 And welcome to Stand the Energy Man on the first Friday of February, the first Friday of February. Yes, that's right. And we're glad to have a great guest here that works with me all the time, day in, day out on hydrogen. And we're going to talk today a little bit about the exciting world of hydrogen as it's going around the world. We get exposed to people working hydrogen projects in Europe and on the mainland and here in Hawaii. And there's definitely something different in the air that we're going to talk about a little bit. Thanks for joining us here on Think Tech Hawaii. And my guest today is Mr. Mitch Hewitt from the University of Hawaii's Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. Mitch, thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show, Sam. Again. Again, yes. But we do a lot of stuff together. A lot of times we don't talk together very much for a couple weeks at a time, but we always tend to touch bases and get caught up. So give the audience again a little bit of your background and how you got into working with H&EI hydrogen. Yeah. I'm happy to do that. I think it's interesting. So when I left the Navy after helping win the Cold War many years ago, I obviously wondered, well, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? And this is in the mid-80s. And I said, well, the next big problem in the world is energy, clean energy. And I happened to be office-ing with a company that represented a hydrogen fuel cell company called Ballard. And so I went out to Ballard and this is what got me. So they had this workshop. And on the workshop bench, just like this table we're at, they had a fuel cell. And the only things that were plugged into it were hydrogen and oxygen. But they had, like, 15 aircraft landing lights, like 100,000 candle-power lights on the ceiling. And they just hit a button. And these things just exploded in light and heat, and not a sound. And I went, wow, cool. And I said, I want to be part of this. And so that was made that my mission. And from there, I went to Florida, worked with a company down there. And we built the world's first fuel cell, PEM fuel cell powered car. I don't want to complicate it. But the type of fuel cell they use today in cars, we built the first one. It was a racing car, advanced composite. The whole body weighed 240 pounds. And we built the fuel cells from the ground up to operate on air. Because all the fuel cells in those days operated on oxygen. So that's how we got started. And then, oh, about 15 years ago, the phone rang. And somebody asked me, what did I think about working in the tropics? And I was invited to come here to HNEI and have an interview. And Rick Roscholo, the director, hired me as a consultant originally. So I had to work for my job. And we were lucky enough to win a proposal that we wrote. And that project that we started 15 years ago is still going on. Great. That's terrific. When you were on submarines, because you did that in the Navy, did they use electrolyzers to make their oxygen on board? Nuclear submarines do, because they stay submerged. A long time. No interface for a long time. Whereas I was on diesel electric submarines. She came up. So we had to come up every day or so and change out the air. So no, we did not have electrolyzers. But we did make hydrogen, because we had big lead acid batteries. And at some point, they gas, giving off hydrogen. And so we had to ventilate that. We never used the hydrogen as a fuel. Yeah, it was really interesting. Last September, we were at a conference with the PECOM folks and their science and technology guys. I don't know if you're at the conference. But the special ops guy got up there and said, the problem is we can't take lithium batteries on the submarine. They're not clear to go on the submarine. And I'm thinking, but on the submarine, you've got electrolyzers that can make hydrogen. And you've got little metal hydride storage containers that can store the hydrogen safely on an airplane or submarine. They should just switch to that technology. So I told them about it. And they hadn't heard about that stuff before. So again, the kind of technology is starting to really spread now. And then people are getting the idea that this may be pretty cool. Same epiphany you had when you saw the thing on the table and all the aircraft lights went off. I had a similar situation. I went to a conference. And these guys had a box. It was about the size of a small engine. And they had a computer and a bunch of lights running. And I'm looking. And that box wasn't plugged in anything. And that was a fuel cell. They were running all their stuff off a fuel cell. And they told me about it. And I was just blown away. And it's like quiet and not much heat. Made all this electricity. The biggest advantage is after it makes this electricity, it turns the hydrogen and oxygen into water again. So it's a perfect cycle. And that's why they call it, some people call it the forever fuel, because we'll never run out of hydrogen. Yeah, hydrogen is part of everything. I mean, anything that's got water in it? Well, we're like 70% hydrogen in the city. Yeah, so just amazing stuff. And you've run a couple of safety classes out here. Can you tell us about the safety classes you've run for the fire department for the fire? Yeah. So as part of my projects, which we'll talk about later, we wanted to get the first responders and fire departments comfortable with hydrogen. Because when we go for permitting and all that, you need to have the first responders comfortable with this technology. So Pacific Northwest National Lab has this great first responder training program. So we brought them out. We spent a week here on Oahu, and then a week on the big island. And we did about 200 or 300 first responders on each island. And they have this test prop. It's a mock-up of a car. They have a hydrogen source inside the car. And they light it off so that the first responders can actually see what a hydrogen fire looks like, as opposed to a gasoline. I'll know what a gasoline fire is. And so that was very well received by the fire departments and the first responders. Because not only did it teach them about hydrogen, how to cope with a hydrogen fire, but it also gave them a lot of training that they didn't have on just electric vehicles. Because the fact is, I mean, when you're using it in the car, it is an electric vehicle. And you have these power cables that feed your electric motor. And sometimes they have to cut through those with their. They're rescue equipment. Yeah, with the rescue equipment. So that was something that they really appreciated as well. And then since then, we've had another round, because we had a project with young brothers to have a shore bait. Well, actually it was a fuel cell system in a shipping container that they used to power up their refrigeration units on the barge. So as part of that, we wanted to have a refresher and hit people that hadn't had it before. So we had training sessions here on Oahu and then over on Maui, because the idea was that the shipping containers, they're going to use that route for them. They're going to go to Maui and back. So that was very well done. Well, what are some of the things that the comments that the firefighters made that maybe surprised them about the hydrogen, because there's a lot of people that are scared to death of hydrogen. They hear that it's invisible and everything, and they freak out because you can't see it. But really once you actually go through these demos, the firemen give you a response. What are some of the things they've said? Well, they've got very comfortable with hydrogen very fast. So first of all, you hear the hydrogen flame. Even though you can't see it in sunlight, you can sure hear it, because it's coming out as a high pressure gas, and it's almost deafening. Yeah, it's really loud. You've got a leak, and then you can see the ripples in the air from the heat of the fire. But the thing that impressed everybody the most is the guy giving the course, this very senior firefighter, had his bare hand, and he was able to put it within about three inches or four inches of the flame front without even singing his hand. And that's because hydrogen only produces water when it burns or when it's used as opposed to trapping. It has no carbon in it. It has no carbon, and the carbon entraps heat. And that's why if that was a carbon-based fire, fossil fire, you'd burn your hand off. Because it would really eat the heat sideways. Exactly. So that was a huge deal. And the other thing is the fact that hydrogen goes up so fast, goes up at 45 miles an hour, which is 90 feet per second. So if you say 1,001, it's already gone up 60 to 90 feet, like a six-story building. So it just naturally wants to get away, whereas gasoline is heavier than air, puddles around the car. And spreads. And spreads and just sits there. And people inside that car have a very dangerous for them. But theoretically, they could escape a hydrogen fire easily. It doesn't even singe the paint, basically, because it's going. It's very directional, too. It's almost like a blowtorch. Yeah. And we brought Paul Ponthio over. He works with Hank Rogers. They've gone totally off grid on the Big Island, and they have a lot of hydrogen systems that they use. And he's invented or built a little hydrogen walk, like a barbecue. And so he brought that over and once again demonstrated some of these characteristics of hydrogen, how it's very hard to light, if it's flowing up from like a gas bottle. So that was really well received as well. Right. Yeah, and then there's nothing to wash down. If there's a gasoline fire, a oil fire, you've got all this fuel spread on the ground. Even if it's not burning, you've got to soak it up. And it's environmentally hazardous and all kind of problems. Hydrogen, like you say, is going straight up in the air, making more clouds down the road. And it's really pretty benign. It is. And it's not poisonous gas. It's totally inert. You could suffocate from it because you won't get any oxygen if you're in a pure hydrogen environment. But if you breathe a little bit of hydrogen, you're not going to have any ill effects from it. Exactly. It's not a carcinogen or any of those bad characteristics about it. OK, well, you started working at H&EI. What are some of the different projects you worked on with H&EI? I know one of them was like a pretty comprehensive plan for hydrogen back about 10 years ago. Can you tell us a little bit about that plan and some other things? Yeah, that was part of the hydrogen fund that was funded almost 10 years ago now, not quite. And part of the requirements was to build, was to develop a hydrogen plan for the state of Hawaii. And so I was detailed off or was given that assignment. There were two plans. There was a three-year plan, like a short-term plan. And then there was a 10-year longer-range plan. So we produced that, ran it through all the various different companies, got all sorts of feedback from General Motors and all the people that were doing hydrogen, and had graphs and a strategy of how we could implement hydrogen here in Hawaii. And some of the main findings that I like to maybe focus on is, first of all, is to develop the hydrogen infrastructure. That is the key strategy, because the cars and the buses, all the equipment that uses hydrogen, that will be developed by industry. Like you see every car company in the world now has a hydrogen program. The cars are here. We have seven Marais sitting here in Honolulu, waiting to be deployed. You can go out and lease a car in California with a hydrogen car with no problem. But the issue is, where do you fuel them? And so that was part of it was, OK, let's focus on putting in the infrastructure, because an industry will only put that in when they see they can make money. And when you're first starting out, there are not enough cars, not enough trucks, or not enough buses to build up the volume of hydrogen like you would have to make it worthwhile. Well, they can't pay for it. So government has to take the lead on that. They have to prime the pump, get it going, because it's the right thing to do for the general public to be able to have this capability. And the second major strategy was to focus on fleets, fleet vehicles, and buses, because you'd only need one station to be able to fuel all 500 buses that the city of Honolulu has, as opposed to having to sprinkle hydrogen stations all over the islands. And that is a smart way to do it. So those were the two major findings, and we're working away at doing that. So Hawaii has some definite advantages compared to like the mainland. I had Margaret Larsen on last week, and we talked a little bit about how much the state of California is investing in their hydrogen stations. But they've got to. And even when they finish with 100 hydrogen stations, well, they've covered California. But what if you want to go to Las Vegas or Denver or Towson, New Mexico or something? I mean, you leave the state of California, where do you find your hydrogen? So the mainland has some serious challenges to get there, and maybe not even a whole lot of incentive. Gasoline's cheap. Natural gas is cheap. A lot of the big trucking companies are just going to natural gas CNG for their trucks and saying that's cleaner. And so they don't want to stay there. But Hawaii's got a real advantage, because we can do it all, can't we? Yeah, we have a constrained geography. I mean, you can't go too far on Hawaii. It's not like you can drive to Las Vegas from Hawaii. So basically, on Oahu, with three or four stations, you can cover the basics of Oahu to address first responders and, like I said, to take care of the buses. Like a car, we'll get 325 to 350 miles on a tank of hydrogen. So you have to be really kind of dumb to run out of hydrogen driving around here. So let's say three or four stations could cover the initial fleets as they roll out. And on the big island, we calculated we'd need about five stations, because the big island's bigger. So you have one north, one south, one east, one west, and maybe one along the saddle road or somewhere like that. But basically, yeah, you're not talking hundreds of stations. In California, they're putting in 100 stations. And the state is investing $20 million a year. I think their maximum is, it will be $240 million to build out those 100 stations. Yeah, we're never going to get $240 million out of the state legislature here. So when we come up on our first break here, and we're going to take a quick 60 seconds to talk about some of the other shows on Think Tech, we'll be back with you in a minute. Aloha, and happy new year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at 1 o'clock. Mahalo. OK, we want to tell you about Hawaii, the state of clean energy, which plays every Wednesday from 4 to 4.30. Ray Starling and me, we co-host that show. Dean Nishina is here. He's from the Consumer Advocate. We just had a show. We like the show. We had a good time on the show. What do you think, Ray? We're going to have Dean back, because there's so much going on at the Consumer Advocate's office. And there's so much yet to be done to get to our 100% renewable energy goals. What do you think, Dean? Did you have a good time? I did have a good time. And I think this is a good opportunity for consumers to learn more, because it'll be really helpful in terms of moving forward with our transition to clean energy. From your ellipse to God's ears. Thanks, Ray. Thanks, Dean. Watch us 4 o'clock every Wednesday. You'll see. Hey, welcome back to Stand Energy now. I'm Stan Osserman here on my lunch hour with Mitch Ewan from the University of Hawaii's HNEI, talking about hydrogen, my very, very, very favorite subject of all things. All things, because I'm old, too. Anyway, Mitch, we were talking a little bit about the plan for Hawaii and hydrogen. There's a lot going on on the Big Island, too. And you're involved in a bunch of that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the projects over there? Yeah, I'd love to do that. So basically, just to backtrack a little bit, most of the hydrogen activity here on Oahu is on federal land. And so basically, on a military basis, you have your station at Hickam. I have mine at Kanioi Marine Corps base. So the general public does not have easy access unless you get special permission to go there. On the Big Island, it's totally different. We're installing a hydrogen infrastructure at the Natural Energy Laboratory, Hawaii Authority, commonly called NELHA, which is on the west side, right beside the Kona Airport. It shares a boundary with the Kona Airport. And so what we're installing there is we're installing a hydrogen production system comprised of an electrolyzer, which is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen, at the moment, is vented off. But we could look at using the oxygen to support some of their aquaculture stuff they have going on there. And then it goes from the electrolyzer. We have three what I call hydrogen tube trailers. They use the transport hydrogen from A to B so that we can deliver hydrogen to different spots on the Big Island. And we'll have one bus located at NELHA. And that'll be operated by the Helion bus service. The county. The county bus service. It's a 29 passenger shuttle bus, which was converted from a brand new bus out of the fresh out of the wrapper by US Hybrid, who is a company that has an operation here in Oahu, which is located with you. They're awesome people to work with. And they converted that bus. And so the Helion will use it as a demo bus to allow the general public to see what's all this stuff about hydrogen. So they'll enjoy the quiet ride, the no fumes, and the acceleration, and all this kind of stuff. And so they'll actually get a chance to have an experience with a hydrogen vehicle. And then we have two additional buses, also converted from brand new by US Hybrid, that will be deployed at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. And that's been a project that's been going on for a long time with the park. And we are supplying the hydrogen for those buses using those tube trailers or the hydrogen transport trailers that I mentioned just a minute ago. And so we will haul those on by road up to Volcanoes National Park, where we're installing a dispensing system, much simpler than the one I have at Nelha. And so we'll take a full trailer there, drop it off. The dispenser will dispense from the hydrogen trailer. And when the hydrogen trailer is empty, it'll be picked up and replaced with a full one. So those buses are slightly smaller, but they will be used to transport visitors to the park, around the park, from various routes that the National Park Service wants to test, because they want to test how well these fuel cell buses perform in the park. One additional bit is that we have designed, invented, and we're patenting an air filtration system, because the park is great in many ways. But one of the things that has a lot of hydrogen sulfide or Vogue that kicks out, and that's not good for a fuel cell. So we designed the system, and we've installed it. So basically, it has a heads-up display, tells the bus driver how well his filter is doing. And at a certain point, when it's maxed out and it's not filtering anymore, it'll cut off. And a second filter will come in place, and then he can get back and change the filter. So he runs on battery for a little while, possibly. Correct. It can go through a plume, and I get to the other side, and then start up the fuel cell power system. Yeah, because our bus, and I think the ones from Volcano are very similar to our Air Force bus, have about 28 kilowatt hours' worth of battery storage, and that's about 30 miles on level terrain. So they could do quite a bit of driving just on battery if they have a real Vogue day up there. Correct. I also want to mention that trying to use the state's money wisely, we leveraged all the non-recurring engineering that went into designing the Air Force bus that you developed at Hickam. So these buses, these follow-on buses are replicas of that, and we don't have to repeat that non-recurring engineering, which was about $750,000, which is a lot of money, that we don't have to spend again. So that's a really good use of leveraging various funds that we've got to do this project. Yeah, we're excited about seeing those things get out there, and I know that we talked a little bit before the show about energy grid energy as a separate subject, but hydrogen has a role and could have a role in energy storage on the grid, couldn't it? Absolutely. In fact, one of the rationales for that hydrogen project at Nelha is to use the electrolyzer as a variable load so it can ramp up and down, and that will help manage grid frequency, which changes as you have a disruption, either a big input of electricity or a quick draw of electricity. For example, if you have a wind turbine, it ramps up and down very quickly if there's gusty winds, and that causes frequency to shift, and so what we use, we use the electrolyzer to absorb that, either absorb it or desorb it so that you can keep the grid operating where it has to be. Which is what the electric company really needs. They really need that, and they're becoming much more interested in hydrogen as energy storage, and plus it has all these other benefits, and also they can sell, or somebody can sell, the hydrogen as a fuel in transportation. So you've got two or three ways of providing value out of this electrolyzer and hydrogen system, and that will offset the cost of your hydrogen. So here on Oahu, and in the state, we're trying to get to 100% renewable on the grid by 2045, and the neighbor islands can do that easy. I mean, they've got actually a surplus of renewable energy, but here in Oahu, not so much. So because hydrogen is so transportable, is there a chance that we could use, produce hydrogen on the neighbor island, specifically the big island, and then ship it in containers back to Honolulu? Is that unreasonable? That's technically totally feasible, whether it's, we have to look at the economics, but yes, it's totally feasible, and you and I have talked about other ways to do that. You can bring it as a compressed gas, or you can liquefy it, and bring it over in basically like big thermos bottles, and they actually have a ship, I think, I forget the name of the Japanese companies, just built a hydrogen, liquid hydrogen ship to transport liquid hydrogen, so yeah, that's totally doable. And this technology, you know, it sounds like we're talking about rocket science technology, I mean, it is kind of rocket science, because NASA has been shipping hydrogen from Canada to Cape Canaveral for probably 30 years, because they use that in the rocket fuels. Yeah, they ship it actually from Louisiana in a barge, going along the inter-coastal waterway, and that's how they get it. Yeah, and they ship like tons of the stuff. Yeah, so like federal department of transportation and the Coast Guard and shipping companies, they're very familiar with moving liquid hydrogen and compressed hydrogen. Correct, yeah, I mean, they have three or four barges, and they've been doing it like for 30 or 40 years, so yeah, there's a history there that we can leverage at some point in time. A knife for the life of me, can't remember the last time we had a hydrogen disaster in the modern container, modern shipping system. I mean, correct, I imagine there may have been some out there, but you can't hardly go through a couple months without hearing about an oil leak or a big fire or refinery offshore drilling rig. Pipeline fires. Pipeline breaks or a valdez or something happening that you have the environmental impact and you just don't have that with hydrogens. Well, let's put it this way. If your ship runs the ground, your hydrogen ship runs the ground, you're not gonna have all our beaches covered in black oil, so okay, big advantage there. Well, what are some of the, has Nelha done or H&E done anything on the smaller islands on Molokai or Kauai or done anything in ag with hydrogen? We actually haven't. Part of the push for our funding, I mean, the actual focus of legislation was to concentrate on the big island first. Got it. And then once we got that nailed down, then we could take it to the other neighbor islands. I mean, we have limited funds and so you need to have that focus, as you know, being in the military, it's like you gotta focus your resources on one thing. That's where our priority is. So once we have the buses up and running and people see it and try it, and then we can introduce the neighbor islands to that, we can look at getting hydrogen, following the strategy, getting hydrogen buses on the neighbor islands. So we've seen hydrogen over the past 15, 20 years at least kind of be in the fuel of the future and then it kind of dies off and then it comes back a little bit and it dies off and I run into a lot of people that are very pessimistic about hydrogen, not because they don't like the technology, they're impressed with the technology, but they go, you know, we've seen it before and it never seems to get anywhere. Is there something different this year? I mean, I'm noticing a different shift this year. Are you noticing that same trend? Yeah, there's a lot of enthusiasm now for hydrogen. You know, you see it with the automobile companies, they've invested billions. And so like I said earlier in the show, it's like, you know, we have our local surf code, Toyota dealer, ship has a new Mirai and they're gonna be releasing those vehicles for like under $400 a month. I don't know what the exact number is, but you know, under 400, which includes the cost of hydrogen. So I mean, that's totally, you know, viable for many people here in our population. So yeah, so it's arrived. I'd like to thank you for your role in getting this, Eric. I know you've been on the watch longer than me with hydrogen. So thanks for mentoring me and helping me come up to speed with hydrogen. And that's gonna be a wrap for this week. We're already out of time, believe it or not. It goes quite fast. Yeah, it goes very quick. So thanks to Mitch Ewan from H&EI up at UH in Manoa for coming down and talking to us about hydrogen today. And we're bullish on hydrogen. So go out and buy your Mirai and your Clarity and your Hyundai Tucson and get out there and drive with some hydrogen. Thanks for being with us and we'll see you next week on the Saturday.