 Okay, we're back for a live at Stink Tech and it's Hawaii the state of clean energy and we have a nigga-watt moment today. We're always happy to have a nigga-watt moment. So Ray Starling and I are going to talk to Keith Block of Hawaii Energy about a special project at UH which is kind of like a pilot project I guess in on the long the way to net zero at the university. Very exciting. Tell us about the project Keith. Well it's their new frog building so flexible response to ongoing growth. That's one of those great acronyms. Right that's why yeah I love that one but the idea being if I have a modular you know already pre-designed classroom and I have growth and I need to put a new classroom in I can just drop in a classroom already pre-designed that's net zero so it means you know you don't have to worry about your infrastructure you know being able to handle new construction and all because the building itself is actually net zero so really exciting. We brought a video of the grand opening and it's got some great technologies in it really thick double pane windows so highly insulated high efficiency fans to move air so that you feel cooler without the air conditioner. It's really designed for natural ventilation so it's it does have an air conditioner but the air conditioner you actually have to want the air conditioner you got to go manually turn it on and it only stays on for an hour and after it goes off you got to decide again is it the oh here's the video right now okay so there's a high efficiency fan so move a lot of air with very little energy so hopefully you feel cool without the air conditioner on those are the lights those are led lights that are very tunable they dim when they're close to the window see this one close to the window you got natural light coming in so those ones will dim while the ones in the middle of the room will be on brighter so that you can see where you're not getting any outdoor light in there's David Lassner there he is yeah he was he must love this project yeah he was talking about the goal for the whole u.h. system but this is a great step in the right direction because it's a net energy zero that's the outside the building it's not a really big building but you can see it was designed for natural ventilation here's a display that's in the classroom that allow the students to actually see how much energy the classroom is using at any one point in time and whether it's you know lighting or is it energy being used by the air conditioner or the fans or so it has a lot of stuff in there for the students to actually learn from the buildings as well but really designed to be comfortable without air conditioning so good job you know this is the kind of thing we'd love to see at the university and hnei hawaii natural energy institute is involved in this yeah they were the ones that got the grant that allowed them to do this program so the grant came from the office of naval research um you know it was sort of expensive because it's a one-off right now but the idea is you know once we prove the concept then it's just a modular solution so anytime i need a new classroom drop one of these in i don't have to think about it and it comes to energy efficiency not limited to u-h could be high schools could be elementary schools absolutely absolutely yeah that's the key the idea of modular means not only is it energy efficient but you can move it around and get the same efficiency anywhere right you can take it from one school to the other one island to the other whatever and they're talking throughout the pacific base and you know so go on you know any place that has you know a need for a new classroom but you know maybe is concerned about infrastructure can drop in a classroom that's net zero so you're watching it like a hawk right yeah well we were we were pretty excited about it so you know i was like kid in the candy store out there for me because it's got all this cool technology so it was very exciting to go out and actually take a look at these classrooms okay ray your witness i got a question you said it was net zero i know it's very efficient but uh you do use some electricity so how do you produce that is panels on the top yeah and and that was the one flying the ointment right now they don't have the panels on right now so yeah but the idea is designed to take care of its 100 of its needs right so the yeah the pv system once they get it installed will completely offset the the energy that they use throughout the the rest of the day or throughout the night in that classroom okay great and that'll be that once they put the pv on getting that zero we can achieve that right now with this one more element of the the pv on the roof right and and two classrooms that actually prove that point you know and and they've got a tremendous amount of metering on it so they know this is true you know they're studying it quite a bit great keith thanks for coming down showing it to us it's not a great project thanks for bringing the video to yeah no thanks for inviting me we'll see you again soon right i hope so keith clock hawaii energy we're gonna take a short break we come back we're gonna we're gonna talk about stem we're gonna talk about black boxes we'll talk about storage all those really important things to put it in the utility together with the homeowner would be right back aloha my name is reg baker and i'm the host of business in hawaii with reg baker we're a show of the broadcast live every thursday from two to two thirty we highlight success stories in hawaii of both businesses and individuals we learn their secrets to success which is always valuable i hope to see you on our next show aloha aloha i'm shantel sevill the host of the savvichick show you can watch the show every wednesday at 11 a.m. honolulu time and enjoy how to be inspired empowered if you're a woman or girl everyone is welcome but it's really dedicated to you and we look forward to seeing you you can also find us on thinktech hawaii dot com see you soon aloha hello this is martin disping i want to get you get excited about my new show which is humane architecture for 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to share it with you and help you live your dreams look forward to seeing you on the show aloha hey style energy man here make sure you tune in on my lunch hour every friday from noon until 12 30 at least maybe i'll go a little long if you got good stuff to to share with you but we'll talk about energy all kinds of energy my favorite is hydrogen and my favorite other favorites transportation and hydrogen but we'll talk about all kinds of energy be with us every friday at noon stand energy man aloha start okay we're back we're live that's ray starling how about a shot of ray there's ray co-host oh yeah here in hawaii the state of clean energy and our special guest tonight ladies before man dora nakafuji from hawaii electric she's an engineer can you tell and tadgloth yay uh from stem which is a company that's very sophisticated programming black boxes things connects all the pieces which we need so badly and i think you have her attention we try to we're trying to make it simple not not too complicated okay that's why i'm going to let you talk first what is it it's you know what we do is a battery system that lowers the peakiness of the electricity use of a building so that that building is a lower electricity bill but we also make sure that the batteries that we put into buildings are used by the grid and help that building owner become a better grid citizen so our battery systems are always serving two purposes they serve a purpose for their host and a purpose for the grid b gc bgc better grid citizen better grid citizens you heard it here it's all in the software right it is that you know that's um that sounds easy but it's that's kind of the name of the game in the storage industry is what we call stacking value streams how do you do two things at once and you know actually show up to deliver each thing you said you were going to do uh there's a lot of statistics we got a little team of statisticians and people just you know doing math in the back room trying to make sure that that happens right and we don't over commit to either either customer well you're walking a tightrope we're going to get to hawaiian electrics you're walking a tightrope because you're dealing with it's mostly real time even if it's a pilot it's real time and you you can't afford to fall off this tightrope you got to be right you can't make mistakes because they'll be on you if you make mistakes so how do you avoid that do you sleep at night dad i do luckily we we have this thing called the cloud and it just takes care of everything it's on 24 hours a day oh well so but uh that that is you know i'm i'm only half joking our systems are um they're all fully automatic and they're run by a local control computer but they're also in connection to the cloud so when they're just operating for that business they're under control of their host computer but when there's a grid event we have a cloud-based operating system we say hey that the grid needs support from from all the batteries that are available and it takes a check and it these batteries are available okay we're going to have those batteries respond to this grid event so one more thing now that we've established this is a software play where does the software live and and what and what components are peripheral units is it connected yeah there's software at every level so um you know all the way down to there's a battery management system batteries have to be babysat and box fed and yeah down to the box and there's a control computer at the box if you have multiple batteries you have one control computer telling all those batteries what to do that's all on site and then you have a cloud layer that sees all the battery systems and is also talking to the utility box yep another box you understand what he's talking about right absolutely it's all about the box how does this look you know the part of view of the utility not everybody can do what dad's doing not everybody can do what stem's doing it i know you guys don't you know don't take it you know lightly uh when somebody comes in and tries to control the system and make everything work right so you have a certain amount of you know confidence in him otherwise he wouldn't be here i think so am i right i think she's trusting her software guys are not here she has the on off switch she has a very good show and actually and i think this is a very important point is that the partnership that we have with stem and this pilot is to demonstrate that in order to do this kind of integration and the sophisticated integration of all of these behind the meter distributed storage systems it takes the intelligence that he just explained so that it can be coordinated with the grid if it's not coordinated and it's just coming on and off there's a lot of issues right and then it's all born on the back of the utility where we don't necessarily have that visibility down to the individual customers homes and frankly i don't think they want us to so there is a little bit of kind of an interplay between our system and their system and then also the customer who's really going to determine how that box that storage device is actually going to be forecasted and and used and then for our side which is a grid responsive service how we use all of them in an aggregate and so we really need that about status availability and control from their systems well you know what why do i i'm flying to italy okay and i go to the sistine chapel and i see michael angelo up there in the sistine chapel with the fingers touching that's what i see the side is wine electric this side is touch touching you saw it here on think tank it takes a partnership the utility and the technology companies do need to work together we've got a big goal ahead and and you can't do it without partnerships across that line oh that's true you know and it's where we're in a new territory it's a frontier kind of thing and the important thing is to make the consolidation really work a collaboration collaboration really work it's all three and so you guys are at the cutting edge really in terms of putting putting it all together and i think until we do put it all together we will not be able to reach nirvana or the sistine chapel uh so ray what do you got to say what kind of issues have you run into i know you're really early in this process but what kind of issues did you not expect that you've run into well with with um you know there are issues across the board there's always challenges and doing something new and so with the customers with commercial customers a lot of the issue is around their expectations um when we put batteries into buildings commercial customers sometimes think they're going to have a backup battery they sometimes think that their bill be cut in half overnight and it's a lot more like energy efficiency what we're doing it's more like hey i put in a better light bulb i saved a little bit um i didn't have to do anything i didn't give anything up so so setting folks expectations about what that really is the the commercial systems that we do just yeah that that's an expectation issue home batteries are different home batteries you might get battery backup you might you might be able to connect your pv system then you couldn't without a battery so there's there's a real difference between what we do for commercial customers and what you're seeing with batteries in homes so i that that's probably one of the main things that we have to do is kind of educate our customers as we bring them along but but zoom out and go go to the utility level now you know what it seems to me is that this is on the path to making a macro system that utility can can by which it can integrate renewables without a whole lot of risk which is the job really in going forward so you're talking about one customer at a time but i think door is talking about how do we make the whole the whole inch a lot of work together everybody everybody together now yeah and and who's going to be making that dance work is it going to be you and then selling that product ultimate product to the to the utility or is it going to be the utility orchestrating it all well i think at the end of the day the utility has still the responsibility for orchestrating it all and managing kind of the interactions from these distributed resources coming back so it's up to kind of the you know the aggregators of the vendor partners that are providing us this information to give us that information in a timely fashion in the way that is responsive to the customer as well as our system needs so it is a partnership i don't think it's something that we can totally say oh stem can do it alone and frankly it also includes the customer so this requires customers interaction as well because it's at their side so it's a way to kind of bring that partnership not only with the utility but the customers engage in this process as well because every one of them we went to them together and said hey we'd like to try this process project it can have savings for you but it'll also help us manage the grid better so they all signed up and i think that was really um it's just it was a statement of confidence it was a very nice really a three-way partnership isn't it's you guys plus it's the customers and they got to buy in and in our state if they don't buy in you know you got a headache so you have to show them you have to show them that it's going to work it's not going to hurt them it's going to help them in some degree even if it doesn't provide battery storage overnight there's still other benefits and you know it's a spreadsheet affair good grid citizens being being a good grid citizen is part of what motivated a lot of these customers to be a part of this bgc there you go and i i also want to just mention because the partnership goes beyond just the three-way we also had a lot of assistance with the initial pilot with hoi energy accelerator as well as the u.s department of energy sunshot program and for our seams for shines project so i think we're extending this not only on oahu with our customer base but also across our monoelectric and hoi electric light systems as well yeah you know you asked about kind of impediments and i think one is certainly that there's complexity to the utility to having small storage devices all over the grid and trying to use those and so that's where stem comes in as we can say okay we're going to remove that complexity we'll simplify it we'll show you just the total so you don't have to say well i want a little bit out of that battery and a little bit out of that one a little bit out of that one we'll figure out which batteries have how much we'll deal with that complexity but where the utility does have complexity is we're not going to be the only aggregators i'd love to say we are that was my next question there will be others so you know you have a partnership which is defined by a certain geographical area or certain clients i don't know if it's geographical or by client um but that does not exclude other aggregators are coming in they will also have to get your confidence story you're going to have to be happy with that but but i see in this this map we're drawing here there's a number of stem type organizations and they all have to follow certain protocols and standards and you're and really you said before Ray said who's going to manage this well of course the utility can imagine how else you know who else could do this you are the center of all of this as you have been and you remain the center for a hundred and twenty years yeah let's be accurate shall we sorry yeah so so as you see i mean i don't know do you have other aggregators who are may i say competitors for stem right now uh or do you see them coming in the future how does that work yes we we do definitely see more of these intelligent devices with an aggregator that has the wherewithal to provide us the information to manage these systems we are revamping our entire demand response programs part of the der 2.0 so there's a lot more things coming and just under our pilot work that we're doing today it's giving us the confidence that folks can do this and i think we want to be able to show you know this partnership across the the systems including our partner and to including our customers can actually work so what we're trying to do really is to develop the logistics all the all the technical issues to making this happen seamlessly and be able to encourage more um kind of responsible grids citizens responsible as well right so that we can we have we can have more responsive distributed systems out on our on our grids well i think it's it's really important to the the whole initiative because this is like you know we've been through the whole next era thing uh we've been through a lot of delay we've been through i don't know what do you call it momentum or confusion or whatever and now we're at the other side of that we're coming out the other side and this is a big thing this is the kind of thing which will give people you know encouragement and we'll tell them things are going well and that we're you know there are other things too i have to say but things are going well we get with with with finding out how to do this now bring it all the pieces together it's a different kind of grid to have to have resources out there at customer sites that can generate and can store energy in this distributed fashion you think about the change in the computing system when you went from the central computers and you dial up over your tiny little you know 14 kb modem to have all that computing happen centrally and send you the the answer you needed and now the internet is this this web you know where the computing powers all at the edge and the same kind of metaphor extends to what we're seeing so that really implies a transformation you've got to have uh think energy moving in in two directions and and someone's got to be managing that and and balancing it and keeping the system stable there'll be other technologies in there besides you know traditional batteries there'll be hot water heaters with new kinds of controls electric cars electric cars smart homes with smart with smart appliances so there's going to be a lot more things out there that can respond to signals but the coordination of all that becomes the next challenge and we have to do this in a very secure fashion so a lot of all this this effort is essentially our model for developing yes that future yes all the security and all the interface to the customer side and all of their systems we have to work this all out and we are working this all out so it's it's really a positive direction in transformation yeah and we have to let the public know that's what we love when you guys come on the think tech show here at Hawaii the state of clean energy the energy policy form a lot and you know let them know they can watch this and and get the idea about how the these are pieces are knitting together we're almost out of time Ray I hate to tell you this right I do have a question for Dora and I know she's she's really smart she's a phd she didn't say that when she came on but she really knows there's something the engineer is not necessarily a phd but whoa right right right so I have a lot of respect for her and I was wondering it can you just look out three maybe five years from now if this thing kind of rolls along and does what we expected to do what kind of changes do you see from the utilities point of view what what will it be able to do five years from now if if we get it rolling that that we're not able to do right now I mean what obviously you guys are pushing very hard to work with these guys to make it happen so what where are we headed yeah and take 30 seconds yeah I don't think I've written that grant to get the money to develop that crystal ball yet but um no I actually do see us um becoming more of that stable platform to allow what we kind of call the plug and play capabilities coming and we still need to maintain a 60 hertz stable grid for all of that to interact I mean the 60 hertz thing is kind of like your pulse of your your heart if you don't have that you're gonna collapse you know just as the human body so we don't want that to happen on the grid in the same sense a lot of the partnerships that we are developing today and testing out the viability of these technologies and the transactions that's going to happen that's what we need and that's what we're gonna probably be going towards the future for 100% renewables yeah plug-and-play modular pulse pulse I can feel it now Dora it's been great to have you Dora Nakafuji, Hawaiian Electric and Ted Gauthier of STEM thank you Ray it was really good discussion enjoyed it we'll be back for more you gotta come back soon thank you thanks for having us thanks for having me on the show