 Okay, we're back. It's four o'clock rock. And where are we? We're in Hawaii, the state of clean energy every Wednesday at four o'clock. You can set your clock. Okay, my co-host and former commissioner of the PUC and an active player in Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, John Cole, John S. Cole. E. Cole. John E. Cole. Thanks, Jay. Today we're here again the last Wednesday of the month. This month's been centered around UH and the University of Hawaii and what's going on with energy. And today we're going to talk about energy efficiency and some really cool structures that our guests work with. We have Professor Olga Boric-Lubecki, who is with the College of Engineering. She's a professor of electrical engineering. And Jim Mascary, who's at HNEI, the same institute that I work for, Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. Okay, well, first let's talk about what HNEI is doing with the special zero energy classroom. Okay, keska se kasa. That's a match. It means what is this zero energy classroom? So the net zero, it's a net zero NZE classroom. These were designed to be highly energy efficient and to generate at least as much energy as they're going to use. So therefore the net zero on an annualized basis. This was a project that was funded originally by the Office of Naval Research. And it's actually comprised of five different buildings. One at an Ewa Beach at Elima Intermediate, two over in Kauai. And they've been up and we've been monitoring for them for a couple of years. The final two of the five, we just completed a couple of weeks ago at the University of Hawaii, Manoa College of Education. Are they permanent or movable, these structures? They are. Technically, they're portable, but they're temporary structures. They're temporary structures, but like most of our temporary structures, they'll be there for quite a while. And the big question, of course, and I'm speaking for David Ege here, are they air conditioned? They are air conditioned. And that's actually one of the features. The air conditioning is somewhat of a specialized approach to air conditioning, where generally we default to an off condition. And then when they need it and want it, then they will push and override, it'll stay on for an hour. These are classrooms, multiple teachers. They have different functions in each class, so they have different needs. So basically, rather than turn the air conditioner on at the beginning of the day and just leave it on all day and all night, it's basically on demand. Push a button. Push a button and it's on demand. You know, in the MLIC, the Manoa Innovation Center, they have exactly that, had it for a long time. If you want air conditioning, you know, push the button. It works very well. In addition, we've got very high efficient lighting, ceiling fans to circulate the air, to create the comfort in the classroom. So my question is, why? Why, Jim, why are you doing this? What? Well, the university has a long term goal of 100% renewable by 2035. Now, this is, we're trying to demonstrate the technologies that we can actually build net zero buildings and stay comfortable at the same time. We look at the Department of Education and we see all these very, very uncomfortable classrooms, looking very closely at why are these uncomfortable, where now we're demonstrating we've got good practical solutions to comfort. They only need to rely on the air conditioning for, you know, a couple of months within the year. The rest will all depend on opening the windows, natural ventilation, ceiling fans and create a perfectly comfortable environment. Okay, so I'll make a civilian guess here. The sun comes and beats on the solar panels. The solar panels fill batteries. The button takes the juice out of the batteries and it puts it in the lights, the air conditioner, whatever else. Is that it? Is that that simple? We're getting close, because... What am I missing here? It is connected. Your turn is coming, Olga. It is connected to the grid. Oh, okay. But we will be, as part of our research, and part of the intent of this, to answer the question about why, is it also gives us a platform for energy efficient research. And that's where Olga will come in. But we'll be doing some battery testing and some battery comparisons out there as well. So we will have batteries, we'll be simulating an off-grid condition, but we are connected to the grid. Okay. How far along are you in this project? We have completed the classrooms there in their first semester of occupancy and it's kind of a shake down quarter. As we, as my team completes, putting in the instrumentation and the sensors that we need to be able to monitor all of the energy. And are there students or people in the classroom? Yeah, yeah, from the college of education. This is real-time, real-time things. Real students out of college of education. And you tell them what you're doing. Absolutely. We've got posters on the wall telling them, this is how the building, these are the features of the building. We're trying to instill a culture, trying to instill a culture within the school of college of education. You know, he said sensors. I heard him say sensors just now. That's the magic word. Yep, absolutely. So at the College of Engineering, you're working on sensors. That's right. But you haven't always been working on sensors. There was a time you were working on radar. And that's when we met. We met when you were working on radar. You and your husband. That's correct. Actually, we have been working on these sensors for a long time. But they're radar-based sensors. Ah! It all comes together now, radar-based sensors? Exactly, yes. So actually, we are using Dopplerator technology that we originally developed for medical monitoring for energy efficiency purposes. So we are still looking for heartbeats and for respiration in the room. But we're not necessarily looking for medical features. So we're now actually looking to decide if there is an occupant in the room or not. OK. Stopping there just for a moment. You see what happens. You develop a technology for one use. And then you say, aha! We could use it for something else. You know, I think Thomas Edison did things like that. Well, it's kind of like we have a hammer, so we're looking for a nail, right? But this is a good fit because energy efficiency is such an important area. And there is a need for the sensors that can detect people when they're not moving. Because the limitations, the main limitation of the current technology is if you're just sitting at your computer and typing or reading, they will think that you're not there. So what may happen in an office environment, the lights may turn off while you're actually in your office. And then you may need to get up and wave your arms and walk around a little bit, which may not certainly be a bet, right? It would be getting a little bit of exercise. You should stand up once an hour, right? You should stand up once an hour anyway, right? But people do get annoyed. So it is a nuisance. And what happens is they essentially disable the sensors because they don't like them. Or they, yeah. So can we go back to the story about the hotel rooms in Europe compared to the US, compared to Asia? Because I just came back from Europe. And I was charmed, as I always am, with putting my hotel key card in a little slot. As I walked in the door of the hotel room, I was going to turn everything on. And nothing would go on until I did that. And then on the way out, in order to leave, I had to take this out of the little slot. And that was my key again. And that's how I left. I was charmed, because I was so totally efficient. But it doesn't work, right? Well, it doesn't always work, because if you have multiple cards, you can override the system, right? So you can leave one card in the room and let the AC leave it running and walk out with another card. And this cost the hotel some money. And this cost the hotel a lot of money. And actually, typically in hotel rooms, energy bills are pretty high. I mean, energy consumption is high compared to residential. Like when people go on vacation, and especially if they're paying for a relatively expensive hotel room, they really don't want to worry about if they turn their AC on. I'll leave the TV on, leave everything on, right? And it is kind of part of their bill, right? They're not going to be charged separately. So the same sort of thing happens in dorms and also with classrooms. If the users of the space are not responsible for their electric bill, they don't have a lot of motivation to worry about how is that energy used. I can go to Simply Safe, a security company, and for $6, maybe $15, whatever, something in there, I can buy a sensor that will spot anybody walking around this room here. If it's on, it's always going to spot. What do you bring to that table that's beyond my $6 sensor from Simply Safe? Right, $6 sensors are hard to beat. But the key is you said that the sensor can detect anyone walking in the room. So if there is a large motion, if you have somebody opening the door and walking in the sensors, we'll pick them up. The problem is what happens when the person stops moving. So essentially, our technology most likely would be used in conjunction with the technology that you mentioned. So as a baseline, so as a baseline, you can use the sensor that you mentioned, which is most likely a passive improvise sensor that would essentially detect when people walk into the room. But then once there is no signal coming out of the sensors, we would check to see is that really true or not. OK, then we're back to the radar reading, my respiration, and pulse, and what have you. Yes, exactly. Suppose my pulse is slow. Can you still read it? Yes. Well, we can actually tell people from different sources of motion. So for example, if you have a fan in the room and there are several of those in the classrooms, we can differentiate the fan from the person because the patterns of your heart and respiration are very different from the mechanical motion. Or for example, you may have a curtain blowing in the wind or you may have air movement due to the AC system. We can differentiate those kind of motions or human motions because human motions have very unique signatures. See that picture? Yes. That's my baby. She weighs four pounds. She's a Yorkshire terrier. Can you get this picture? That's my baby, Emily Ka'ea. So we can tell the difference between her and her. That's my question. So she would not register on your radar. Well, you could get by. Not necessarily. We can pick up geckos and cats and dogs. But the thing is, they all look different. So depending on how complicated the processing is, you can set it to a four-pounder, a 20-pounder, a 30-pounder. Well, you see that dog is going to have different heart and respiration patterns than a human being, right? So you can look for different patterns, right? Or you can just say look only for human patterns, depending on which space you're monitoring. So where in the College of Engineering does this kind of science fit? Electrical engineering? Electrical, yes. OK. All these things you described are electrical engineering. Yes. OK. And you've worked on this for some time because you were working on the Afghanistan issue, trying to find people behind the walls. Yes. So now this is easy. Now, how does this connect with Jim's zero energy room? Right. Well, actually, the classrooms that Jim built are a fantastic opportunity for us. They are essentially a research platform. So we can use them to test the accuracy of our sensors. So our sensors are still in research, right? So we still need to prove that they can do better than the commercial sensors. We actually are pretty certain that they can. But when we present our data, normally our audience likes to see how do they compare with the commercially available sensors in realistic environments. So this is an environment that's very energy efficient. It already has commercial off-the-shelf sensors in use. And essentially, we would use these research platforms to test the performance of our sensor against the performance of the sensors that they're already used. Got in the vibe of having a flash on one of those Tom Cruise movies where he wants to steal some diamonds or something, lowers himself down to the case where the diamonds are and the sensors don't pick him up because he's just above the line of the sensors. Can you cover the whole room, including the part where you lower yourself down from the ceiling? Well, you certainly can. I mean, you have to know what the room is, right? What is the shape and the size of the room? And then you can design your sensors to cover the whole area. Again, it's a software thing. Well, it's software and hardware, right? So you have to place the sensor in strategic locations. Isn't that great to be an engineer? I should have gone that road. Well, it can go through the walls. Well, it can go through the walls. So I mean, if you're talking about the telerooms, you actually don't want to go through the wall, right? You just want to test that particular room. You can adjust it for that. But you can actually, you can build the sensors so that it actually senses through the wall. So you use different combinations of your antenna aperture and the frequency, radar frequency, and the power that you're sending. So you can actually tweak it for different space or different types of wall materials and that sort of thing. Now, we heard Jim talk about this one hour button push, OK? And then we heard you all talking about how the sensor would look in the room and tell us was anybody there, even if he was really quiet or small, four pounds. And when we come back from this break, I want to ask you a very important question. Does your technology replace his technology? Don't answer. Are you going to eclipse what Jim is doing in the push button? We'll be right back after this break and find out the answer, right? Please join us at St. Tech, Hawaii. My program is Asia and Reveal. My next program is on November 17, Thursday, 11 AM. This is Johnson Choi, your host. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to Stand the Energyman at 12 noon. Aloha, Friday here on Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likable science here on Think Tech, Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 PM, you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. They'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, a way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 PM here on Think Tech, Hawaii for likable science with me, your host, Ethan Allen. Aloha, how are you doing? It's me, Angus McTech. Wishing you to welcome and join us to see us on Hibachi Talk on Think Tech, Hawaii. Join my co-hosts, Gordo the Texan and Andrew the security guy every Friday from 1300 to 1345. We look forward to seeing you. We'll talk tech and we'll have some weave and a fun. Remember, let your wing gang free. Where are you be? Aloha. We're back. Hi, John. That's John E. Cole over there. And next to him, Jim Masque. Also of the Hawaii Natural Engineering Institute. Next to him, Dr. Olga Borek, Becky, who was professor of electrical engineering at the College of Engineering at UH Manoa. So we left hanging with this question. And which of you wants to answer my question as to whether Olga's technology is going to replace your push button 18th century technology where you turn everything on and off with a switch with a button? Let me take a stab at that. Because one of the things that we're trying to accomplish with our net zero building is to create a culture, to create some interaction between the user and their environmental conditions. Let them determine whether they are actually comfortable or not comfortable. And so giving them the ability to be able to turn off or turn on manually while it seems very archaic, it's actually very efficient. Power to the people, absolutely. I mean, it's tough enough that we give them occupancy sensors that turn the lights on and raise the lights up and dim them when there's plenty of daylight. So there's nothing they can do with the lights other than turn them off. The ceiling fans aren't too much fun to vary the speed on. And so the only thing left is the mechanical system for them to play with. Okay, so you would leave the push button in place because it's that sense of empowerment? Well, from a research perspective, yes. As we study this for the next couple of years to try to determine a baseline of behavior, then we'll watch to determine whether are they turning it on during times when it's completely comfortable without the air conditioning just because it's there? Or are they turning it on only when the conditions are such that it really requires air conditioning? Yeah, I think I got it. It's the watch bird watching you. Your technology is watching his technology. Well, something like that. I think our technology can help to improve the conditions a little bit. How would it work? How would it integrate with the push button? Well, I think if you have people that left the room, and the room is empty, and they didn't push the button, then our technology would essentially push the button. It would override the push button. Yes, right. So essentially the goal is to avoid waste of energy when the space is empty. But it wouldn't work the other way. In other words, if we came into the room and it needed energy, your technology is not gonna push the button for the people in the room. They still have to push the button old fashioned style. We could, we could, but I think the way that the space is configured now. The way it's configured, and actually in energy efficiency design, in fact, in California, they're even requiring what you just suggested, which are called vacancy sensors, as opposed to an occupancy sensor. A vacancy sensor will turn off when somebody leaves the room, but it has to be manually started up. It has to be a conscious decision made to start a device as opposed to automatic. So her device would be able to close it out at the end of the day with very high sensitivity towards whether anybody's in there or not. But starting it up would be still manual. So you're the closing out technology rather than the starting up technology, an accurate closing out technology. Well, I guess the bottom line is what you want to avoid the waste, right? So like Jim mentioned, what we're really looking at is this vacancy sensor, right? So making sure that if you have space that's not unoccupied, we do not waste energy. We know that for sure. That is really unoccupied. And on the other hand, we do not want to turn off the lights if people are there, right? Because it's not only a comfort issue, it's also a safety issue. Okay, now suppose I'm a student in the library classroom, the special net zero classroom, and I leave and I'm the last one out the door. And as I walk out the door, I realize, and it's closed down now, the lights are off, the energy is off, we are reaching efficiency by not providing energy to a classroom in which nobody is present. As I walk out the door, oh, whoops, I forgot my cell phone, or I forgot my pencil, or I forgot my notebook, and the like. So I come back in, nothing. Yeah, well, usually actually, the sensors are set with some delay, right? So usually they're going to give you some grace period of maybe five minutes or 10 minutes or something like that, right? So that's actually something that can be adjusted, right? But if you go home and you remember that you forgot something and you come back a couple hours later, right, you would have to push the button. And that really depends on what device is set to, occupancy sensing or vacancy sensing. Okay, so here we have the classrooms are built, the buttons are in, the appliances are in, whatever they are, you know, and we're ready to go, and Olga's working on this thing, but it's not done. So you have it installed. What is your path in terms of developing this device, installing it and implementing it? We are actually working on plans for installation. No, they're not in the rooms now, but as the buildings were worked on, we actually talked to Jim about the possibility of this testing. So Jim actually provided a platform for us. So the building is pretty much ready. So we've prewired. Yeah, it is prewired for. Well, you gotta just put it in. Yeah. Okay. And so it'll just be that, it'll be a vacancy kind of thing. If there's nobody there, it'll turn it off with a grace period or whatever to be determined, right? Right, well, initially we will use it to assess the accuracy of our sensor compared to the sensors that are there. So initially we're not going to control anything in the room with our sensors, right? I love to be one of your test model people. What I'll do is I'll sit at the desk like this, not move a muscle, try to lower my heart rate and see if you still pick me up. Yeah, absolutely, no. We'd love to test you. We can come here and test you during your show too. And you guess you can see how they feel about the questions that are being asked, right? So John, how does this relate to HNEI's mission? Well, our main mission is to reduce the state's dependency on fossil fuels and efficiency is the most cost-effective way to go about that. And there's so much opportunity, I think, with the efficiency that hasn't even been tapped into. I mean, this stuff is very high-tech and automated and as we get that way, you know, more and more, the better. But one of the things I've seen is, you know, you can install a lot of the energy efficiency measures and appliances and things like that. But if the people using the buildings or appliances or whatever aren't educated or don't know enough about it, it kind of goes the way. So it comes with an education and behavior change process, I think that's really important to do. That's what you want to tell the students what you're doing. Yeah. And Jim was mentioning that, you know, different people might have different comfort levels. So they have ways of getting input from the students and others that use the buildings as to whether they were comfortable that day or not. You survey the students. That's right. Yeah. What do you ask them? We're developing a sort of an informal polling device, electronic polling device where we basically ask a fundamental question, how comfortable were you? And give them a choice, very comfortable, slightly uncomfortable, slightly uncomfortable and very uncomfortable, whatever the scale is. And then just collect their responses and compare them to the actual environmental conditions within the temperature, the humidity, what we're observing within the space and then try to do a correlation between their perception of comfort and the actual conditions. So a lot of the one aspect of the area of work that we're doing is really tied to behavior and perception. Yeah. Well, perception is really everything. It's everything. And if you know that a certain set of parameters is comfortable for, you know, say 90% of them, that's what you want to achieve, right? That's right. That's right. And we'll have hard data on how warm is it in there with ceiling fans. Actually, you can actually have a fairly high temperature in there with the air motion moving across the skin and feel very comfortable. So we'll be able to actually document that. This is an architect's dream, isn't it? He's an architect, by the way. I'm sorry I revealed that. You can still talk to me. Okay. I promise. I mean, you want to make people comfortable in their house. That's what you want to do more than anything. We want to create comfort at a low cost for energy. Yeah. So, I'll give you a hypothetical, okay? Olga has finished all her research and testing and she has installed in the classrooms all of them, these devices, and you have finished your survey work and you've correlated, you know, the answers with the maximum, you know, not only the maximum comfort but the maximum efficiency that you could achieve, right? And HNEI has a record of all this. You know, it has all these lessons are written down and we have a book that's thick on exactly what we have learned in all this and what we have used to achieve what outcomes. How are you going to deliver that technology to me in my house? Can I buy it? I have my checkbook. Can I buy it? Can I incorporate that? Can I be as comfortable as your students? I want to be as comfortable as your students. When and how can I achieve that? I think Olga and I would have two different answers because she'll have a commercial market. Our audience is really is, you know, the energy efficiency research industry, if you will. And we're trying to contribute to the body of knowledge towards the design of energy efficient buildings. Not so much directed at a consumer but then it's up to others to be able to integrate those responses and that work. So you publish. So we publish. And other architects of like mine picked that up and before you know it, it's in this house and that house and this house. Correct, exactly. So you have to come back and tell us more as this goes by because then we can tell people how it works. Same thing for you, Olga. Olga, what is your answer to my question? Well, we are actually commercializing this technology. So through the office of the... What does that mean? I mean patents, is that what it is? That means patents and that means a startup. And we actually started several years ago and we were working with the tech transfer office at UH. We also worked with the UH accelerator. So we have been fortunate to have received some funding to actually take our research to the prototype stage and that is actually gonna help us with this further testing at the, at Zero Nine. Oh sure, sure. This is all, is it the same company that you were using for the radar back when or a different company, different product? Yes, yes. How interesting, okay. So then, assuming you have your venture capital and you have your patents, it takes five years to get a patent. What then? I mean, you're gonna go in the market in Walmart. I mean, can I find it on the store there? Can I bring it back to my house and is that what you're designing? Well, we are actually seeking the partnership with one of the larger manufacturers of these kind of technologies and with energy integrators. So we are, I think we would be too small to really make it to the Walmart shelf. So I think coming to market would be, you know, a more realistic path for us would be a partnership. Okay, Kmart, I don't know much. Yeah. But it would be an object, right? And I'd plug it into my house. It would live between the power source and the appliances, yeah. Yes, well, it could be a sensor that you can plug into a wall anywhere. And it would essentially just look for where you are and then communicate with the power system in your house. Adjustable. I could, all those parameters you were describing, I could change that. You could change them, right? So we would, I think we would most likely preset them to some level that most consumers would be happy with. And I could do that on my iPhone, right? Yeah, yes. I think I just revealed something. Or maybe I.