 This is Think Tech Hawai'i. Community matters here. Good afternoon, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech Hawai'i, where there's a will, there's a way, which is why we have today as our guest, Mr. Will Geesey. Geesey, that's right. Geesey, yep, with Awanian. Who is, he has three separate titles at his advanced age. One is somewhere right up there with the Sierra Club. Another is with the Hawai'i Solar Energy Association. And another is with the Inter-Island Solar Supply, which is the solar wholesaler. When the solar installers are ready to do a job, they'll call up Inter-Island Solar Supply. I need this, this, this, and this. They get all ready. They pick up their, they pull by their trucks, pick up the stuff and move on. So it's the solar heart of America. I speak without prejudice because I'm a friend of a colleague, Judd, who founded it. Yes, he did. Yeah, he also helped found the Hawai'i Solar Energy Association that I work with. So welcome, Will. And we are, as the audience is gathering, going to talk about solar energy today. And before we leap into the hot topic of PVs or photovoltaics, here's a lead-off question. Since the photovoltaic rooftop situation is so muddled today, and a lot of solar companies are not doing well at all because of that, why isn't everyone back on the solar water-heating bandwagon? And I'll tell you my personal prejudice. I work for the state government. Our mission is 100% clean electrical energy by 2045. And we have that evening peak demand to deal with, whoops, airpiece problem here. Why not push the heck out of solar water heating during this lull in PV because number one, it's a really easy sell. You get 35% state tax credit, 30% federal tax credit, and I believe it's a $750 rebate from Hawai'i Energy. It's just about free, tremendous payback. And from our standpoint, when families come home around five in the afternoon, they've got a battery waiting for them in the form of 80 gallons of very hot water. Out of all the demand that they put on their homes, there is zero for hot water because they've got all the hot water they need. Therefore, that evening, nasty old evening peak gets shaved. So why not push the heck out of it? Well, that's a good question, right? So I mean, first, I just want to say you make a lot of good points. I think the rebate is actually at $500 for Hawai'i Energy, which is kind of sad, because the rebates themselves or the budget that Hawai'i Energy has been allocated keeps going down every year, which is unfortunate, because I think they do a lot of good work. Because I like to say energy efficiency is the other side of the coin, right? Because you have energy generation, which is kind of the hot topic now. Oh, yeah, I can have a PV system on my house. But the other side of it is efficiency, right? If I lower the load that I have to serve with my generator, the generator itself doesn't have to be as big. So you bring up some good points. I would say that, yeah, the industry right now, as far as PV is going, is definitely in flux. And so why isn't there an uptake in more solar hot water systems in the state? Part of that is, you know, if I could speculate, I think you have seen an increase in some of the permits for solar hot waters in the last couple of years since October. Now, there is another reason you sometimes get tangled up with the PV permits, or certainly these days you get all tangled up with it. The solar water heating permitting process, as I understand it, is completely electronic. If you're not in a flood zone or have no other complications, boom. Yeah, you can get online and just go through this like that, yeah. Yeah, so it's really easy to get those permits, and definitely there's been, although recently, you know, the HSEA and other organizations have had a lot of success with the permitting department as far as PV systems go, especially with energy storage. But until recently, you know, it's been difficult to get those energy storage permits. And so solar hot water, obviously, is a way that you can kind of remedy that, right? By lowering your load. I would say that, you know, there's several companies that the Hawaii Solar Energy Association, who are members of the HSEA, who have kind of gone back to their backbone, right, of solar hot water. But I would say that, too, you know, we've had a solar PV boom, and the companies that started working a lot in solar PV just hadn't ever done solar hot water. Good point. It's a whole different animal, and now you're dealing with all this water business, and you have to have plumbing expertise. I think a plumber has to sign off on the job. Yeah, I mean, you have to have a plumbing license, right? So it's two different licenses, right? You have electrical and you have plumbing. So you have a big company, you know, like one of the big solar companies. They probably don't do solar hot, like a national solar company. They probably do do solar hot water. Good point, good point. And so they're just not diversified in that way. But thankfully to those companies, you know, they have the capital to kind of wait it out until the tariff gets better the solar market starts picking up. The unfortunate thing is that a lot of local businesses, smaller ones that just did PV and aren't as diversified anymore, because they can't do solar hot water, they kind of unfortunately had to cut staff, you know, and we've seen a pretty significant amount of companies who've lost a lot of staff. I think our most recent HSE report had, I don't know, maybe 50% of staff losses and the ones that we've surveyed. Yeah, I mean, you know, we say, wow, that's a lot. But I mean, these are people's jobs, you know, that they're losing. And yeah, I'd like, I think there's been a slight uptake in solar hot water. Obviously, solar hot water, like I mentioned, and like my boss, Rick Reed says, it's the backbone of the solar industry. And it doesn't change very much. So it's, it's not like influx, like solar PV is. So I would like to see more companies move that way. The problem is they just have to be diversified in that way. And some of them are just not set up for it. But the ones that are, I think, are pivoting to make that in the meantime. Glad to hear it. That warms the cockles of my heart again from the standpoint of evening peak shaving. Yeah, and you're totally right. You know, why buy, you know, why buy, I mean, energy storage technology like lithium ion batteries are great, right? But you have a battery in solar hot water, right? That hot water itself is your battery. And there's no danger of it catching on fire. No, or exploding or anything like that. Yeah. So I mean, you've got the battery right there. And it's, you know, 25, $2,000 to $2,500 after taxes and rebates. And the return on investment on that is, is so great. Why wouldn't you do it? I think, you know, if I had a house, I'd be, I bet I'd definitely be thinking about, you know, the first changes that I would make to my house, solar hot water would be up there for sure. And energy efficiency measures. And then like later, when I, you know, have a little bit more capital, or I'm a little bit better to afford a solar PV system, then I'll build that PV system, but it's going to be smaller, right? Because I've gotten rid of all that love, which is great. Yeah. Back in the old days of pre any of this, right, because that's how far back I go, we would look at the energy use profile of a typical Hawaii home, which number one did not have air conditioning. Number two had the electric resistance water heater. That water heater accounted for 40% of the entire load. It still does. In some houses, 40 to 60%. 60% when you have a lot of people under the roof. So there's a lot of dishes to wash, a lot of clothes to wash, a lot of people taking showers. Yeah. So imagine, I mean, translate that into the amount of money that you're saving every, I mean, it just kind of makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I would encourage solar installers and contractors who are able to do that. I mean, to continue trying to diversify their business, build out solar hot water. And we have, you know, unlike most states in the United States, we have a pretty robust solar hot water contractor installer economy here. You know, I, it's, I think, you know, if you live in a state like, you know, I'm originally from Arkansas, where natural gas is pretty cheap. Yep. Why would you buy a solar hot water heater when natural gas is cheap? But here we don't have natural gas, but what we do have is the sun and abundant resource. So why not just use that? And we, on, in the mainland states where it freezes in the winter, you have to have a special anti-freezing provision up there too. Yeah. You do not have that problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is possible to do it. I just, my dad actually who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and sold a solar hot water heater. But yeah, it's a little bit more expensive, right? Because you have to have that kind of freon almost in there to prevent it from freezing. Yeah. Not here. Well, I guess unless, unless you live like on top of a big island or something like that. Okay. Well, I can assure you that on top of the big island, they're the only warm bodies up there, number one, are not so warm because they're astronomers. Yes. Those astronauts that just came out of that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This morning. Yeah. Anyway. So you mentioned twice the word storage, and we're not talking now about hot water storage. You're talking about another kind of storage. What might that be? Right. So kind of the hot thing right now, obviously, is energy storage in the form of batteries. Mostly, I think probably most popularly, lithium ion, I think the most popular manufacturer obviously is Tesla, but we have many different lithium ion batteries that many different manufacturers like LG Chem, Enphase, Simplify, they all kind of developed a lithium ion battery. And so I think this is kind of, the, the PUC itself in 2015 in October made a decision to end the NEM tariff, the net energy meter in tariff, and replace it with two, right? Customer grid supply, which is essentially NEM at a lesser amount. About half the amount. About, yeah, 15 cents. So NEM was at retail, which I think at the time was 24 cents, I might be wrong. But in the other half of it, was customer self supply, which is essentially you can build a solar system on your house, but you cannot export energy to the grid. And the way that this happens in most residences, because people are at work instead of at home during the day, is they store that energy in a battery and then use it at night. So those batteries, again, again, shaving that peak. Shaving that peak, exactly, right? So we have, you know, the infamous duct curve, right? So we have two peaks, one in the morning and one at night. And the energy storage helps to shave that peak by export, or by basically lowering the load that the house is putting onto the grid, right, by using the battery that it's stored up during the day. And so these batteries are often lithium ion, but they can be other things like lead acid or salt water based batteries. Now let me give you something, a piece of information that maybe you don't even know, and this is extra credit for our viewers here. The, as you know, the battery permitting process at the city is pretty gosh darn slow. I've heard horror tales of up to six months, and you can correct me, but I think the reason is that the permit checkers just don't really understand this new technology, and they know that they're capable of catching fire, and they are very, very, very, very, very, very cautious about this. So here's the new piece of information. We, I'm with, sit on the Hawaii Building Code Council. We pass all the building codes. I'm the energy code guy. I think I know what you're about to get. And there's, we just, the governor just signed into law the 2014 NEC, National Electrical Code, and we're lagging behind that. That's a whole different story, because there is the 2017 National Electrical Code, and the last chapter, which is brand new compared to the previous editions of the code, it deals with the battery storage or electrical storage, and it gives the guidelines on how to, and requirements, and how to safely install and operate a battery. So I'm working with Aki, Aki Marso, and Marso, and she has come to the council and testified, and the fire, deputy fire chief sits on the council, and he likes their idea, and that is to take that last chapter of 2017, and at the county level, tack it on as an amendment. Yeah, so basically how I understand it is that it would reference, you know, anything that has to do with the installation of energy storage as it pertains to the National Electrical Code, it references the most recent code, right? So yeah, I mean, so I was gonna say that, first of all, Aki Marso is great, I think she's doing a really good job reaching out to try and get that stuff done, and actually, she was one of the people, so you're right, we saw an issue at the Department of Planning and Permitting, the industry did, and the issue was that it took forever to get energy storage permits, so oddly, the bottleneck was no longer at HECO, it was at the, at least in Oahu, is at the Planning and Permitting Department, and so, you know, over many months, we got together with DPP folks. DPP, Department of Planning and Permitting. Yes, sorry, I need to define my acronyms. Department of Planning and Permitting folks, and they were nice enough to facilitate, and they continued to do so, facilitate some meetings between industry people like myself, the distributed energy resources council and elemental accelerator, and several other people, and we're working really hard to help them, kind of, you know, basically help them figure out what their issues are with energy storage, how we can assure them that the technology is safe, and how we can better integrate it, you know, into their code and into their processes, and those conversations actually have, in the last few months, we've had a pickup in a lot of permits, especially on the residential side, and I attribute a lot of that work to, you know, myself and those other folks as well, especially Aki, who was kind enough to start those meetings up, so I think, you know, it's moving, you know, as all things in Hawaii, sometimes it's slow to get started, but once it does, I mean, it is getting started. The other thing that we're doing is materials and methods, right, so basically, the DPP has an expedited permitting process for certain materials, well, for certain technologies that are vetted by their staff, right, including solar water heating, right, or commercial heaters, all different kinds of stuff, and so one of the things that the industry did was, like, well, we need to provide the DPP with different materials for different battery storage options and different loadouts for these options so that they can be comfortable with them and make an M&M or materials and methods number that then we can help expedite that process, so they know that their plan checkers, first of all, are not spreading their resources very thin to check a bunch of different things because they can look at a whole set of plans now and say, hey, all these plans, they fall under M&M numbers, so these are good, we know these are good. These other plans, we can be a little bit more, we can focus a little bit in, take a deeper dive and see exactly what's going on and feel comfortable with those too, and as we start going through these permits, I think the DPP folks will get more comfortable as they always do, the fire people will, as well. It just takes a lot of work, and I think one of the things that the industry didn't realize was that we, you know, we needed to help initiate that work, and we've done it, and we've got a good working group going, but yeah, you're right, it took a while, but now it's happening, and I attribute a lot of the success to all the people that worked with this, including the DPP folks. So what a concept, collaboration. Yeah, I mean, yeah, right? The other thing about the code, I mean, I think that people don't realize right now, I think we are in the 2008 NEC code is what the city and county uses. I think you're right, yeah. So, I mean, it's 2017 here, and the DPP knows this, and they're like, we need to update this code immediately, and I think from what I know, we're getting very close to updating that code, and you can be sure, rest assured here, that I'm going to work to push that through and get that code updated. Yeah, the process is that the administration, city administration, proposes the code as a bill to the city council. Right. City council introduces it, and then there's three hearings. Right. So it'll be very useful for people like yourselves and Aki to appear at those three hearings. Well, I will definitely be there as well as Leslie Colbrooks at DERC and Aki as well, and you know, we're working with the DPP folks on this, and I expect a lot of success, and it just makes sense, right? It just makes sense to have an updated code, because it just helps facilitate the build out of renewable energy, which I think is what we all want, because we have this big mandate of 2045 that we need to get to, and there's a lot of different pieces that go into that puzzle, and permitting is one of them. Absolutely, and oh, let's see, before we get into any more of that, we're just getting warmed up here. We need to take a break. Howard Wigg, Think Tech, Hawaii. My guest today is Will DC Solar Energy Association, and two or three other hats back in a moment. This is Think Tech, Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science on Think Tech, Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science, where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science, and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great, it's all entertaining, it's all educational, so I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav, I'm the host of Think Tech, Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11 a.m., please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii, not just law, love, people, ideas, history, please join us for Law Across the Sea. Aloha. Welcome back, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii, where there's a will, there's a way, which is why we have Will Geesee, Hawaii Solar Energy Association, and we've been talking about topics that are so exciting we can just barely contain ourselves, but we have better move on to the, what we see in the future for solar, and this regards Hawaiian Electric, and they are now, I've worked for Hawaiian Electric, with Hawaiian Electric for probably as long as you've been on the planet, and they have really, really, really changed now. They say in public we're totally committed to 100% clean energy, and they are walking the talk. Two very important measures that they're talking about, which directly relates to photovoltaic on the roof, is DR Demand Response and TOU Time of Use. Which one would you like to discuss first, and describe for our audience? I think, let's kind of start with Time of Use, because I think that's probably the most relevant, and the reason I say that is because in the current distributed energy resources docket, which has to do with obviously distributed energy in Hawaii and integrating it, we're talking about a smart export tariff, which is kind of a new tariff that will be in addition to customer self-supply, that will be essentially a time of use-based tariff in that you will be allowed to export energy at peak times. Tariff means billing. Yeah, tariff means billing. So you'll be paid for the energy that you produce to the grid at a certain rate, and the smart export tariff is basically you will be paid for energy exports at certain times, which happened to be the peak times that we talked about earlier. So the duck curve in the morning and at night, and then during the day you won't export any energy, much like a CSS system, but you'll be storing that energy in your batteries, which then you'll then export during the peak times or at night. And so this is a time of use-based tariff in a way, because the amount of money that you're being given for that exported energy is going to be a certain amount that's determined by the PUC, but it's only going to be during peak times. And so the other thing about time of use, which I tried, but it didn't work out great for me, was they have a time of use pilot program. Generally in Hawaii, the way time of use is done is it's split into three time periods. There's on-peak, mid-peak, and off-peak. And you get charged three different rates. So normally you would get charged just one flat rate for energy use throughout the day. In time of use scheme, you get charged for different time periods when you use energy. So if I come home at five o'clock, kick off my shoes, turn on the TV, I'm getting charged maybe 25 cents or 30 cents or some very high tariff. But if I am working from home in the middle of the day, in off-peak, when there's a lot of solar energy going on and the generators are not, the utility generators aren't going, I'm getting charged a very small amount for energy during the off-peak time. And so this kind of incentivizes a certain customer behavior or incentivizes a certain behavior by companies to use energy during the off-peak because it's going to save you money on the long run. I think the problem was that especially from the residential side, it's not everybody gets to work from home and a lot of people just want to come home at five o'clock and use energy and turn on the TV and relax and not really think about, hey, how much energy am I using? And last I heard, the TOU tariff pilot program, which had 5,000 possible slots, had only about 2,500. But the nice thing about this is that it kind of sets it up for different things, like especially in the realm of PV, right? For smart export, it sets it up for customer-based renewable energy, which has a time of use based tariff as well. And in the future, obviously things like grid services or you get paid almost to not generate energy or you get paid to produce or you get paid to have a service that you give to the grid that's not just straight energy. So it sets it up for a lot of good things. It's a precedent, right? And so anyway. Yeah, let me just try to accommodate us late people here. So probably the cheapest rate would be in the middle of the day starting about 10 in the morning when the sun gets really shiny and going till 4.30 in the afternoon when the sun begins to set. The PVs right now are producing more energy than when electric can accommodate. They can throttle down their power plants only so far. Right. They throttle them down anymore and just like a car, it's going to stall. Yeah, you have to have a must-run generation. Yeah. And the PV actually produces more than that. So there is a certain wastage here. So you want to use as much energy as you possibly can during that time and they're going to make it cheap for you. Why not put your dishwasher, clothes washer, and dryer on timers so that they go on at 10.30, 11.00. Wouldn't that be an option? I think it's a brilliant idea. Also, if you have a hot water heater that's not solar, you could do this as well. Setting everything on timers, I think, is a very simple, very low-cost way for people to save money, especially if you're on a time of use tariff. If you're on a flat rate, like a retail rate, there's no incentive for you to do that, right? And so one of the hopes is that these time of use tariffs will incentivize this type of behavior, but I think there needs to be a really strong effort by the utility as well as other stakeholders to get the word out that, hey, this tariff exists. You need to use this kind of behavior to do it. I think one of those ways, obviously, grid modernization, having people have more access to their data and their usage data, what's called usage profiles, right, where you're looking on when do I turn things on during the day, how much energy am I using, all different kinds of stuff. I think it all incentivizes this type of behavior, but it's hard, right, for people to change the behavior that they've been doing for, I don't know, 50, 60 years. Yeah, it's just plain old habit. It's hard to change habits. One option that I see is in the little newsletter that Hawaiian Electric sends out with our bills is a chart. Here's, let's see, here's midnight. Your rates are fairly low, and here's 10 o'clock in the morning or whatever. Your rate is way down here, and then comes 4.35 in the afternoon, boom, goes up after 9.30 or so, boom, goes down again. I mean, that's totally visual. Right. And then have clever illustrations. Put on your water heater, dishwasher, whatever, put it on timers and put them on this time. You're getting cheap energy. Come on. Yeah, I think one of the things I'd like to see is, you know, state programs to incentivize this type of behavior through technology, right, because everybody loves data. So if you're looking at, I mean, if you own a house and you have a simple CT monitoring thing that connects to an online portal that looks at your energy usage, now you know, or connect to, like, the Internet of Things, which is kind of a millennial term. You're talking like a millennial here. Not my favorite term, but it is applicable at this point, right, because then all the things would be connected and you could set one time for all of them, right. Theoretically, right, in the future this would be great. If everybody was kind of reactive to the grid's wants and needs, and we were all players, and we all contributed to this, it would be great. And that's something that, you know, I hope as we continue to go into the future and work on all these dockets, you know, power supply improvement plan just got closed, the grid monetization plan, the final plan was filed, DER continues to go, all these different things. I mean, I'm really excited for what the future will bring, and I think it will. Speaking of the future, we have a very, very tiny future in this program left to us, and you know, we didn't even scratch the surface, so let's bring you back into not just the future. I have a whole bunch of other topics. Great. And this is affecting everybody's pocketbooks, so they're going to be just fascinated beyond words. So on that sad note, we must bid fond to do to Will Geesey, Hawaii's Solar Energy Association, and a bunch of other hats, talking about a program that is going to affect each and every one of us in the pocketbook. Howard Wigg, Code Green, see you next time.