 Welcome to Think Tech on OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Raya Salter. And I'm Elise Anderson. In our show this time, we'll take you on a trip we made to a number of energy and sustainability projects on Kauai. That included tours of green energy, Hawaii dairy farms, the Tesla solar and battery facility, and visits with some VIPs at Kauai County. We flew into Kauai on Friday, April 7th. First, we met Beth Tokioka, Communications Director for Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, K-I-U-C, the Electric Utility on Kauai. We're going to take you down to green energy, our biomass plant, which is relatively new to our portfolio, but an important part of our renewable portfolio. Spend some time with those folks. We're going to show you our Tesla plant. That is a really exciting project for us as you know that we had the blessing about a month ago. And that is going to be online very shortly for us, providing 13 megawatts for roughly four hours in the evening. So storing all that solar that we have. Working with the county on a number of things, one of them was retrofitting all of our street lights. So we, I believe, are the first county in the state to be running now on all LED street lights. And it's, again, not only great for the environment, but it's going to save the county, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000 a year on their energy bill to run the street lights. Sometimes if one entity can show the others, you know, can kind of blaze the trail and show others that it can be done and others can learn from our experience, and that's a good thing. I think in Hawaii that's a really great thing. Sometimes other islands can learn from Kauai, sometimes we can learn from what's happening on Oahu or Maui or the Big Island, but that's a nice thing. In our state, I think we're all, we're small enough, we're all connected, we share information, we try to learn from each other. On Kauai, you know, we're doing, we have partners like Grow Farm, who, they are hosting the Tesla facility, that Tesla leases that land from Grow Farm. We also have a solar field in Kaloa that's on Grow Farm land. They've been a really important partner for us. They have lots and lots of land. The land that we're utilizing is agriculturally zoned. They have lots more agricultural land. So you know, it's an important thing to strike a balance between, for example, agricultural land using how much of it for energy production? How much do you want to use for food production? This is the issue of, this is the issue of our time and it's any island issue is what will the land use be as we try and walk towards a sustainable future and it sounds like, in addition to the technology, you guys are having to have these community conversations that I also think that other islands and other parts of the world can ultimately learn from. Yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, so we want to be sensitive to that. So that's why we have to look at all different types of technology and part of our challenge is not moving too quickly. You know, I mean, at this point in time, I suppose we could look at, you know, a strategy of just putting solar farms, you know, as many as we could out there and reaching 100% that way. But we actually have a policy in place or a guideline that we will only add so much renewable every year because we want to be able to be responsive in the future to new technologies, to new types of systems that we could consider. We don't want to move too fast. There's that, kind of that sweet spot of moving as quickly as you can but then not too fast that you miss important opportunities. Then we drove to Green Energy, near Lihui and met with Abraham Costa and his team for a really interesting tour of the 7 megawatt biomass to energy facility there. This is the first closed loop biomass plant in the nation. And what that means is we take from the seedlings, you know, from the seeds. We grow the plant. We grow the big trees. We cut it down, makes chips, brings it to the facility. We burn the wood chips, heats the boiler, makes steam, steamed turbine and power out to the grid. The wood is albizia? Yes. We're doing albizia right now. It's invasive species that we're chopping all those trees down now and then we're actually growing eucalyptus. All right. We're going to go to the unloading bays, try on this side. That's where the chips are unloaded. From there, there's an automatic crane. The crane takes it into the boiler and then we'll go inside the boiler house, look at the fuel belts. From the fuel belts, we'll look inside the boiler through the viewing windows and then we'll go look at the turbine and the generator. So we've been actually in service commercially for about a year and three months. They built it from the ground up, a European company from Germany, SKGs. We have our automatic fuel crane. So we have four trucks with the walking floors. What it does is our plantation, they cut the trees down, they chip it and they drop it off over here and this crane will work all day unloading it into the fuel hall and then from the fuel hall it puts it in a hopper, it's got screws in it, it goes on the belts and from the belts into the boiler. Now right now we are running at capacity. We're running at 6.7 megawatts right now. The plant is capable of doing about 8.3 megawatts out to the utility. This is our trailers from the plantation. We do roughly about 16 trailers a day. The trucks are walking floors so the wood chips just walk themselves right out the back. We replant all the trees. So on the areas that we cut down, we'll clean the area out, they'll replant from seedlings and then we'll put eucalyptus and from the belts the fuel chips will fall down in there. If you see there's two viewing windows and you can actually see the wood chips falling into the chutes. The original costs about 90 million to build this place. The boiler has a walking floor on it as well which is angled down and the floor walks. So the wood chips get pushed inside, they light on fire and then they slowly walk themselves down the grates until it burns out. Until it becomes ash. And then the ash, we recycle the ash and the ash is taken back up to the plantation. Fertilizer. For fertilizers. Yeah, so we go from the little seedling to the ash and everything goes right back to the plantation. This is the main combustion page and then we have different training screens that we utilize. It tells what's going on and I have an alarm page down there which I can acknowledge that right here. So those are the wood chips. That's the consistency of what goes in, yeah? Yes. It's called SCADA which is supervisory control and data acquisition. So I supervise by basically watching and then doing control like changing load and data acquisition, doing trending. We adjust it according to what KAC wants. If KAC says we want 4.2 megawatts, we'll give them 4.2 megawatts. Or if they ask for 7.5, we give them 7.5 megawatts. Also automated. Yes, they just punch in the number and everything does its thing. We can manually sink it to the grid as well from here. We like to keep hands off. We just automate, press the button, let the system do its job. What this does right here, this is an electric static precipitator. So there's air that's blown into the boiler, you know, to stoke the fire, make the fire and then there's a big ID fan that keeps a slight negative pressure on the boiler. So it sucks all that flue gas out and it comes out here and it goes into this electric static precipitator. And what that does, it's high voltage plates and it's 50,000 volts and all the particles, all the dust stick to those plates. And so the flue gas comes out the stack and it comes out clean out the top. We got everything going into the other side through the boiler up through a technology that takes the carbon and the socks and the socks right out of it. And then voila, here what you have is electricity that goes to the electric cooperative here, KIUC. After that, we went to Hawaii Dairy Farms at Maha Ulebu and met with Amy Hennessy and Jim Garments to see what's going on there. It's quite beautiful. Tell us a little bit about the farm and what we're going to see today. Sure, well it's about 557 acres and we're proposing a pasture based dairy. It's the first of its kind in the islands and it has rotational grazing. We have the herd broken up into six different groups and we rotate them through a series of pastures. So they eat the grass as their natural feed. They leave behind natural fertilizer that helps the grass to grow and then it's a nice virtuous cycle for the farm to exist. Great and this is towards greater sustainability for the island, yes? Food security and hopefully creating a dairy farm that's going to help to provide 1.2 million gallons a year for everybody to drink. As I understand there aren't any cattle here now, but that what you're looking to do is establish a pastoral, a sustainable renewable pastoral system of raising cattle and having a dairy so that these and you're preparing and these pastures are being prepared for that new kind of system. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that. Sure, yeah, so we are growing a whole bunch of grass. Right now we're doing grass trials to understand how the grass is growing in this particular area to make sure that we have enough feed for the cows. And then the idea was to try to use the pastoral model to get away from the reliance on imported feed and fertilizer for the cows. Got it. Yeah, so it's a much it's a lower cost model. It's better for the environment. It uses the natural resources that we have. The cows manure is a great fertilizer. So we recycle those nutrients onto the pasture to grow the grass and then they get to eat the grass as their feed. So why do you have why are you cutting the grass if you want to grow the grass? Oh, so it's important to cut the grass. We're doing an 18 day rotation like we would if the cows were on pasture eating the grass so that we can see how the grass performs. What's the nutrient value? So we want to keep that rotation and we don't want it to get overgrown too because if the grass gets too tall, it loses its nutrient value. So what's the sign table? Well, that's a really good question. We're in the process of doing a second EIS to respond to community comments and questions from the regulators. So we hope to submit that for a review and comment sometime this year. I can't give you a definite time because some of these things take time. And then our hope is to be through the permitting regulatory process and in construction in the next couple years. So when all that's through, when all that's done, how do you see this place in your mind? So what's it going to look like? How is it going to function? Oh, this is going to be beautiful. It's going to be green pastures. Really idyllic with cows dotting the landscape and different pastures just enjoying the grass. And it'll just be a really peaceful, serene, beautiful place to be. I'm jealous of the cows. I'd love to hang out here every day. Let's pull for milk. Pull for milk. Pull for milk. You've been in the dairy business for 35 years. You went to school. Your family was in the dairy business. What is it about the dairy business that attracts you and your family for all these years and keeps you with it even now? What is it like to cows? After a break for lunch, we visited with John Yoshimura and Nick Clements at the 13-megawatt 50-acre Tesla solar farm and battery storage facility north of Lihui. What we've got here is 50 acres of solar panels, 55,000 solar panels that are paired with more than 250 Tesla power wall systems to provide energy to the island of Kauai. This is a fantastic project for us and a partnership with Tesla. Tesla, most people know that company, it's a very groundbreaking company in many ways, but they've partnered with us to put up a large solar plus battery storage facility here in Kapaia. So this facility is located on 50 acres of grow farmland and it's got a whole bunch of solar panels and a whole bunch of batteries. And basically what this facility will do will help us move our solar energy into the evening hours. So this is agricultural land, it's nice, it keeps ag zoned land in production and out of development so to speak. It's good for the landowner grow farm. And you know the power that's generated here, so these batteries will store 13 megawatts of power that'll be fed into the grid for four hours in the evening. So it's a total of 52 megawatts in the evening hours which powers roughly 4,500 homes here on Kauai. And it makes a dent because otherwise we would be burning fossil fuel, which we don't want to do if we can avoid it. So this helps us to avoid probably in the neighborhood of 1.3 million gallons of fossil fuel a year. That is incredible. And also I understand the arrangement that you have with Tesla and this is a little, not unusual or unorthodox, but Tesla actually owns this facility and sells the power back. I understand 2KIUC at a rate that is cheaper than what you, than what KIUC had paid before. Is that correct? So there's an economic benefit to this project? Correct. One of the beauties of this project is that because we have, so yes, Tesla built this facility, they lease the land from Grow Farm. They own all of these panels and batteries that we see here. And we executed a purchase power agreement with them for 13.9 cents per kilowatt hour, which is a very good rate for us. It's lower than what we're currently paying for oil. And we probably expect oil to stay the same or maybe go up in the near future. So it helps us create a downward pressure on our rates using solar energy, which a few years ago, I think a lot of folks didn't think you could deliver that kind of renewable energy at a price point that was comparable or that made financial sense. Can you tell us a bit about the cooperative model and how that's important here when it comes to renewable energy? Absolutely, because as we talk about rates, we are cooperative. We are owned by our members. We have 24,000 plus members, and they're all of our customers. We all own the cooperative. This happened about 15 years ago. A group of businessmen here on Kaua'i got together and purchased the utility from Citizens Utilities. So we are all member owners. We don't have a profit motive. So basically any profits that we do make are returned to our members at the end of the year. So anything that we can do to save money and bring more value to our members and lower their bills, we're happy to do. So this is the type of project that really helps and it helps all people benefit from solar. Yeah, could you talk a bit about how you guys have worked with the community as you've developed these resources? So a lot of folks in recent years have been able to put solar panels and PV panels and batteries into their homes in order to power their own homes. But not everybody can afford to do that. Or some people rent, or maybe their homes, their roofs aren't ideal for that type of thing. So not everybody has that opportunity. But as a utility and a member owned cooperative, we feel that projects like this at a utility scale help all of our members benefit from the sun. Finally, we drove to the County Office Building in Lihue and met with Ben Sullivan, the Energy and Sustainability Coordinator for Kauai County, and Bernard Corralo, the Mayor of Kauai. KAUC is doing incredible work. The County of Kauai is really very happy with the progress they're making and a number of various. We're also very close partners with them. So a project that is very near and dear to my heart is the recent completion of the LED street lights. Oh, cool. Tell us about that. Over the course of the last several years, we've been interfacing with KAUC, and we've both had this mutual objective of how do we get conversion of our high pressure sodium street lights to LEDs. And right from the beginning, there was agreement that it was the right thing to do. It was going to benefit taxpayers, benefit members of the cooperative, but we knew it was going to take a little bit of work. There was a regulatory piece we had to complete. There was numerous other aspects of the project that needed to be worked out. But we luckily have a really strong partnership with them thanks to an agreement that Merica Vallejo and their CEO reached a number of years ago. So the whole project moved forward and just starting last August and completing this just last January, they finished the installation. So we now have brand new street lights all around the island. I think we reduced our energy use in that area by 70%. Wow. And what does that mean in terms of dollars? So the county will be paying $400,000 less on our electricity bill every year or thereabout. We did some great stuff this morning. We went to Green Energy to see that biomass facility. Could you perhaps tell us maybe some of the county perspectives on that project? Sure. Merica Vallejo was very supportive of that project and really excited to see it happen. I recall myself, actually, before I worked for the county or for KIC, I remember as a community advocate for Green Energy discussing that at a grassroots level in community meetings and saying, hey, what a great project. And our thinking was, hey, this is a diverse solution. We look around today and very often it's solar or wind, right? There's very few other things happening. We thought we need to diversify and that's part of it and this was an important piece. How are things doing in Kauai, Mer? There's a lot of great things happening on our island and we're trying our best to look at all the opportunities regarding energy, regarding sustainability. We're transforming our island to walkable, bikeable, complete streets, safe routes to school and all that kinds of opportunities to make it more healthy, encouraging people to get out and about. I think that's the big part. We transformed our street lights, I'm sure Ben talked about that, but there's many different projects happening at the same time. So I think we're on the brink of looking at different opportunities, bringing in resources, and then getting it back to the community and making our island safe and healthy. And that's the big part for me. We talked, and I hope you can talk with me about this whole transmutation of the idea of kind of citizen democracy with KIUC, about how that also affects the county in general, and so it's like it's transmuted from one to the other and back and forth and it's magic management. That's what we think about this. Aloha, all of it. And so yeah, we have an awesome relationship with KIUC. We started off with a memorandum of understanding, came into my office, we meet once a month with the leadership team. Just to talk story, I got some issues that we need to vet out. And then at the end, we go back and then come back again on a monthly basis. So the memorandum of understanding, science still delivered, and so look forward to looking at more opportunities to partner with KIUC. The Tesla project out here, looking at some other renewables. We're looking at our methane project where you transform the methane to energy or to fuel. We're going to fuel our buses one day from the methane extracted from that landfill and KIUC is going to be involved, okay? Jai, I'm so excited about our energy conference in June. We are going to focus on bringing resources related to local businesses and as tied to energy use. And so KEDB is hosting the conference. This is Kauai Economic Development Board. It's going to be down on the Marriott June 19th. It is going to be great. It is going to be a three track conference. We've got electricity as one track. We've got transportation, ground transportation as another track. And the third track is going to be about our low carbon future. So we're going to be talking about things like climate change and really what an opportunity we have in terms of understanding the changes that are happening and how we can respond as businesses. Energy and sustainability are alive and well on Kauai. KIUC is effective and popular and a model for other places. The Green Energy Facility was quite impressive in its technology, design, scale, and contribution to clean energy in Kauai. Hawai'i Dairy Farms was lovely and promising in its prospect of a return to dairy farming in Hawai'i. It's so important that we all learn to understand how important local agriculture is to our self-reliance. The Tesla Solar and Battery Facility was huge, with 54,000, yes, 54,000 solar panels and acres of high-tech battery units that will serve Kauai well. And we love talking with Ben Sullivan and Mayor Bernard Carvalho. They are great public servants for Kauai, dedicated to energy and sustainability for their island. All in all, we were left with great admiration for the people and projects we saw. Indeed, Kauai is a special island with a special community that has found a special vision for energy and sustainability. Keep up the good work, Kauai, and all of you. We'll be watching and rooting for you in the years ahead. And we want to come back again and again to follow up on your great projects and leadership going forward. It was a very successful trip. Sincere thanks to Beth Tokioka of KIUC for setting things up and helping us get around and to Abraham Costa at Green Energy, Amy Hennessey and Jim Garmatts at Hawaii Dairy Farms, John Yoshimura and Nick Clements at the Tesla Facility, and Mayor Carvalho and Ben Sullivan for helping us learn so much. And a big mahalo to the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Annie Sinclair-Nudson Memorial Fund for making all this possible. Want to know more about KIUC? Check it out at website.kius.coop. Want to know more about Hawaii Dairy Farms? Check it out at HawaiiDairyFarms.com. Want to know more about Tesla batteries? Check it out at tesla.com slash powerwall. Want to know more about Kauai County? Check it out at kauai.gov. And now let's take a look at our ThinkTech calendar of events going forward. There's so much happening in Hawaii. Sometimes things happen under the radar and we don't hear much about them, but ThinkTech will take you there. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on OC-16 several times every week to stay current on what's happening in government. Industry, academia and communities around the island and the world. ThinkTech broadcasts its daily talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share our shows, they're all archived on demand on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube. The audio is on ThinkTechHawaii.com slash radio. And we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. See our website for links. Visit ThinkTechHawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and YouTube links or sign up on our email list to get the daily docket of our upcoming shows. ThinkTech has a high-tech green screen first amendment studio at Pioneer Plaza. 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For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit ThinkTechHawaii.com, be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii and, of course, energy and sustainability on the neighbor islands. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Ria Salter. And I'm Elise Anderson. Aloha, everyone.