 Do you know how big the I-Know-Kia is? This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. 4 o'clock on Wednesday, everybody knows. It's a flagship show for energy and the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. And it's a little switch here. I normally just, I stay on the side, but I'll be host today. And Maria Tomei, who is the ordinary co-host, is going to be my guest, I guess. Sure. We'll call you any name you want. Yeah, OK. Sure, co-host guest. And what's valuable about this is that a week ago, just a week ago, Maria and our other co-host for the show, Mitch Ewen, were in Maui at the Maui, Big Island, at Nelha. Thank you. The Nelha Storage Conference. Couple of thoughts. First of all, good for Nelha for setting it up. Oh, yeah. It's their middle name. They ought to do energy, and they ought to do storage. They ought to do entrepreneurship, and they are. With Greg Bobber over there, they're doing a great job. I really admire how he sets this all up. And I guess he got a crowd to come over. He got you to come over to talk about storage. And storage, obviously, for energy, for the grid, for the future, for 100% renewables by 2045, storage is critical. It's kind of important. It's a great subject. Yeah, yeah. So you went. Yeah, and so Mitch and I were talking last week. We didn't meet you. Yeah, sure. I found it very interesting, and I learned a lot. I don't know if that I conquered it, but why did you go? Oh, well, we have to know what's going on in energy storage. As you explained, it's very important. And not only that, it was a really impressive group of folks working in all sorts of areas related to the storage, the mini grids, the micro grids, the technology, everything from the chemistry in the batteries to the bigger picture of, well, when you look at the regulatory questions, who pays and when does this get paid for? And how does it all fit together in some future scenarios? That suggests the first point to write down in your notes today. And that is when you talk about storage, you're really talking about everything. Because storage is in the middle of all of this connected to everything else. You're trying to develop technology for a grid, for example, you don't have a battery or a storage. It's a system without connection to everything else. Yeah, so an energy is connected to everything from telecommunications, to health care, to water, and so all those interconnectedness as well. Society. Important. Very important stuff. Now the question is, what did they present over two days? So I thought maybe two days worth of rehashing what they had said would be kind of excessive. So I pulled out some of the slides. I know last time we had mentioned a couple of things. Hey, there were a couple of slides on energy storage being more than batteries. So I pulled out some of those slides. Why don't we go through them, Maria? Yeah, OK. So the first one, slide number two, I appreciated one of the presenters. And what I've done here is up at the top give the name of the presenter so that everybody who's so excited about this can go and actually see all the slides given by these presenters. That's a great idea, though. Give them credit. Yeah, yeah. So it'll help you find them. The last slide that I have actually has the link to the website that has a conference. So I thought this was interesting presentation of the variation in energy use not only over the years, which was the point that Terry was making, but the first point on the left side is 2006, the amount of energy sold. And then over on the right, it goes out to 2017. It's a little bit covered by the logo, but you can take my word for it. It's 2017. And you can see that the amount of energy that's used in Hawaii every month varies by season. So when we're talking about energy storage, we need to think not only about the moment-to-moment variations in a solar system output or wind energy system, but also what about seasonal storage, especially later on as we get less and less fossil fuel or liquid fuels in use. And you have energy storage systems of other types trying to pick up the seasonal. It's very interesting to see that it went down. It's probably half a dozen factors that went into that. And of course, the economy is part of it. And so I think we have a little bit of an uptick when the economy picks up a theme as well. But what I don't understand, maybe you can help me, maybe Terry Searles talked about this, is why it differs from month to month that way. Well, if you want to go back, well, let's look at what month is causing is the peak. So go back to slide two. So Don, on the bottom, you can, oh, right there. Yeah, that's good. So you can kind of see that the middle of the year around July, August, September, what happens at that time of year? It's hot air conditioning. There you go. Yeah, so the total, you know, it may not be when we have our absolute peak that tends to happen in the winter and the evenings, but total energy use, not only do you have a lot of energy being used by air conditioners and whatnot, but you've also got July and August of 31 days. So anyway. I had to say this, but you can learn a lot from those seasonal changes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also when you look at what are your energy sources, it's kind of, if you have a lot of sun and a lot of heat, that your solar can help to be used to survive. That's a value you can show it for sure. But you've also got, but the trouble, the thing that is concerning to the folks who are trying to plan these systems is just that there is so much variability. You had 100 to 150, you know? Percentage-wise, it's quite challenging. So that you know it, though, enables you to bring other equipment online. More pricing signals, right? Yeah. Yeah, you know, if everybody's using something at the same time, what usually happens to the price? It goes up. Yeah. So you can price that chart flat. You can do that. Yeah, well, that's a monthly thing. So it actually is even more variable, but right. If you had it, not only month by month, but you know, hour by hour, you know? So those are some of the interesting financial questions. I wonder if that's going to come up in TBR. Oh, we can't talk about that. We're not going to talk about that. OK, slide three. Let's talk about slide three. So, you know, we talked about season. Down at the bottom of this, this is a slide talking about, once again, energy storage technologies. So it's probably obvious that this is from somebody who's talking about the hydrogen potential way to store energy, not just for hours or even days, but from season to season. So that was one of the points being made by this chart. Now, in the previous last week, I had said, hey, there were all these great charts that showed it's not just battery. And so this is one of those, I think I've got four of them. They show it's not just batteries. So hydrogen storage, you know, if you can produce a liquid or a gas out of your excess electricity, you may be able to store that and use it later. So is this supposed to reflect something is happening now? Is this the distribution or rather the? No, we're not yet, but it's. Why is it pumped hydro? So pumped hydro. OK, this is not Hawaii, first of all. National, national. Yeah, international. This is talking about the theoretical potential or the practical, I should say, the practical applications. So if you need one gigawatt of energy, of electricity, what are you going to use for, you know, batteries usually are not producing that. But pumped hydro is. We've got many gigawatts of pumped hydro available. Compressed air is something that people are interested in. Once again, this is more on the mainland. If you have old salt mines, I guess they're airtight because you can pump air into an old salt mine and get a lot of energy stored that way. We don't have any old salt mines in Hawaii. No, and a rock is so porous it would come out. Yeah, you know, but there are other folks talking about bladders under the ocean, but costs like anything else. You know, you do your trade-offs and your cost if, well, but what is it being compared to, right? And do you have enough utilization of that for it to make sense? So that's why it's on this chart. And then batteries are there and flywheels are there, supercapacitors are there. They can hold a lot for a little amount of time. Now, the next slide is very similar, except more colorful. So slide four talks about the different types of batteries. And then they're talking about your bulk storage is on the right once again. You know, you're talking about your pumped hydro, compressed air, energy storage once again. This doesn't have hydrogen off on the right the way the other one did. Obviously, everybody has their favorite technologies or the ones they're studying. So when you get the folks who really understand the details of something, they try to show the context. But then they kind of focus in on theirs. And so you don't have them presenting. Everybody's got its own agenda, yeah? Yeah, yeah. The next slide is slide five once again talks about hydrogen. But it points out that you can actually have hydrogen turned into liquids. So liquid organic hydrogen carrier is the LOHC. And ammonia is another hydrogen carrier. So this was the point of this fellow's presentation. What does storage time mean? What does that mean? How long? The battery is over the charge, maybe? No, if you need energy for more than just a day or a month. It's kind of like the days, weeks, months chart that was previous. Yeah, and then he was trying to talk about the cost. And of course, those are all over the place. And I have a chart later on that talks about you can't just look at the price of the battery itself. But so if you are interested in figuring out what technologies are being discussed for different sizes or applications, these charts are very helpful. And I think there was one more. And I think that was Stan. Stan did the slide six as long as we're in the, yeah, yeah. So he's probably presented this. If not, we could ask him to explain. But once again, you've got the hydrogen and the methane, which compress natural gas, compressed air, pumped hydro, as the long duration and high power. And then they talk about the flow batteries, which has got an electrolyte that doesn't just sit in the battery, flows into the energy production device so you can have more charged electrolyte, depending on how much energy you need out of it. Notice how the biggest shape on the page is hydrogen. Yeah, it depends on where are you focused, right? Exactly. Exactly. So I think. Let me add a thought, though. We started out with renewable energy, what, 15 years ago? Don't warn that, but yes, OK. I mean, we're for serious discussion. When the forums started 15 years ago, everybody said we need a diverse portfolio. And I think a lot of people still say that we have a diverse portfolio. But over time, a lot of the nominees in that portfolio have been stragglers, and they have dropped out of the planning. So now you have, clearly, you have solar and you have wind. A lot of the others, we don't have anymore. We don't think about it much. OK, Eric. How about ocean energy, right? Nothing. No, no, there is. There is. You've got your wave energy test facility. It's a 15 years, it's a test. Yeah, it's OK. I don't think it really competes with the ones who are sort of emerging as the leaders, right? So I suggest to you, Maria, that it's the same thing with storage. Right now, we have seven or eight things there. And over time, the capital is going to make its choice. The developers are going to make, the entrepreneurs are going to make their choice. Utility companies are going to make their choice. Everybody's going to make a choice. And there will be the same kind of emergence. So it's nice to have diversity in the possibilities for storage. But at the end of the day, it's going to narrow it down, don't you think? You know, I think there is enough difference between a one-second solution and a seasonal solution that you will still have a diversity. OK, all right. And you know, people are always looking for the magic bullet. You know, there's the presenter who always says there is no magic bullet, it's magic buckshot. Or maybe it's just silver buckshot. I don't know. Whatever. And then you have breakthroughs, you know, something you may have discounted as, ah, that's old. It's been developed as far as it can be. And then somebody figures out a new twist on it or combines things in a unique way or gets to understand, what is the chemistry? What is the failure mechanism? You know, how can this actually be used in a different way? And all of a sudden you have a resurgence, which is why it's very dynamic. And it may surpass the other ones if the technology is significantly better than we thought. You know, we used to just have something and say, well, it kind of does that, right? And then you find an application for it. And then when you're getting into the details, especially down at the nanoscale and you're understanding what are the actual mechanisms? Where are the waste? You know, where are the inefficiencies? How could there are always breakthroughs? And I think that's what's so exciting about having the national labs show up at these conferences and share their enthusiasm. And they did. Yeah. Last time I didn't remember which national labs were there. So I should mention. We had NREL. We had the Department of Energy, also, for folks. And the National Renewable Energy Lab. We had Sandia. And we had the Pacific Northwest National Lab and Argon. So all these folks were there. And then we had our local folks, the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii. And then, of course, HCaT, you know, Stan Arthur. Very appropriate conference for right now. Very appropriate attendees. Yeah, so anyway. So they were able to share not only their enthusiasm for their specific technology and the breakthroughs that are happening now and that they're looking forward in the next 10 or 20 years, but also they're aware of the bigger picture, which is also what you get when you come to these conferences. Right. The possibility of conjoining technologies together or looking at one and learning something to be used in the other. Exactly, yeah. So if they share a breakthrough here, it might also apply to another. We're going to have a breakthrough, too. A break. Actually, a break. Yeah. Break through. Yeah, there you go. You'll see. Maria Tomei will be right back. I only got through six slides. Cool. Good job. This is technically raising public awareness. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha. Nothing is making sense. For the end, there's got to be solutions. How to make a party. Hey, Aloha, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. Where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy in transportation, energy in maritime, energy in aviation. We have all kinds of things on our show. But we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii. Because it's my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. But we talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. And we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Stan Energyman. And take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. OK, we had our breakthrough. Ha, ha, ha. We're back. It's Brea Tomei. And she's the co-host of Hawaii State of Energy, State of Clean Energy. And we're talking about the conference at Nelha over storage just a week ago. So you have more slides. I think you have more slides. Yes, yes. So slide seven was one of the few that actually discussed the function of liquid fuels as actually stored energy. I mean, that's why they are so prevalent and so useful is they are stored energy. And so we're familiar with it. So when we talk about the new energy storage systems, we usually don't even talk about liquid fuels, unless we're talking about liquids that include hydrogen and whatnot. So I thought it was an interesting and valuable part of the discussion to at least acknowledge that liquid fuels are stored energy. And this slide pointed out that if you look at the batteries that are out there for energy storage, I think they also pumped hydro and whatnot in there, it is four minutes of the US energy need. Sometimes that'll do it for you. And oil reserves, of course, 54 days. And I would just mention that one of the things that concerns me from a strategic point of view and a long-term point of view is if we're burning up our stored energy, we're not going to get that back. So it almost makes more sense to use what we have from renewable sources and just leave that other stuff in the ground. Climate change is a whole new dynamic on this. We don't want to take the carbon and put it into the atmosphere. But see, that's a very interesting notion. But also it's a reserve. You know, you'd probably never need it. But maybe it would be useful. But what if your other things are not developed quickly enough to meet the demand, why are you burning up your strategic? Anyway, sorry. Which is a different angle on the whole thing. What you suggest here is that there needs to be a global view of this, of what we use first and how much of it. And how it works. And what we incentivize for electric vehicles, for example. Yeah, how it fits together. So that we can manage it. You can't let things happen by face. Yeah, well, you have to be aware of the realities of the market forces and the political forces and everything else that's happening. But you do need to also be intelligent in how you are working with those forces. It would be good to have a plan. And the invention. Yeah, and there's also a force of invention. So you do need to be aware of that. You have to modify the plan with the inventions. Because technology will always surprise you. Yeah. So one nice thing about this conference was not only the information, but the diversity of folks who presented. And not only that, we got press coverage. So on the Big Island, and you can see on slide number 8, the one session that the press showed up for and had a newspaper article on for the West Toi today, the next day, was this one regarding Big Island. Resiliency enforcement here, situations. I don't think that would be the one that. Lava, they had hurricanes they had. And so the press showed up and they took pictures and they wrote a good article, I think. And so I really like it when there is public interest and media interest in what's happening. Well, they were. What did he say? What did Jay Ignacio say? Oh, OK. So the next slide. He talked about, of course, the lava. This is a situation where not only do you have to worry about power quality and all this renewable energy conversion and all, but resilience of the system. So resilience was the big topic. Reliability resilience, being able to react as quickly as possible to whatever nature throws at you or whatever happens. Storage is a key thing on that. It is a definite help. If you have your system set up to have redundancies and to be able to handle the short term disruptions and to as well as planning for the longer term ones. So there was a lot of discussion of microgrids and their contribution to resiliency. They also talked about the wind events they had had, the hurricanes. It wasn't even a hurricane when it hit in 2014. It was a tropical storm, but it knocked down the trees and took out a bunch of poles. It wasn't that it knocked down the poles directly. It knocked the trees onto the poles, the albizia. And so there are so many things to look at when you're building a resilient system. And there was a lot of discussion at this conference about Puerto Rico. Rebuilding Puerto Rico's grid to be more resistant to disasters, more resilient. As long as you've got to rebuild everything, can you do it in a better way? So they actually had many presentations on how the grid failed as well as how it was going to be built back. What part storage would play in this? I'm very interested in that. I'm actually moderating a panel for EUCI, remember them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have their annual conference in Waikiki. And the panel is on hardening. Hardening the system, being more resilient. Yeah, which is part of what you've got to do. With due regard for what happened in Puerto Rico, of course. Yeah. Oh, well, I'll go back and check which of these presentations had a bunch on Puerto Rico. But if you want to take a look at them, there were some very good points, very good questions, some unanswered questions. We have to learn. It's like if there's a plane crash, the FAA comes out and they have inspectors and investigators, and they inquire into what happened. So why? Other planes can learn. Other airlines, other pilots, other planes can learn. So every time there is a storm, there will be storms. We should be learning a lot about how to minimize the effect of the next storm. That's the world we live in. If there is a success story there somewhere, maybe that can be replicated and expanded as well. In the case of Puerto Rico, we did a show on this with a, I guess he was an energy expert in Washington, DC, who was studying what happened in Puerto Rico. And he had photos of these large, they have large solar farms in Puerto Rico. They're not just behind the curve. They serious solar farms. It goes on for acres and acres. And one installer did one side of this particular farm, used a certain kind of fastener and fastening technique. And the other side, the different, maybe a different installer, a different methodology. And after the storm, this side was destroyed, completely pulled up. This side was still functioning. So you learn from that next time you build a solar farm. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I was very glad to see that level of interest and the media coverage of that, at least that part. Right, important. Yeah. Another important point is how not only is storage important to Hawaii, but Hawaii is doing some things that are very helpful in the storage area. So the next slide, I just wanted to illustrate slide 10. Hawaii Natural Energy Institute is very involved in this. And they are doing everything from collecting the data to doing a lot of modeling and analysis and testing. And they are applying some of these tools to Hawaii's questions. And so I know we had some H&EI presentations. And I hope we have more. Yeah, he did on the show a number of times that you do very recently and many times. And others at H&EI as well. I just took this as part. This was part of one very basic slide. But I think it illustrates that they are doing a variety of things. So it does go both ways, which is why it's so interesting for us here. Well, you can't wait for a storm to hit to do the research. Yeah. No, well, no. You can't wait for a problem to do it in advance. And the best place is in the laboratory. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's better than having to wait until the storm hits. And then, yeah, so slide 11 kind of gets into some of the level of detail they were going into about different types of batteries. I know we're finally getting to the battery discussion, right? I've only got a couple slides on batteries. But you can see that the energy storage deployments, lithium ion, like everything in all the other sectors as well, is really taking over. You've got a lot of the vehicles using lithium ion and your small portable electronics as well. And it's also being used for some of your large-scale energy storage. You know, lithium ion is certainly the top of the line right now, expensive. And there's only so much lithium in the world. But I read, since this conference happened last week in the Big Island, I read that there was another kind of battery that somebody came up with, which is cheaper. Which holds the charge, which I think is bigger in terms of the volume of the battery. But that may not matter that much, because batteries, collectively, don't take that much space. Well, for storage, it's not as critical as for cars. Anyway, I mean, I don't think we can rule out the possibility that battery technology is moving forward even as we speak, and that lithium ion is not the end of the road. And there will be batteries that are to be cheaper and better, more manageable as time goes. It's a technology to watch for. And I think we'll hear more about that. I think so. And there will be many conferences in which they present a lot of the work that's being done there. Yeah. The next one does mention a couple more types of batteries. Slide 12. So the flow batteries, probably not the one you heard about, although maybe it was. Sodium metal and lead acid, of course. And there are a variety of these technologies that aren't even shown here. I think you've probably got hundreds of potential technologies that are under development. Interesting. Some of them are significantly, they have a greater duration by, oh, gee, twice as much. And this is really. And so the reason I included this, oh, sorry, is not so much for the information at the top part, but the bottom. Because if you want to see the energy as a website, you can go and get your energy storage database fixed. Because there's a lot of energy storage projects that are being. I know this question is going to surprise you, Maria, but what is the website you're talking about? It was on the slide. OK. Yeah, the previous one. So just if you're watching this, just hit pause, hit pause. And it's energystorageexchange.org. Yeah. OK, thank you. So I've got one more graph, and then we get to just the list of presentations. So the point of this was, OK, you're excited. Let's say you have a favorite battery technology, and you figure it's perfect. What is the price? Well, if you go and say, how much can I buy the battery for? They're going to give you the number that's the orange one there. It's just the DC direct current system cost. Right? So you've got to be careful with how you ask the question and how you answer the question, because it's more than just the cost of the battery. You also have the power electronics. And you also have, you've got to build it. Sometimes you have to build a building around it. Sometimes you need to air condition the building around it. Right? And you have to integrate it into whatever system it is that it's supposed to be supporting, whether it's a building or exactly. And there's programming in it. Yeah, right. So that's got to change. It will change. The way to do the building, the way to do the electronics, it's all going to change. And probably it'll come down in price. Probably, yeah. This is a great conference. It was. It was a lot of fun. To think about these things, to look out into the future, to feel the limits and how they move, and to see new possibilities. You're right that it should be a collaborative kind of conference where people come in from various sides to see how this affects them, even though they're not directly involved in batteries and storage. Yeah, yeah. And the networking and the connections that can be made between the. That's worth the price of eggs right there. Yeah, yeah. So I had one more slide. Don't want to miss the slide 14. So I just wanted to give a shout. It is. What I love about the way they present it, it's so clear. It's so easy to find. If you're looking for a specific presenter or whatnot, you can come right here, click on it, and find it. It's an order of presentation. Yeah, cool. Yeah. And it's got the name and the time and the presentation and whatnot. And so it's just so easy to navigate. Yeah, that's great. Simplicity. Yeah, well organized. And it's free. You can go and see what they presented. A lot of these folks are actually very accommodating. If you're researching something or you have a question about applications, they're very accommodating, I think, many of them, to engage with the researcher or the journalist or whoever. Well, what comes around goes around. We might as well learn from each other. It pays to be to exchange information. And of course, you have to draw the line where you're going to reveal your patent or some kind of product. You're not going to write the paper for the student. You are not. Right, right. Very good. I'm glad you went. Well, my. It was a lot of fun. I wish I was there. But I think there'll be more. I noticed that this conference in Nelha was the second one in two years. So it was another one two years ago. So a shout out to Greg Barber. Good for you, Greg, for putting it together. And maybe next time you could do it annually, what do you think? Maria, would you agree with that? There's probably going to be a lot of stuff happening between now and a year from now. So I would love to go. Of course, putting them on is a lot of work. So whenever you have the next one, hopefully we'll be there. Yeah, energy is technology. Technology is energy. The two are inextricably intertwined. Thank you so much, Maria. Thank you. Great to talk to you. And thank you. Aloha. That was quick.