 It's Wednesday, four o'clock, your favorite time of the week because it's Hawaii, the state of clean energy. We're sponsored by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, who is also funded by HNEI, had to get a plug-in for my mother company. And the Policy Forum, as the name implies, we look for good and for bad policy. We look for good policies to do good. And we try to identify policies which might not be so good and offer our comments on them. So today we have a great show. We have Larry Pearl from Utility Dive Magazine. And we also have Peter Rossig from HECO. And we're here to talk about some really good news for HECO and for Hawaii. HECO has won the Utility of the Year Award. And we're here to talk about it with Peter and with Larry. So first of all, Peter, why don't you start off? Okay. You know, we got an email a week or so ago out in the blue and it said, you've been named Utility of the Year by Utility Dive. Utility Dive, Larry could tell us more about it, but it's a very highly respected online independent journalistic publication that covers the utility industry across the board. And we certainly had our share of write-ups in there because we're, as you know, we're kind of on the cutting edge of a lot of stuff. There's some awards that you nominate yourself and there's some awards that you beg your friends to nominate you. And there are some awards that if you make a large enough donation to the organization, boom, you get an award. But this is completely an independent award. It came out of the blue, as I said. And it's very gratifying for that reason to be recognized. And sometimes happens here in Hawaii, we're better known and somewhat better respected out of the state than we are in the state. Here, you know, we get our share of NOx occasionally. But so this is a great, great honor for us. And I think it reflects, we can talk in more detail about what it reflects. But we are on the edge of clean energy future, of electrification, of transportation, of grid improvement, modernization. And it's good to get a pat on the back for that occasionally. That's great. Larry, welcome to the show. And how about telling us a little bit about this dive magazine? Because I was thrown back by the name. So tell us about Utility Dive. I hear it's like a significant publication for the utility industry. Sure. Well, thanks for having me. And we're an online publication that covers the utility sector. And our overall theme is covering energy transition. How the whole is transitioning from the old centralized generation with dominated by fossil fuels, coal. So Utility Dive, we're daily. We also have three weeklies on energy storage and renewables and what we call load management. And every year, we select a number of awards. Company of the Year, Project of the Year, Executive of the Year. As Peter mentioned, we cover Hawaii Electric a lot because they're doing a lot. And so, you know, Hawaii Electric came up in the conversation fairly early. It starts with an editorial discussion. And then based what we do, we reach out to people in the sector, to experts, consultants, analysts, and so forth. And because we want to get, I guess, validation for our choice. And we reached out to a number of people. And basically they validated what we had said, that Hawaiian Electric is at the forefront of a lot of these changes that the industry is going through. So it really is hitting on a lot of the major trend driving the transformation of the sector. And so that's why we want to recognize what they're doing with this award. That's great. So what are, you know, what are the outstanding? I mean, I know they're doing a lot in just about every, in all sectors, not just about every single sector. But what are the kind of the top level, really exciting areas that you think that they really shine for the overall industry that's kind of showing them the way and, you know, learning by our challenges and our solutions. So what are the two, one or two or three top level things? Sure. I guess a couple of things. And the first one is driven by Hawaii's mandate to get to 100% renewable energy by 2045. They've had some large procurements. They had one for 930 megawatts of solar equivalent, paired with some storage in the past year. And they're going to be moving on to other procurements as they increase the amount of renewables on their system. So really, you know, closing fossil fuel, coal, and other facilities, oil, fire facilities, the other aspect, which I would say, which kind of go in with the renewable part is, you know, Hawaii, I believe has, and period can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there's per capita rooftop solar coverage in the country. And, you know, you want to leverage those assets to help the grid. You want to be able to integrate those to assist the grid. For example, if demand spikes or something like that happens. So they're working with Sun Run and working with other companies to really take all these assets, these individual assets, and help the overall grid to function better and more efficiently. But I would say the renewable part of it and the integrating these distributed assets, these assets that are in people's homes on the rooftops. I appreciate that, Larry. And just to follow up a little bit statewide in our service territory, 19% of single-family homes have rooftop solar. Here on Oahu, where the greatest percentage of people live, something like 33%, roughly a third of all the single-family homes have rooftop solar. And then there's more on businesses and big box stores and that sort of thing. So I think it's safe to say that we're far and away ahead of any other utility in the country on a per capita or percentage basis. And eight or 10 years ago when this boom started, our challenge was simply to integrate that kind of diverse power plant across the island that our system operators could not even see. And we don't know what's going to be coming into the system from those. And we have evolved now to the point, as Larry suggested, where we're looking at ways not just that they don't hurt the grid, but that they actually help the grid, that people who have storage can work with us as participants. And eventually we'd like to see almost three times the amount of rooftop solar that we have today. And more and more of those people not just taking care of their own energy needs, which is fine, but contributing to our ability to deliver power, quality power, reliable power to everybody. And that's literally the transition that's kind of somewhat gone unnoticed over because it happened slowly. We got from, we went from, wait a minute, we can't take this much solar on our grids because it's a 20th century grid and we're in the 21st century. Now we're beginning, it's just the beginning, but we're moving into a period where we're saying, okay, we're going to take more and more and we're going to find ways to take it so that it supports what we do, not undermine it. Larry, how do you leverage this kind of a situation that we have here in Hawaii with your readership? I mean, do you come up with feature stories that was, for example, would feature Hawaiian Electric and tell them a story on what they do or do they submit stories to you? Just you're a reporter, so how do you come up with your stories and what kind of stories are you writing? So we have a combination of what we call daily news stories. Those are company announcements, new rules that are proposed by other states or federal regulators. If Congress passes the Energy Bill, we'll cover that. So those are kind of straight news. We're going to cover also the good stuff and the bad stuff. We don't shy away from covering news that is not all positive, but most of the stuff we cover is rules out or announcements that come out from companies. So that's sort of the news part, but we also do what we call features and our chance to go more in depth into the trends that are happening, whether it's the rise of electric vehicles or integrating energy storage into energy markets and how that's going, and one of the features we've done recently with Hawaii, actually a couple of weeks, is how changing what they call the utility regulatory model and Hawaii is one of the leading what the refer to as performance-based regulation, where they're kind of divorcing the idea that you get your return and your revenues based on your capital spending. Utilities are impacted by this transition. And just in terms of our news coverage, we use a combination of... I got to talk over here. We're going to be really rude. Believe it or not, we've blown through the first 15 minutes and we're ready for a break. So hold that thought. We'll be back in one minute. Thanks. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lowe and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Okay, we're back after our longer break where we've rectified some technical difficulties. That's just always dangerous when you kind of play with the setup. But now we're back. We're live. We're hot again. We have Larry Pearl from all the way from Washington, DC, where all the fun is happening these last couple of days. And I have Peter Razig with me from Hawaii Electric. Hawaii Electric just won Utility of the Year award. So it's been a great, great outcome. So Larry, I mean, Peter, talk about this. Well, before I brag humbly about Utility, let me just follow up on what Larry was saying before. A very big part of what's going on kind of under the surface or invisible to most people, I think, is this performance-based regulation, performance-based rate making. And I want to say I give a lot of credit to the Public Utilities Commission here. We didn't initiate this. I mean, we've had elements of performance-based where we would be judged on how well we were doing on renewables, how well we were doing on customer service. We've always had an element of that. But the Public Utilities Commission looked at this unique situation here and said, we really need to bring this whole system into the present. And we're in discussions, negotiations with them and the consumer advocate. There are about 10 different areas, criteria that will establish a baseline, how many rooftop solar panels we have on the system, and it will be judged according to whether we grow them as we say we intend to. So it's really going to be another example, I think, of the Utilities going to be looking at this here and seeing how it works. Is there any other utility doing this? Either you know, DeLarry, do you know if any other utilities are going down this path? Or are we that unique? Are we like blazing the trail here for the world, for the rest of the utilities in the U.S.? Well, I would say that Hawaii probably is in the region, but there are heads of other states that are moving in this direction. So it's something that a number of states are looking at. But Hawaii is going through a multi-phase process and they're in phase two now. And I believe the utility commission is expecting to come out with a ruling towards the end of 2020. But I would say Hawaii is definitely at the forefront of this movement to basically change how utilities are evaluated and compensated and how they prioritize their projects and sort of the economics of the industry. I have a question, Peter, for both of you guys. It's like, how do you measure, I'll call it success or progress? Like you're doing all this work, but how do you actually measure? Is there a way to measure how well it's working? And how do you do that? It's tricky. And that's why it's a long discussion with the commission. I think in some areas, as I said, if you there's some things that are fairly easy to quantify. For example, we can tell you with a fair degree of precision how long it takes when somebody calls our call center, how long it takes for them to get an answer. We can put a number on how quickly their issues are resolved, or how long somebody we answer, we say, please hold, how long that hold is. So some things like that are fairly, fairly easy. I mean, we have computers now that will tell you that spit out a report. But we can say, get your calls down to two rings, get your holds down to a less than 10 seconds, get people to resolve their issues in four minutes, whatever the numbers are. You get into other areas like rooftop solar, and how much, how you integrate people into that. It's a lot more complicated. It depends not just on what we do, but what our customers do, what the contractors and solar developers do, are they selling batteries in a way that helps us get batteries in people's homes and on the system. So there's some things the utility can control, some things the utility can't control, and finding the sweet spot where you can actually measure or be fairly accurate and find a way to determine that. And some areas very hard, and that's exactly why we're going back and forth with the commission. And I think it's why people are watching us, because there are some things that are hard to measure. What's your experience, Larry, with this from the rest of the industry and all the feedback you get in from the rest of the utilities? Sure. I mean, I think it's Peter was alluding to what he was saying, that this is a complicated process. It's a long stakeholder-driven process in Hawaii, Illinois, and some other states, where they are really taking a look at who regulate utilities, how you assess utilities, how utilities make their investment decisions, how they're compensated for their investment decisions. And it's a very involved and complex process that states are going through. And I think probably some states are watching these bellwetters face like Hawaii to see how they are going through the process and what's working, what's not working, how they come through the process. And I expect that over time more and more states will, because driven by the transition of the power sector and the changes that's going through, I think more and more states are going to get on this sand wagon of looking at performance-based regulation. But it's a long process. And I think a lot of states want groups to be involved, whether it's utilities or environmental groups or public advocacy groups, or legislators and so forth. But it's definitely something that we have our eye on and are tracking. What about the technical ability or experience of the PUC commissioners throughout the nation? And also you brought up legislators. I mean, everybody's not an electrical engineer. So how do you educate them and bring them along? And is this something your magazine tries to do? I mean, an educational part for the people that have to make these decisions or generate these programs? How does that kind of work in the industry? Sure. I mean, we have a wide readership. Our target is utility professionals, but we have a lot of regulators and NGOs and other stakeholders that are readers. And we certainly do have an education component to what we do. We try to, what we want to do is there's a lot of news happening. And we have limited resources. We have a very good team, but we have a limited number of reporters. And part of our function is to pass through all the things that are happening. There's announcements every day from every state commission and many utilities. And part of our job is saying that here, okay, these are the stories you should care about. And these are their top six, 79 stories every day that we think rise to the level that you have a very busy day, but take 10 minutes and you'll be on top of what's happening in the industry. And also, as I mentioned before, our deep dives or our features, they tend to be a little longer, but they really go in depth into four of these issues, like performance-based regulation, like distributed energy. We had a whole series on artificial intelligence in the power sector, how this thing applied to things like target security and improving customer engagement, things like that. So those are opportunities to look at things that are important to the sector and spend a little time to talk to some more people about what the challenges are and where these things are going. Let me add, I'm a former journalist. I worked for the late lamented hungler and advertiser for many years. I'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination. And I find utility dive, first of all, to be written in an intelligent way, but not in a highly, highly technical way, so that it's really understandable, I think, to the average person who's willing to spend a little time with it. And also very important, most articles in utility dive start out with two or three or four bullet points, to sort of say, here's our short version, here's our take on the situation, boom, boom, boom. And then, that will, if you don't care very much or you, that's all the time you've got, that'll give you an outray into the subject. And if you have the time and or have the interest, you can read the rest of the article. So I think the way the utility dive, and I assume the other dive publications are set up is they're not for the, you know, they're not for Joe Sixpack, as we used to say, when we wrote the whole little advertiser. They're not for the guys who are, you know, in the sports section necessarily, all their lives. But they're for intelligent readers who are, who know enough to know what they don't understand. And they're very well written. And I give my kudos as a former journalist, especially. We've seen many, many articles in utility dive, as Larry said, it's not always good stuff. Sometimes it's saying how we didn't make that particular thing or not. But it's fair. It's straightforward and it's readable. So I got to say it's anybody that's interested, a legislator or staffer, people on the commission, just people interested in the subject ought to take a look. We've had some new news out here in Hawaii today. And I'm going to let Peter introduce that to you. Well, the news here is that we, after five years of very, I think illustrious leadership by Alan Oshima of our company through some, some rugged times, he announced his retirement next year and his successor has been named is a guy named Scott Sue, who I think will be known to a lot of people because Scott is very involved in the community. He's been with the utility 27 years. He's worked in many different departments. He knows a lot about how the utility works. He knows the community. Born and raised here. He went to Kamehameha schools. You know, he went off to some little college on the mainland. What was it called? Stanford. Oh, that little college. Where is that? You've got an MA, an RBA, and a mechanical engineering degree at Stanford, came back home and worked in a variety. You know, he didn't have the honor. He didn't have the good fortune to have a university of Hawaii education, but, you know, nobody's perfect. But he's really involved in the community. His family is very involved in the community. And he's very well known. He's led our efforts in resiliency. He's led our efforts in one company, which is trying to get the best of our three different companies, the best processes and procedures. He's been in charge of public affairs for the last few years. So he's my boss. So you can take that as a, you know, in terms of anything I say, you can take that into account. But, you know, that combines regulatory and community relations and corporate communications. And, you know, our involvement with the community has really been, our community engagement has been under his supervision for the last five years. And that's been tough. It has been tough. It has been tough. And it's not going to get a lot easier. I got it going forward. You know, there are people who are unhappy about a solar project in their neighborhood or wind farm and so forth. Anyway, the company, people in the company are very excited about Scott. They're very, you know, we heard a while ago internally, he's probably going to be somebody inside the company. And so there was the kind of horse race, you know, speculation about this candidate and that candidate. I think this was a great choice by the board and it's going to be, I think he's going to be a great leader going forward. And he's going to have a raftload of challenges to be sure. So he's got to, he's now, you know, he's not taken over the utility of the year. He's got to carry that torch. He's got to, you know, we don't want to drop off the, he knows we can't drop off the marquee in the near future. So we're very excited about it. We think it's a great, great move. And you know, we are, I said, we're committed. We think we can get it to 50% renewable energy within a couple of years because of the big procurement of their invention. We think we're going to triple the amount of rooftop solar. We're going to integrate our grid. We're going to harden the grid against storms. You know, we're doing a lot of stuff and Scott has got to pick that baton up without missing a beat and continue running as Alan has run the company. Great team supporting him. And I also like to pick a plug that Scott is also a member of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. So one of our alumni made it big time. So Larry, believe it or not, we've blown through half an hour or more. And I'm going to give you the last word to wind us up. So what are your last words? Just, well, thanks again for having me. And, you know, it's an exciting time for the power sector. And, you know, we have a team that really is excited about covering it. And we really look forward to all the things that Hawaii Electric can do in the future. And, you know, there are a lot of challenges ahead and, you know, a lot of things happening. And, you know, we're going to cover them as fast as we can. And we really look forward to, you know, continue to work with them and to cover them and hope that we can sort of inform the sector and, you know, let everyone know what's happening and, you know, why they should care about all these problems. Thanks, Larry. Tell your boss you have to come out to Hawaii, you know, in January or February to take a look. Just, you know, we're going to be X right now from the staff here. So I'd like to thank you very much, Larry. Thank you, Peter. That was great. And Aloha, everyone. And we'll be back next Wednesday at Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Aloha.