 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Hey, Aloha, and welcome to Stand the Energy Man here on ThinkTek Hawaii, where community matters and we're trying to make a big difference here in Hawaii. And today we have a great show where we're pressing our technical abilities here by Skyping in from the Big Island with Paul Ponteo from Blue Planet and Mr. Dr. Karim Zaib from HydroKobek. So we've got the U.S.-Canadian coalition going on in the Big Island to talk about some energy issues and we're going to Skype them in and try and get some insight not only on clean energy and hydrogen, but also on some battery technology. So welcome Paul and Karim, good to have you on the show here. Thanks, Dan. Good to be back. Hey, first off, let's let Karim tell us a little bit about himself and also about the kind of work that HydroKobek does in energy so that we can get some perspective on where his background is. I'm Karim Zaib, I am the director of Sapaopictima Energy Policy and I work for HydroKobek for 23 years and HydroKobek is the utility 100% owned by the development of Sapaopictima and we produce about 90% of our power coming from HydroKobek in the green and green energy that we produce. And HydroKobek is the only one in the United States that they own energy and they invest around 130 million in research and development. Terrific, so when you're talking Hydro, because here in Hawaii we don't have big reservoirs and dams and things, you're talking HydroElectric like from fast moving rivers and through dams, correct? Yes, so HydroKobek is divided in four departments. The first department is equipment housing, they make the dams and then it's production obviously by water, by hydro and the third division is transportation. We're using the one of the highest voltage, about 730 kV and distributions. So distribution we have around 4 million clients and we also export our green energy to our Canadian neighbors like Ontario and New Jersey and also USA state like our neighbors in New York State and other neighbors behind us. Great, so you actually are producing green power using HydroElectric and you produce enough to not only take care of your own customers but also to export to New York and some of your neighbors to the south, correct? Great. And what brings you to Hawaii to visit Palpantio on the big island? Is there anything you can share with us on that? Yeah, I think I have a collaboration for over 25 years with the Bollyard from the University of Hawaii. We are developing body machines and the Department of Energy and we are working for what you call it butterfly advantageous transportations mainly by Lawrence Beckley Lab, Hawaii and also Department of Energy. We're developing what you call it safe, a battery safe material like lithium ion battery like ion phosphate and we are coming here to see for in order to have some collaboration and we try to introduce this technology that we write for many years, safe technology for energy storage and also long cycle life and also 90-90% of our technology is recycled so we can use this material for recycling our technology. That's really important. I think a lot of people leave that out of the calculation when they start talking especially lithium battery technology. They forget about the fact that lithium is a fairly rare metal in terms of availability on the planet and recycling it's critically important if you plan to use lithium in batteries. Isn't that pretty accurate? So I think the vision of HydroKibak I have a program in my center of excellence that we are doing research. Even when we have a student that they are doing the master and PhD in the field. For us recycling is very important that our earth and our humanity might clean and not just after finishing this body and without them anywhere for any place and because of that we have some electrolytes, we have some side reactions without so for us recycling is very important and we are pushing to recycle our materials and our bodies 90-90% recycled. Great. I know we didn't have a chance to talk about this before but I saw an article earlier this week that talked about mining lithium from ocean water as part of a water purification process in countries that desalinate their water where they could also harvest the lithium and I know that the oceans contain some lithium but it's like trace amounts but they figure with the scale of the oceans you could probably recover some is Canada. Do you know if Canada or any of your institutions are looking at that concept for harvesting lithium from the oceans? I don't think so in Canada but there was some program in New Zealand about 10 years and 15 years for this kind of taking the lithium for oceans but not in outside. Okay. Go ahead now. I think something important for the viewers to understand is the distinction in lithium batteries and lithium chemistry. One of the reasons we chose to use lithium ferrous phosphate was for the safety reasons but also the recyclability of it. Cobalt is what is in most of the lithium batteries that are in use in the world today and cobalt is not a very environmentally friendly element. So you can't just throw that into a land drill. You can't recycle it easily. So it's really important to know that there's a distinction in chemistry but that the lithium ferrous phosphate is almost 100% recyclable, 99.7. So that's a big difference in being able to reclaim all the materials and metals that are used in the process. And also I know that the lithium iron phosphate technology is also much more stable. Is that also one of the big comparative factors compared to the lithium cobalt? I believe the lithium iron phosphate they have the longest cycle life. Now it's still about lithium cobalt. Let's see maybe 1,000 cycles but the iron phosphate versus graphite we talked about 15,000 cycles to 20,000 cycles. And we cycle them 100% deep and charge them 100%. It's not like 2% of charging. So we fully recharge them and fully charge them at least 15,000 cycles. So you can see that the columnar life of this technology is over 20 years. Yeah, that's really important. A lot of people, they think of batteries in a fairly limited scope and their experience of batteries is either the kind they put in their flashlight or their computer or their car. And you're right, when it comes to designing the battery properly, if you're not able to discharge it completely and recharge it, you're really missing out on a real capability and that's one of the real strengths of the lithium iron phosphate batteries as I understand it. Yeah, that's true. And again, going back to the end of life scenario with the battery, one becomes a matter of recycling and the other one becomes a hazmat disposal issue. So those are things that a lot of people don't take into account. With flashlight batteries, most people throw them in the trash, which is not a good thing to do but that's what they do. With large-scale energy storage batteries, it becomes a much bigger problem environmentally and just the monetary cost of disposal is a big deal. So if you've got a battery chemistry that outlasts one other chemistry by 40%, that means you're going to get much more of your investment return out of that product. So how mature Paul and Kareem is that lithium iron technology in terms of ready for market? I know you work with Sony and I believe Panasonic also does that technology. Is it mature and ready and while you're at it, address the safety issues with that too. I know that's another thing that people don't think about with batteries but nowadays you can't get on planes with certain lithium battery devices and products because of the fire hazard. So can you talk a little bit to the safety issues? I think the technology is already in the market and our partners Sony and Morata, they are making very great batteries and this technology also is used mainly in China for electric batteries and also for electric vehicles and for energy storage also is known as very safe technology. And for our experience in Hiro-Quebec, we have already put about 2 years, 1.2 megawatt, 1.2 megawatt hours once in our research institute and we deliver to Hiro-Quebec distribution about I think last December 2.4 megawatt hours and it's already on distribution site of Hiro-Quebec and we've been actually testing ours for going on 4 years now. But it's important to note that Sony started manufacturing the lithium-ferrous phosphate batteries back in 2008. So this is not a new technology so to speak or a new startup technology. This is pretty mature and well documented. Can talk a little bit about the nail test that you've seen on that technology compared to standard lithium cobalt. Yeah, we actually, we have videos of what they call the nail test and they literally take a lithium cell, the LFP lithium-ferrous phosphate and an NTM nickel cobalt manganese cell and they actually drive a nail completely through them to see what the, to simulate the damage to a cell. With the LFP, basically there's a temperature change, temperature starts rising. There's a patented bowing system that opens up and lets up the pressure as well as an internal fuse and a little bit of organic solvent rips out and that's pretty much it. On cobalt side and you can see this on thousands of YouTube videos, guys destroying cobalt lithium batteries. They explode violently as soon as the product was breached or shorted. They release all of their energy very, very quickly and that's the safety hazard. It's easy to change. This is what you call it, the angle of fire. You have the oxygen. You have the gasoline and then you have the internal source circuit like much because oxygen is very in phosphate. So it means that they are not oxygen really. But in the cobalt oxide at high voltage and so on and you have, if there are any internal source circuits, you have internal source circuits that make heat and you have the gasoline which is electrolyte and oxygen evolution coming from carbon and then you're going to make fire. So it's very exclamation. So it's pretty much a, what are they called, spontaneous combustion once the oxygen is exposed to the lithium cobalt chemistry. Okay. Okay, so we're all kind of used to the lithium technology in cell phones and computers. But when you take it to scale and I don't want to pimp or get on Elon Musk's bad side because I know that Paul your boss drives some of his cars but that technology carries a lot of those batteries and it seems to be kind of a dangerous mode to get into in the transportation sector where you have a lot of those lithium cobalt batteries basically lined up under your car and if they're not armor plated any kind of metal that cuts through the batteries does that oxygen exposure that Karim talked about and gives you a pretty robust fire. I mean from my experience, I mean the car is pretty much totaled as soon as the fire starts because it doesn't get put out very quickly. Yeah, they've had several Tesla fires that have been caught on camera either through security cameras or from first responders and I think one of the notable ones was a Tesla was following a truck ahead of him and a piece of steel fell off of the truck and it actually punctured the bottom of the battery case on the car and penetrated and caught those batteries on fire. Now to Tesla's credit, they had compartmentalized their batteries so that it contained the fire in that section allowing the driver enough time to pull over and exit the vehicle and get out. I think there was also a fire in Norway two years ago where at a charging station the car caught on fire and it became a fireworks display and melted the car down to the tires. And this isn't a poo poo Tesla or their product because they have a beautifully designed car and it gets great range out of the battery system. It looks good and handles well. It's got a great reputation but it's just talking about the technology and you just have to be aware of these things. If you do see something happening where you may be puncturing your batteries under a car like that just for your own safety, you need to know that you can't spend time collecting up all your belongings and taking your time getting out of the car because it's a serious safety issue. It's one thing to have a fire and a vehicle that you can get out of quickly and another to have it inside of a building where you may not have the time, the luxury of time. That's true when you start to scale this technology up. We're going to take a quick break here and we'll be back in 60 seconds to spend some more time with Karim and Paul and talk some more about some energy. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough where we motivate, educate and power and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4pm and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Aloha, I'm Kili Ikeena and I'm here every other week on Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Together. In Hawaii Together we talk with some of the most fascinating people in the islands about working together, working together for a better economy, government and society. So I invite you into our conversation every other Monday at 2 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. Join us for Hawaii Together. I'm Kili Ikeena. Aloha Hey, welcome back to my lunch hour. Stan Energyman here with Paul Ponteel and Karim, Dr. Karim Sakib from Hydro Quebec. He's their transportation guru just like I'm the hydrogen guru here in Honolulu. But he's a lot more educated than I am with a lot more experience than I have and a lot smarter than I am not to mention good looking. So he's got me beat on all cases, but we've been talking a lot about batteries and the technology that's out there and both of them have worked extensively in the energy field and we're talking a little bit about the pluses and minuses of the different lithium technologies that are out there and there's some really good ones out there now that they're exposed to. But one of the things Paul I've noticed is that the lithium iron or the lithium ferrous is not so much used in transportation. Is that something on the horizon or? Well, I'll let Karim answer that one because the argument that I've always received on that front is the penalty of weight. It's a slightly heavier chemistry and technology for stationary storage, none of that matters. But I'll let Karim kind of elaborate on that. Yeah, so the iron phosphate as I said has safety, they have calendar life they have all advanced except the energy density is level compared to lithium cobalt oxide and other technology by volume and by weight both of them and in order to have range, big range and so on maybe is not the right technology that's using iron phosphate for huge energy itself. But now I believe all worldwide and also and other company, but the company they are working on solid state bottles and solid state bottles can increase the range and then safety because the electrolyte is not flammable. All the lithium ion today, iron phosphate or lithium cobalt or any technology of the lithium ion today the electrolyte because in the bottle you have anode and cathode in between them is electrolyte with ionic conductors and is flammable. So now the direction is to increase the energy density and also to make it more safe and also low cost. Around now today, I think the cost of lithium abat is the part is around 250 and in order that the government car or internal combustion engine will be disappeared that the part of the body must be $100 as kilowatt hour. And they believe in five years we are able to reach this kind of the cost of the lithium ion. But anyway the lithium ion or others the energy density also become a limit. So why we need another technology in future? Like hydrogen maybe before we explain and so on and I believe also that hydrogen has a lot of energy and the body has power. And we need the both of this technology for transportation and energy, so on and then for even the same one. Yeah, so what Trame was just alluding to is why we see in fuel cell EVs there's always a battery as well as the fuel cell. I think a lot of people have the misconception that fuel cell cars are running purely on hydrogen fuel cells. If you straight out the power and the energy then that's what you really need to perform to the standards that we want a vehicle of transportation to actually do. Having the fuel cell there for the long duration of the energy and having the battery to supply that instantaneous power for acceleration and things like that. That's the perfect marriage. It also is one of the reasons why at our MG lab in our micro grids here, we marry hydrogen and batteries together because we feel that this is actually the perfect combination of technologies to support micro grids and energy storage. With the battery you have the quick response, you have the instantaneous power that can absorb huge start-up loads of motors and equipment and the hydrogen can provide the back-up power and it can provide the long duration energy side. When you tie the two together it's a great combination especially if you're in an off-grid type of micro grid situation where you have excess energy at times. This is one of the issues we have in the state as you know Stan. We have solar farms and wind turbine farms that are sitting idle sometimes because there's not enough demand on the grid for them to actually export their power. So we take that excess energy and we turn it into hydrogen and we save it for when we need it. I don't want to get too long-winded on this but the other thing about hydrogen is when you start looking at the cost of energy storage, you're looking at the cost per kilowatt hour of the storage over the life of the technology. Batteries are always going to be a little more expensive than hydrogen storage because they perform a different service so to speak. If you take and you build your system with the batteries you need for the round-trip efficiency and the quick response where you're cycling those electrons very rapidly, one least once a day then hydrogen becomes more economical for storing electrons over long periods for backup fuel or backup power. So there's a combination and a certain ratio of combining these two technologies that actually makes the most sense. Too often in our industries we hear arguments on both sides that hydrogen is better or batteries are better and it's just not true. Neither one is better or worse than the other. They're just different. So combining the two makes the most sense. Yeah, it sounds like in a world that's focused on diversity, we ought to be applying the same principles to batteries and hydrogen. It's just a different kind of way to get your energy and we shouldn't discriminate between batteries and hydrogen. We should be looking at them as the perfect pairing to make the best product. In fact, you guys visited my shop yesterday with Guillaume AA and we talked about battery dominant vehicles versus fuel cell dominant vehicles and there's advantages to having them set up one way or another. So you actually can custom build your vehicle to take advantage of the battery when you need more of a battery performance or a fuel cell when you need more of a fuel cell performance and the good designers are going to come up with that perfect marriage of the two technologies and I think that's why a lot of folks across the industry are really being bullish on hydrogen right now because they see that it is a good match the battery and hydrogen partnership makes for a perfect transportation solution. So, hey, while we've got Karim on today too he's got a pretty good picture on the international scene of where hydrogen is going could you give us some insight from your perspective Karim about what's going on in Europe or Asia on the hydrogen scene and whether you're feeling optimistic in 2018-2019? What I see for me I think there are many advantage countries that using hydrogen as very important energy for Japan. This is public information that by 2020 Japan they're going to introduce hydrogen for Olympic Games they are very aggressive, they are doing very well and then I believe there will be opportunity in 2020 to see hydrogen in the buses and the cars around the athletes and the Olympic Games and so on and they believe this maybe will be accelerate the penetration of hydrogen by the Games Olympic Games 2020 and I think there was also very important company like Kawasaki this public information Kawasaki Shoda and others working Tomota, Honda, they are promoting hydrogen and was also using it to be internet, there was huge consourcing between Elikid, Total, BMW, Tomota, GM and others they want to promote hydrogen I think Mercedes Benz and others and also Department of Energy U.S. because I am part of the BATT program and they go to review meetings once a years and they have huge program on hydrogen that all national labs that working on hydrogen can be for transportation or for production and so on and they believe also China they want to go to this hydrogen and because you know hydrogen if you see the U.S. hydrogen is 30,000 watts per kilogram is huge compared to the gasoline is around 11,000 watts per kilogram and this is the efficiency of the independent combustion engine is only 27,000 watts what you need about and the best of the batteries you can see maybe 500, 600 watts per kilogram compared to 30,000 why this country, why these companies are very interesting on the hydrogen applications can be for production of electricity or transportation for other source of applications yeah I think that's one of the real interesting things about the time period we're in right now this is kind of one of the first times in history where we can start to tackle transportation and our stationary energy needs with basically the same technology so it's really encouraging to see this happening yeah I agree and I think when I look internationally we're at that right time and things are just going to start happening I know China's moving forward in hydrogen South Korea, Japan and Europe Denmark's got one island that's already completely covered with hydrogen fueling stations and transportation and we need to keep pressing forward with that and I think all of us on this show and throughout the community keep educating folks because I know that in many cases even rather astute educated sophisticated individuals have some really bad misperceptions about hydrogen and if we could kind of kind of get those things pushed to the side we're placed with real facts hydrogen would start becoming much more acceptable to the general population well you know believe it or not we've already hit our endgame here at Think Tech for our show and I'd like to thank you especially Karim and Guillaume in the background there for being on the show and helping coach us along and we'll hope you back in Hawaii soon and we'll get to visit some more and get another update from you and Paul on hydrogen around the world so thank you for being on the show and until next weekend we'll be talking to you next week Friday on Stan Energyman, Allah