, but possible. So that's kind of a soft entry to an outage that could be lasting a couple of weeks. But there's some scenarios where you can actually have some equipment. Disruption, actually equipment trauma, like say the worst case scenario that I could think of would be an electromagnetic pulse attack on a grid. And both Russia and China have said they have that capacity with an above ground nuclear weapon or something that would basically anything with a computer in it and anything electrical would suffer some kind of physical damage. In that case, say, for example, substations and transformers were destroyed, at least a good portion of them. What kind of impact would that have on a grid, particularly Hawaii's grid? An EMP would be pretty devastating to any grid. Macro, micro, the mainland and Hawaii. Very few things are going to survive and a true and effective EMP that is targeting small electronics per se. The thing that an EMP, when you say we're going to take out all small electronics, the substations and the big equipment and transmissions lines that we see, those don't have a large impact because they're just blocks of metal. There's not a lot going on with that. But it's all of the smarts, all of the protection and the controls that allow us to operate this remotely. The protection controls in there that make sure, OK, when there is a problem, the tree pose on the line that we're clearing that in an appropriate amount of time before a greater problem starts to arise. All of these devices are now very much semiconductor based. It's not like the breakers in your house where it's just a mechanical switch. They used to be. But we've gone away from that and for good reasons that we've done that. So the EMP that takes out all those small things. You're not just replacing them off the shelf right away. And another reason I'm replacing it is because if the factories that build them got whacked, they don't even have any that you can go out and replace. Yeah, we have computers making computers. We have computers making computers and everything on the shelf that they all expire. There's no supply chain in that sense to replace these units. And I can't even begin to predict the amount of time. Now, that is what I would consider an effective targeted EMP and the effect that it could have. When you look at those other big, what I'll call long lead items, things that take a really long time to make and engineer out the transformers, those would have to be targeted a little bit differently. And that's no secret to anybody that these big transformers, when they go out, very critical breakers that protect a very large generator, those can go out and cause disruptions. And we're talking long outages. The grid is set up to take on outages in certain areas. It has levels of protection and redundancy for itself. But when you start taking out multiple units, you start to have problems. The EMP would be one that's going to knock out. I mean, most people's toasters can talk to them now, right? So your toaster is not going to work, so heavy that we want to out. About 20 years ago, we had an earthquake that actually was a wildfire that caused one or two substations to shut down. And it starts a cascading effect with the whole system. Where one substation goes down and the load shifts to another substation, which overloaded it and then it shut down. And then after that, it was just everything went downhill till the whole island was blacked out. It actually happened on, I think, day before Christmas. And it was kind of interesting to watch because, like, we had power out in Kailua, but I was on my way to the airport. And I could still see all the lights out and have a beach doing fine. By the time I got to the airport, the airport and have a beach and the whole rest of the island was out of power. And when the island shuts down, even if there's no damage to transformers, what's the what's the timeline to get the grid back up just on this island? I'm not sure if he goes current emergency response times that they have, but it it it does take time because it's a systematic approach where it's not like there's a giant light switch that we can just turn on and turn everything back on at once. So this is a it's a systematic approach where some power plants are able to start up their own areas. Some power plants can't even start themselves up. They actually need to rely on another power plant to to work its way over and start powering up the neighborhoods and the transmission lines and the substations as it gets over to that next power plant. And then it says, OK, I got power now. I'm going to start up. So the reason it does take time is because it's a it is a highly technical process that that takes time and it depends on which resources are available. So if you lost some key substations, routing yourselves around that, it's not a it's not always, let's say, an easy and prescriptive procedure on how to do that. But could be, you know, it could be ours and very, very difficult ones. If you were to take out some key lines could could be longer. Absolutely. So it's been a while since we've had a major hurricane or tsunami or even a really bad earthquake or anything that would knock power out. But what are some of the things you've experienced? Because you've been here, but you've also been on the mainland, you know, on hurricanes and stuff and work with hospital systems in Texas and setting them up to survive. What are some of the things that maybe people on Honolulu aren't thinking of when it comes to, you know, what's what could happen? Like we were talking earlier, you live on the 34th floor of a high rise in Honolulu, what are some of the things that would be impacting you besides say you don't have electricity? Yeah, it's starting with electricity is a problem. And then we can go on to the to the next utilities. But when you look at extended power outages, we're very well at taking into account the the short power outages. Now, you go into the social media, everyone complains about it if the lights blink. But we can handle that. We're we're we're apt at dealing with that big north wind that starts knocking down some power lines and some trees. We're out of power for an hour. We're out of power for three, four or five hours. We can still we're still able to deal with that. When we start to see the issues is what happens if you're out of power for one day? OK, you can probably figure that out. You know, how do I just not have power for a day? Now, I'll take it to three, take it out a week. Can you be without power for? Do you know how to survive without power for a week? And there are some cases we can look at. Now, we've built different, let's call microgrid systems, different critical power systems, let's say along that golf course, we've got that hospital that it is. It's not just generating its own power that that you have to consider. It's those fuel supply lines that you have to consider. It's all the other utilities are do you have water to supply that that critical facility? And what are you doing to to prevent that natural disaster from affecting you? So in a golf course situation where you're lying low, what is your blood walls built up for? I mean, we've had facilities sitting in the middle of basically a river with its with its blood walls up, generating its own power and controlling its own cooling and having its own supply water. Now, take that mentality and put that to your house and ask those same questions. And I think that's where we're going to get some interesting answers. Definitely something we can we can talk about right now or right after the break, if that's more appropriate. But OK, well, like one of the things that we talked about was if you do live in a high rise, you obviously won't have an elevator to use unless your building has emergency power. And now you take it out to seven days a week, a week and a half, two weeks. If they have their own generator, maybe they're running low on diesel fuel and if we don't have diesel fuel coming in and you talked about the supply chain, everybody's competing in the hospitals, get priority, the water pumping stations that give you your potable water. They get a priority. The sewage system gets a priority. Yes, it's taken and move the sewage away. Otherwise, you have it overflowing near shore and in the streets and canals and things like that. So when you start to have those kind of impacts you know, people have a lot more to think about than just a I don't have the light for tonight or I can't watch the movies or turn my computer on or charge my cell phone. But you mentioned the break. It's about time for a 60 second break, so we'll turn it back over to the studio and we'll talk to everybody in about 60 seconds. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and finding greatness. I feature a wide range of amazing guests who share valuable insights about how going beyond the lines leads to success in everything you do in life. I'm looking forward to you joining me every Monday at 11 a.m. Aloha. Hey, welcome back to Stand the Energy Man and we're talking to Ryan Wubbins, my very favorite electrical engineer, about, you know, hey, speaking of pandemics and disasters, are we really ready for an energy disaster? You know, we understand the implications and are we doing all that we can for ourselves depending on where we live and, you know, how we're going to get through more than just a couple hours or a couple of days of no power, but potentially weeks, hopefully not more than months without power. But, you know, Ryan, you live out on the east side near the North Shore, and what are some of the things you do to prepare for a possible disaster of any kind, but particularly electrical damage? Yeah, sure. So we do tend to lose power on a fairly regular basis out here that power line Cam Highway is a fun target for some people in vehicles, unfortunately. So from a power standpoint, when we look at our solar installation, the nice thing that we can look at now is that when you include it with a battery for that grid storage plan, some of the battery manufacturers are allowing you to have an emergency circuit that comes off of the battery. So maybe you have two circuits that you can run through your house or transfer from your house over to that emergency side. So even when there is a power outage, that battery, if it still has its storage or it was generated from that day, can give you some relief and some amount of power to get through this time that's a low. So in a hurricane, let's say we're out of power for three, four days, I may be able to keep my refrigerator running, to keep my router running that provides me the internet and the information that I need to know what's going on, because your cell phone may be working for that first day. And the cell towers, they're very resilient, so they'll probably be able to stay on. But you're getting your information from your cell phone. Now when your cell phone dies, because we're playing on it, because we're bored, how are you recharging that? So if you have one of these grid storage batteries, make sure that you're trying to find one that allows you to have that emergency backup as well. And it may go out because they don't last forever, but you can always look forward to a sunny day on the next day and get yourself back running with a little bit of power. On the water side, we look at that as well. How we carry about 45 gallons right now of clean water. That's just something that we have a habit of doing ourselves. A rain barrel on the side with a 55 gallon drum. And we just use that because we have lost water a couple of times on a main break. We've been out about eight hours last year. We're out at once. And the line got back up and running very pretty quickly considering, but if you're out of water for two or three days, you got to think about flushing your toilets and when and how you're using that. But a simple rain barrel fills up so fast that you can use that as what we call gray water, dirty water, and you can flush toilets with that or use a filter from a camping kit and start using that for drinking. But those two combined get us a lot of our utility use to keep us prepared. Well, I grew up in a time when wine electric had a lot more power outages on the windward side than just the occasional car running into a utility pole, especially before President Obama started coming out here for his vacations. All of a sudden our power got really reliable here in Kailua for some strange reason. But I'll tell you what I have here at my house. I have a 55 gallon rainwater collection. Comes right off of my roof. And it fills up really fast with a couple like evening showers. I have 80 gallons of gasoline in my boat. I have 30 gallons of gasoline in my truck. And I have 20 gallons of gasoline and five gallon Jerry cans in my shed. I have three generators. I have an alternator, a 9000 watt generator, and a 2000 watt generator. And so I can generate power for myself and my neighbors. All I want is gasoline and oil to make sure the stuff keeps running. A trick that I've learned though, because I have some property on the big island that's not only off the grid, it has no solar, no running water, no nothing. But I've found that you can get by with an amazingly little bit of power if you get one of those little jump starter things for your truck or your car that's able to boost your starter up. And what I do is I just keep it charged off my truck. And it's got two USB ports. I can charge my cell phone off of that. And then when I go out to make and run an errand or something, I plug it back into my truck and charge it back up. And at night it can run a couple lights for me and charge my cell phone and charge my... I have a little mosquito lamp, a little bug zapper that actually runs off the thing too. And it comes in really handy. That's just a real small battery. And you could also just keep batteries around. Like I have an LED lighting system at the place. And I just have a little miniature 12 volt battery that I charge once in a while at a friend's house. And it's enough to keep that LED light lit for a week straight if I don't turn it off. And so it's actually quite capable. And so there's a lot of little things you can do. But like you say, it's important if you live in a high rise and you're not fortunate to have two cars with gasoline in them and a boat and things like that. Then besides the elevator not working, most of the water in high rises are stored on the roof. And after that water supply is done, no flushing toilets, no drinking water. It can be pretty tough on top of hiking up and down 30 flights of stairs to bring your food up there if you can find it. So there's certainly a lot to think about it. I mean, this pandemic has been kind of an eye-opener for a lot of people. But I think it brought home the reality that these kind of things can happen on a pretty short notice. And the pandemic kind of we rolled into it. It wasn't like an earthquake or something. It just happens and suddenly everything is down. So I hope it's kind of gotten people's attention that they really need to start thinking about, you know, the stuff the civil defense always preaches. You know, making sure you have a communications out plan or a re-joint plan for your family if you're all spread out around the island and you need to join up. A bug out bag like you have with a water purifier in it and enough food to eat for a few days, medications, if you take medications, things like that. I hope people start taking it seriously now that we've kind of had the slow version of a pandemic. And like I say, really kind of get ready for the worst case, which is if we run out of energy. Because with today's technology, it all relies on energy and mostly electric energy. And I don't think we've ever really been given a low blow of power outage to last more than a couple of days. And I think that would really get everybody's attention. Yeah, I think it would. You say, well, that this is a nice little awareness or awakening to what may be possible. And being energy conscious, something that you and I have spoken about time and time again is the best way to, you know, maybe to approach yourself going off the grid or what can you do to boost your own renewable agenda. And the easiest thing anybody can always do, which actually helps you in times like this is be energy conscious, be aware of your load, lowering your load, your impact, your requirements that you need from the grid. That is the first best thing you can do before you start going investing in these big things. These little things that you're talking about just having batteries on hand can help you go a long way if you're energy conscious and able to live on some under some different load. Another thing, since you're bragging about how much power you have, I didn't know this was a competition. I do have propane for my cooking, and that certainly helps you in those times where when I lose power, I can still fire up the range and start cooking. And then that's helped us out before. That's a little bit less of a demand. And as we get more renewable, I don't know where I think our requirements and our demand for electrical power will go up even as we have this level of energy consciousness. But hey, we all figured out how to not use toilet paper for a few days. So maybe we could figure out how to not use power for a few days, too. I never have figured out how to not use toilet paper. But I was down to about three rolls when I finally found another stash at Costco after three weeks. That was bad timing on my part. I'd stocked up about six months ago. And I was hitting the end of my supply when this thing hit. When toilet paper and paper towels ran out, I was in Hurt City. I was really running low on both of them. Yeah, we've kind of gotten a little taste of how bad things could get. And this is kind of a good wake-up call for all of us to start thinking about taking our hurricane prep and our earthquake prep and our lava flow prep, especially on the Big Island tsunami prep. And potentially just electrical outage. Like I said, the last big one that happened island wide was caused by a wildfire on the west side that took out a couple of major power lines and caused a ripple effect through the whole grid. So we really need to think about how we prepare for these things. Yeah, being that we are competing a little bit, I have propane, but it means I have to go cook outside. I have a gas grill and a Coleman stove that can work on white gas or propane, if I want to run both of those. Well, I'm not going to let you get away with that. I have a charcoal. I cook with wood there. Oh, that's right. You got your egg, right? I got a big smoker there where you cook out on the weekend. I'm not going to let you win that one. Just really try and get the last words here. If I could speak for another minute, you might not get the closing sentence, but I don't know what I'm going to say. I have to hand it back to you. No, we're actually pretty much at the end of time here, but I want to thank you for your insight. And I think it's something that, again, we just take it for granted. Take for granted that when you turn the switch on, he goes always there. The power is always there. And we really don't know what we have until we don't have it anymore. And then all of a sudden, it's like, yikes, not what. And I think a grid outage is one of those things that if it lasts more than a couple of days, it really, really starts to get people's attention. So anyway, Ryan, thanks again for being on the show. And we have to have you on more often. You have to have you on at least once a month. And I think we need to do a little bit more than that. Yeah, we'll have to find some time back here. Thanks for having me back. This was a lot of fun. It's a good time talking to you. Okay. And I'll wrap it up for Stanley Energy Man this week. And until next week, aloha.