 This is Stink Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're back if you didn't figure that out already. This is Stink Tech Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. My co-host, Mike Hamlin, Mike Takeabout. Thank you, Jay. Good to be here again. Nicely, nicely done. Okay, two special guests before the break. Donna Moon, a law and electorate, talking about your new app. We're so excited about that. And Marvin... Here you are. Marvin Quinceo, he's going to talk about Hawaii Energy. Say hi. Hello there. Excellent. Good job. Okay, Donna, you begin. What about your new app? What is it? So we actually have a new mobile app. This is the first that we've developed from Hawaiian Electric. And it's really a way to make it more convenient for customers. So what you can actually do on this mobile app is look for outage information within your area. So if you have geolocation turned on your phone, you can see if there is an outage that's nearby. So you can maybe possibly avoid traffic. We can also provide notifications to people who have downloaded this app. So if there's some company information on a traffic advisory or if we need customers to conserve energy, we can actually send that notification out to them. Wow, that's great. That's great. Why are you holding the phone that way? I thought I was going to be able to actually show the mobile app while I was here. Okay. So I actually brought my phone with me. Okay, excellent. So I could show everyone. There it is. Hold it a little higher. Hold it a little higher. Okay. Now I get to see it. That's pretty good. Okay. Now I can download this either on my Apple or my iPhone. Yes. Okay. And I just go to the Play Store or the... The Google Play Store. Google Play Store. And Apple iTunes. Or iTunes. Okay. And what's it called when I go searching for it? So you search for Hawaiian Electric or Hawaiian Electric Mobile. Okay. Either way. All right. Okay. And now when I get this, it's going to look at my coordinates. My GPS coordinates know where I am. It's going to tell me if there are any outages in my area. Right. So you can actually just click nearby outages. Yeah. And there are no known outages near downtown areas. So it actually displays that. Okay. But it allows you to, with a touch of a finger, just go report an outage. Say by chance, if you're at home and you want to report your outage, you can just do it straight from your phone. Just push a button. Just push a button. Because it knows where you are anyway. Well, actually, it doesn't have that information when you actually report it. So you actually do have to call them. You have to tell them. You have to tell them. But you don't have to call or look up the phone number. You can actually just, if you want to still call by phone, you can by hitting by phone. If you actually want to do it online, you don't have to go to our website. You can just use the app and click by web. And it takes you straight to actually report your outage. Hold it up. Hold it up higher. Go ahead. There you go. There it is. There it is. There you go. Okay. Very good. Nice. Very, very professional app. So, you know, your press release, which I did look at this morning. This is hot news. Your press release said you had other things in store that you were going to load up on this app. What are they? Well, yes. Our intent is actually to... If it's secret, you have to tell us in secret. Yes, it's secret. So, we're letting everyone know on think tech first. Breaking news. Breaking news. But actually what we're hoping to do is add more features that are customer service related. So, if you wanted to check your electric though, you could do it from the app. So, that is something we want to actually do later on in the future. And then also add in where our EV chargers are. Well, that's very important. Yes. So, actually, I think it's next week you're having another christening, a blessing for electric charger. Where is it now? It's not too far. It's on EVLA. EVLA. Yeah. We're going to try to cover that. Yes, that would be great. It's in the morning of December. I want to say 6th or something? No. August 30th? August 30th. Oh, next week, right? Next week. Okay. We're going to try to be there and catch that. Great. Because we like electric chargers. We think everyone you put in is a blessing and that's why you should have a blessing. We love them too. Okay. What else about this? I can do this right now, huh? Yes. You can go right now and download the app. And then also if you actually wanted to check any notifications, you can always click notifications and you can see what new hot information we might have from the companies displayed right there. Okay. So, if there's road work that's going to be done or utility work, we'll likely send out a notification to customers. So, I guess the thing that pops into my brain first is if my lights go out. I want to find out what the scope of the outage is. I want to find out how big, how little, what to do, your advice, whatever it is. And I can get that, yeah? Yes. Estimates of when it's going to be turned back on. Yes. Yeah, right. Good. Yeah. And that would give me some comfort, yeah? Oh, there it is with the map. It tells you what's going on. It tells you what area is affected, the number of customers, and the estimated restored time. Excellent. This is very good. It is very good. Okay. I'm going to turn this over to Mike now for some serious cross-examination. How long? Ready, Donna? Should I be scared? How long has it been available now? It actually just got released to the public on Tuesday, this past Tuesday. But previous to that, we actually launched it out a little bit earlier. As a beta test? As a beta test for our employees. So what we wanted to do is we put it out in the stores and we let our employees actually test it and give us feedback so that we can make small refinements before we actually announced it to everybody. And what's the traffic been like so far? So far, I mean, we're getting a lot of positive feedback and we've got downloads. I think for both, I mean, I think we're at like hundreds of downloads at the moment. But hopefully, as people find out more about it, they'll start downloading it. And then the 10,000 people that listen to this program. Right. But it's also a good thing because that means there's not that many outages going on. Right. There you go. Well, after this show, I'm going to download it myself. What was it now again? Hawaiian Electric or Search for Hawaiian Electric Mobile. Okay. All right. Either on iPhone or Android. Great. Do you have any cross-examination? No. I just want to do say, though, that the work that she does and her team does on social media, especially for Hawaiian Electric, is really helpful. Not only sharing the fun stuff when it comes to cooking tips and just good work that they've done, but especially in times of need when there's something that needs to be addressed. It could be a hazardous situation. You know, Hawaiian Electric does a heck of a job. Well, because of her leadership, it was a real nice job over there. In fact, on our way in the door, they were posting stuff. Wow. Talk about breaking news right here. What I get out of it is you have to come back soon, Donna. I do? Yeah. Donna moves Hawaiian Electric. Yes, I do. I do? So I get to become a regular like Marvin? Yeah, like Marvin, yeah. No, it was my first time. Speaking of Marvin, we're going to see a video from Marvin. What do you got today, Marvin? Well, it kind of along the same lines of just rolling out new and exciting stuff. We want to make sure that folks at home continue their efforts to save energy, even on the grander scale when it comes to companies doing so, you know, large-scale commercial entities. But right now we decided, you know, let's have a little more fun. Let's bring some more energy to it. No pun intended. No, no pun intended. I wrote it down. It was intended. And, you know, let's go ahead and do kind of lift up, I should say, our efforts in terms of, you know, getting the word out. And so this week, folks have been noticing, we have new commercials on air. Our website, we've got a brand new website. We're going to kick that in the next 24 hours. We bought, or this, I don't know if you can see the logo right here. Energy.org. Yes, this is pluggy as I kind of try and do this. We brought pluggy to life. We have full mascot that was going to be visiting the cakey as well as other types of trade shows and stuff and all the good stuff. And since you had asked, let's go take a look at the highlights on this video right here. Okay, here we go. And she's back. Seriously? She was here an hour ago. Make a choice, energy waster! You know, she'll get a rebate if she trades up that old fridge. Pick the MAC salad. That's two weeks old. I know. Let's stop energy waste. Learn more at HawaiiEnergy.com. I told you how much I love being a smart strip. Only a thousand times. I can't help it. We're so much better than regular power strips. We can turn off several devices at a time simply by shutting down an item plugged in our smart outlet. No flipping a switch, no wasted energy. If only everyone knew about smart strips. Well, not everyone is as smart as we are. Learn about smart strips and more at HawaiiEnergy.com. That is a great film, very cute. If you want to look at the website, look at HawaiiEnergy.com. Okay, Marvin, what else do you want to tell us about it? Well, I do want to remind folks that if you took a look at that, head over to one of those ad walls. Take a picture, post it to Instagram. Don't forget to tag us at MyHawaiiEnergy, at MyHawaiiEnergy Instagram. And two tickets too. It's not this weekend. This weekend they travel to Massachusetts to play UMass. But the home opener is the next weekend. Let's go bows and have a good time doing it. HawaiiEnergy, don't forget to save energy at home, as well as at work. And just have a great time doing it. Chris Dide said that. Marvin Buencanseo and Donna Moon, thank you so much for joining us. And Mike, I think we're going to take a break now. You ready? Yep. He's ready. Thank you both. Thank you. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. To help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, Diveheart has helped children, adults, and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. Diveheart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search diveheart.org and share our mission with others. And in the process help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives. Bingo, we're back. We told you to come back. Mike said that. I did. That's Mike Hamnet, my co-host and co-chair of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum too. And he's going to talk to you later about what happens on the 28th. It's magic on the 28th, magic. Okay, but the second half of the show here, we're talking to Brendan Morioka of Hawaiian Electric. And he is the general manager of electrification of transportation, which is no small feat. We're going to talk to you about that. Absolutely. Are you ready for the conversation? It's a drama. Okay. And then there's Risa Gorbani of the UH Renewable Energy Design Lab. We can talk about science and design and transportation as you all together now. Who wants to go first? Okay. Brendan, it's you. What's going on? Well, I mean, I just joined Hawaiian Electric about six weeks ago to help with their electrification of transportation initiative. And it's really an effort to move away from the use of fossil fuels, more electric vehicles, electric buses. People think about electrification of transportation. They think about EVs. But that's not the only area that we're going to be looking into. We're going to be dealing with electric buses and how we can get some of our both public municipal buses and some of our private services transition to electric buses. How can we work with the DOT on electrifying some of the operations at either the harbors or at the airport? So for me, it's a really exciting time. There's a lot of momentum and a lot of support both in the community for electric vehicles, electrification of transportation, but also politically at our legislature. Many of the stakeholders are looking at the City Council here in Honolulu. Very supportive of electrification of transportation. So for me, it's a very exciting time to be a part of it. It's a new position. New position that Hawaiian Electric created as a part of their transformational efforts to really look at new business opportunities as well as how is the utility supposed to look in the future? The utility of the past is kind of... The core mission is still there, provide electricity, keep the lights on, keep people safe. But it's really an effort to look at how the utility can better serve its customers and looking at other opportunities and other avenues that we can also play in that is not necessarily just what people view as the traditional utility. You know, that's visionary. I think it's part of the vision that was expressed a couple years ago from Hawaiian Electric to move forward in this kind of things and it's really happening. These are good times, aren't they? It all starts from the top. We have a very visionary board that oversees a company, but we have folks like Connie Lau and Alan Oshima and our entire executive team who really bought into this new vision of a brand new utility. That's one of the reasons why I kind of jumped at the opportunity to be a part of the Hawaiian Electric team. Sounds great and you've come at it with all your experience in transportation. No fool around. Hopefully I can help. Hopefully you can help. We'll be watching. I know you will, Jim. We'll be calling you down for more. Okay, so let's get a situation here on Risa. Risa, what are you doing there at the UH Renewable Energy Design Lab as anything to do with Brennan's work? Oh, yeah. Actually, what we are more interested in is integrating more renewables in the grid and green transportation or electric transportation is one of the most important solutions of adding more renewables to the grid and I'm really glad that HIKO is thinking that or I'm pushing toward electric transportation because it's not only vital for our economy in the future to have more electric transportation like Brennan said, not only EVs but different types. Also, it's important to think about it now as we move toward 100% renewable energy. So what does design mean? Is design like HNEI? At HNEI, there are guys who are developing fuel cells and batteries and what have you. Are you doing that or are you doing something more in the context of design? Yeah, we are mostly interested in solutions or innovative solutions. Like what? Like, for example, how do you use AI, artificial intelligence to help? AI? Are you an AI person? Yeah, we are. Holy moly, Mike. We've got an AI person here at the table. How do you like that? Sharon, did you know this? No. I'm not saying I'm the expert in AI. You're the real intelligent. Yes. We have plenty of people working on AI. For example, one of the solutions is, one of the things that you work on, how do you use AI in order to help the decision making, for example, in finding your best spot to charge? Or how do you actually provide services between the customers that they have, renewable energy that they want to sell, and customers that want to charge their vehicle, right? How do you understand the driving portfolio and driving cycles and how they are related to charging profiles and how those charging profiles are related to, for example, the saturation of the lines in electric grid and so on. And how the reliability, for example, is interested, is related to all of these big decisions that we are making. And in future, we will have more autonomous driving cars in the streets like in future, I mean 30 years, even in maybe 10 years. You say 30 years? Maybe 10 years. I thought you said 20 years. I said 30 years. You said 10 years? 30 years. Five? 30 years. I mean, if you go to Pittsburgh, you see them already. But in Hawaii, I would say, so all of these questions are important to be actually looked at now, and then you will recommend to the people who are developing technologies to work on the technologies that make more money for them. So let's assume you come up with a solution, a design solution for one kind, including technological or social or organizational, whatever it might be, to improve electrification or transportation. What does the UH Renewable Energy Design Lab do with that solution? Who do you call? Do you call Brennan? Of course. We had examples. I don't have my phone number for now. If they pick up their phone, we'll be more than happy to discuss with them. Yeah, I mean, my group and other groups, we already met many times with HECO. We are also discussing technology right now with HECO. What HECO's priority sometimes is different than my priority. So basically, what we are doing at university is creating a new technology. Maybe the first customer is not HECO, it's somebody else, and HECO can adapt it in 10 years, right? So sometimes HECO plays an important role in letting us to run it. I mean, from university, a pilot plan. And from that pilot project, you can just go to the scale up. How long has the design lab been in existence? Nine years. And how long have you been with it? Nine years. Okay, there's a symbolic connection here. Yes. Okay. One thing that strikes me is that the electrification of transportation, not only cars, but everything, is going to have a profound effect in our lives. And I know you guys think about that, but when I think about that, it hurts my head, because I have no idea how it's going to affect my life. I just know it's going to affect my life. You can't comment. Well, I mean, I said I joined HECO about six weeks ago, and it's profoundly impacted my life. My head spins almost every day just because... I knew we had something in common. I mean, the more I learn about this, and I'm an engineer by trade, but I've never been on the utility side, and I'm actually a civil engineer, not an electrical engineer. Learning the utility side and the power side has been very interesting to me, and so I leave every day with my head spinning, because there's so much for me to learn right now. But it is so exciting. I mean, we talk... We just talk about new technologies, and we have a lot of very intelligent people working at HECO and dealing with a lot of different technologies, initiatives, proposals that are generated both internal and within HECO, but also externally, where people are continually coming to Hawaiian Electric to make proposals on how they might be able to help the utility really grow as a more modern grid. And so, you know, we just kind of touched upon it a little bit, but ultimately, if we have more electric vehicles out there charging and using those batteries, you know, it's really more like... It can become like a virtual power plant where we're actually communicating with different power sources, and whether it's the heaters at the homes or the batteries in the cars at home or at the workplace, creating a much more smarter grid, communicating within itself so that we can better manage the way that power is flowing back and forth. And I think that's the end game for many of the stakeholders. But for me, it's really exciting to see the kind of growth, especially in the last couple of years, of people's interest in buying electric vehicles. I mean, the sales of electric vehicles increased by about 30%, just over the last year itself, whereas car sales in general have kind of remained a little flat over the last couple of years. So, you know, that just kind of shows that there is a growing interest in electric vehicles, whether it's for, you know, the green sustainability side of people's interest, or there is an actual cost savings, too, right? You end up your overall energy portfolio as an individual resident actually is supposed to be coming down. You may pay a little bit more in your electric bill, but your overall expense for energy as a whole, whether it's fuel consumption or whatever, or maintenance of your cars, all of that is meant to save the customer money. And at the end of the day, that's what the utility is in the business for, is to help customers. And so, Mike, we have to see where things are going, too. Absolutely. Friends, because they kind of got blindsided by the rooftop solar. And the same thing could happen with electric vehicles without sort of looking ahead and anticipating what the market is going to do with that and then what kind of other benefits like storage that the electric vehicles might provide. And so you actually raise a very good point in that the PUC actually is asking Juan Electric to provide an electrification of transportation strategy and roadmap by the end of the first quarter next year. So in March, we're going to be providing some kind of roadmap that Juan Electric believes is in the best interest of all of our utilities territories. But in order to accomplish that strategy, Juan Electric is being asked to develop the strategy, but really it's a strategy for the state. And there are many, many other stakeholders who have interests or who have responsibilities if we're to achieve some of those goals. So by developing our plan, we will be including a lot of our stakeholders from the very beginning of the development so that we're going in, building a direction, building a strategy that everybody's going to buy in at the end of the day when we submit it. So it's not just a Hawaiian Electric strategy. It's really a state strategy. No, but we really appreciate the fact that you're out there doing it at the front end. That's the fun part. Yeah, it's great. And I mean, it's leadership. But I wanted to ask you, Mike, as a guy who sort of sees this from the university point of view just by way of career, where do you see the connections here? One of the questions that's going to be posed in the Energy Day conference, just on the 28th, coming up soon of August, is who should take the four? Who should be out in the front? And on this issue, on transportation, the electrification of transportation, cars and everything else, we should have a sense of that. And I wonder, from the university point of view, from the university point of view, who should be calling the shots? Who should be out in the front? Who should be coming up with stuff? I sense as if the fact don't matter, it is Hawaiian Electric. But what's your thought about that? One of the things, and we're going to talk about this at the Hawaii Clean Energy Day on the 28th, is the trouble with transportation is it's so broken up. I mean, in the electric sector, we've got the 800-pound gorilla that's controlled by the TUC. We're doing some leadership in direction there. There's somebody to steer the ship. But in the transportation, there are just so many stakeholders and so many actors that it's hard to see where it's going. And I think, and we're going to talk about this on the 28th, it's finding leadership in the various strategies to move the transportation, clean energy mission forward is going to be the trick. And it's not going to be any one actor because we don't have a utility or transportation commission. So the trick is going to be to encourage and support all of the actors in taking the various strategies that we've got available to us. And I think to your point, a lot of the major stakeholders has already bought into that approach because Hawaiian Electric worked with a number of the different entities, created what's called Drive Electric Hawaii. It's a coalition of Hawaiian Electric and KIUC. So it's your utility statewide. But also the State Department of Transportation, DBET, you also have Ulupona and Blue Planet Foundation who are part of this coalition. And it is meant to see what we can do as policy makers, as influencers on trying to drive EV adoption here in Hawaii. And the thing is, is that electric vehicles are one of the few avenues for getting clean energy into transportation because biofuels hasn't gone anywhere. And, you know, bike shares are going to help and car shares are going to help and pedestrian improvements are going to help. But still, it's the automobiles that are the problem and the trucks and the buses. Even though B-key is extremely successful. Yes. Have you B-keyed? No, I haven't. It's on my list. Well, it's a confluence. You know, we started out with looking at energy in general and trying to go renewables. And there was this sort of elephant in the room. It's transportation. You know, as I recall, it was six billion dollars a year sending out for oil for our cars. And we weren't really attending to that. And nobody was coming up with big solutions for that. But so, I compliment Hawaii, Hawaiian Electric for, you know, coming up with this and coming up with you and moving in this direction, coming up with ideas. And so, at the end of the day, it's a matter of socializing those ideas in my oldest takeover and getting, you know, consensus over it. But, you know, even in the consensus, somebody has to speak first. You know what I mean? We're trying. So, where do you fit? Where do you fit in all this? I mean, for example, we had a project from, you know, from the U.S. transportation from the University of Central Florida. We were looking at different technologies of electric transportation. For example, and also different problems. For example, how this charging and this charging of the battery is to provide service to the grid impact the lifetime of your battery of your electric car. We looked at how this high penetration of electric vehicle can impact the grid and how the grid stability issues impact your decision-making of charging profiles. There was sort of a whole thing about technology in general, about energy and technology. You're always worried that if you don't wrap around the latest transportation, I mean, latest technology, you know, you can't keep up and you get left behind because you're not wrapping around the last thing that happened. And sometimes you just can't do that. But with you on, in the consensus model, with you and the team play as a stakeholder, you can help us keep track of the advancing technology. And that way, only that way, we're going to learn how to do this in the most efficient manner. I mean, to the cutting edge technology, you're interested in to see what technologies might show up in five years, for example, or what technologies make sense, or what solutions make sense, and what we will expect in the next five or 10 years. I mean, you plan for it, or when the network or coalition are working on it, so they expect, okay, these are the technologies, so we plan based on this, expect the technologies. With everything, we'll be connected. Everything, I mean, the data will be available. And so, what I see U.H. role or College of Engineering and H&EI, for example, H&EI is a little bit different as they're doing big projects or in big implementations. What I see U.H. College of Engineering role is mostly innovation or fundamental research of the problem. Okay, don't stop. Okay, so... We'll be having this conversation again and again with you guys. So, Mike, you know, just so everybody's clear, what exactly is happening in August 28th and how does it relate to this conversation today? It's the 9th Annual Clean Energy Day for the Energy Policy Forum and it's going to focus specifically on transportation. And it's a... Pathways to Clean Transportation. There's going to be panels in the morning and the afternoon and then there's going to be a facilitated session in the afternoon and there are going to be people displaying products there, including Tesla and Hart and I think the bike share folks. So it's going to be a good program and it's at the Lana Keeley Y starts at 9 and runs until 6 p.m. with sort of a palhanna at the end. But it's going to be a good program. Hope you guys are there. I'll be there. I'll be there too, yeah. All right, thanks very much. Thank you guys. Appreciate it, Brandon. Great to have you here, Mike. Aloha to you next time.