 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Bingo, we're back! Oh my God, it's Wednesday. It's the 4 p.m. show, a little after 4 p.m. It's Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy from the Energy Policy Forum. I'm Jay Fidel of Think Tech. I want to go through the table here. To my left is Shannon Tanganon. Nice. Okay, Leslie Cole Brooks and Ted Peck. Wow, what a crowd. Okay, Shannon is from Hawaiian Electric Company. Leslie Cole Brooks is from Distributed Energy Resources Council of Hawaii, DERC. And Ted, who's been around energy for a long time. When I was a small child, he was doing energy in one way or another. And he is the CEO of Holu Energy. Okay, and so we're going to divide the show in two parts. The first part is to report on what Hawaiian Electric is doing in Westlock. We've got a Navy project on Navy land, and you're going to do some interesting renewables out there. I want to know more about that. What's happening, Shannon? We are going to be building a 20 megawatt solar facility out there. REC solar is going to be our contractor. This will be... It's an interesting project because it's on Navy land. We're leasing the land in exchange for the lease. We are going to do electrical upgrades at their Navy-owned facilities. So, over the course of the 25-year life of the project, we expect to save customers $109 million. Because why? How does that work? How does what you're doing save them the money? It'll be the lowest-cost renewable energy to date. Once it's in service. Less than $0.08 per kilowatt hour. Wow, that's pretty good. Yes, it's very low. How do you get that low? Magic. It's a good thing. Well, it's leasing the land. If we were to do this project, if we had to own the land and whatnot, it would be much higher. So who are the players? The Navy is the landowner. Navy is the landowner. Hawaiian Electric, you're hiring somebody to actually build the thing. To build it? Who's going to build it? REC Solar. Okay, and then when we look at it at the end, what is it, a solar farm? Is that what? Yeah, it's a solar facility, 80,000 plus solar panels. That's big. And a wahoo, that's really saying something. Hard to get that much land. And it's on land that the Navy can't build on otherwise. So we're utilizing land that would stay barren. And this is going to serve who? How is this going to serve either the Navy or the public? It serves everyone. Wahoo customers will be able to feed off of that from the grid. It serves people on base. And everyone really wins with this because the Navy will get the electrical upgrades that they need for their own electrical infrastructure. I really like that. Contra kind of idea. And we're really excited about it. We broke ground on Monday, and we expect it to be up and running in December. Hopefully I'll be back in December to let you know that it's operational. Make a note of that. So this is a new idea here. This is not same old. This is a new idea. Somebody got creative on this one. How does it differ? What is happening that is notable in terms of a shift in the way we do these things? Well, I think we're trying to establish really good partnerships with the military. I mean, we're seeing it here with the Navy at Schofield. We partnered with the Army to build our Schofield generating station. And that's going to be run on biofuels and normal fuels. So we're shifting to the renewable. What I get is that the Hawaiian Electric, as the utility, is getting more hands-on into the development of renewables itself. It is taking a position on this. It is investing in this. It is the organizing entity that's making all of this happen. That's a new thought, but usually it would just let it go on an RFP basis. Now this is more hands-on, all right? This is more hands-on. What we're trying to do is really take advantage of the partnerships that we've established with the military. We're able to come in leasing the land and for this one trading for upgrades. So it's lower cost all around. Our customers will see the value in it by lower pricing for less than 8 cents per kilowatt. That is really terrific considering our history of these rates on renewables. So is this going to happen again? Oh, we hope so. The land is scarce. We'll just have to see what happens. I think in general, we just want to see renewables, whether it's private rooftop solar, grid-scale solar. We just need to reach our RPS. The key to this project that sounds like to me is the land. The land makes it feasible. It pencils out a lot better when you have control of the land, such as in this case. Well, good for you. Are you the project manager? No, thankfully. You want to be the project manager? I'll make a call. I'm good just talking about it. Well, you have to come back at the end of the year when it's done and show us some pictures of how it got built and all that. We will. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you. Now you've got to go back and actually start working on it, right? Yeah, exactly. Start with the shovels. Thank you, Shannon. Shannon Tanganon from Hawaiian Electric. We're going to take a short break. We'll come back and we're going to talk to Leslie Cole Brooks and Ted Peck about jobs. I love jobs. We all love jobs. We'll be right back. You'll see. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I believe freedom is all of these and more, regardless of your ability. DiveHeart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, DiveHeart has helped children, adults and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. DiveHeart has helped them transition to their new normal, search diveheart.org and share our mission with others and in the process help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives. Good ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff? MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your Match Day experience. If you drink, never drive. Three. Okay, we're back. I told you we'd come back. We came back. Look at that, huh? We're still here. Some things are true and predictable. I like that. Okay, so here we're talking about jobs, let's say called Brooks. We're talking about distributed energy and you see the landscape of distributed energy, so you can see it clearly. I can. You have the picture. And Ted, you've been around energy since I was a kid and you have the picture clearly too. So what about jobs? Have we got a real future on this? And by the way, this is important because we're looking for diversified industry. We're looking for a diversified economy. You know, in the early 2000s, we tried to do that in technology. The technology sector really didn't happen. There's something recently in the paper to suggest that it's really not all that robust even now after all these years. But maybe energy can do what we had hoped. What's going on? Well, for one thing, when you think about it, the jobs have to be done here. They can't be outsourced. So like what we just heard about, the solar farm is going to be built here and so people live here and they make money and they spend it here. So that's the good news. Can't be outsourced. And the other thing is that it's a good job. You feel good about doing it because you're helping the planet and you can't go wrong there. So are there jobs? There's lots of jobs. But they're changing a lot. I have kind of a long list. I had to bring notes because there's so many jobs here. So that's a general landscape. That's good for us. You're optimistic about it. I'm optimistic about it. The market here, overall the unemployment rate in Hawaii is so low and I won't say who told me this but I was asking different people. I won't say who. I won't even indicate. What does it take? And this person said, just send me somebody so it is hard. It says everyone is employed and if you're not employed it's because you're on your way to your next job. So you're excited. No, that's what I was told. Let me throw up. A lot of the jobs we have are jobs that are really, you don't want to take it. And hotel jobs and scut jobs and one kind of digging dishes. Well I guess I'm talking about generally within the trades construction. If you're up on the roof if you're an electrician you ride around in a golden chariot. I mean really, I will know but it's really worse now. We've been through some hiring over the last year and finding competent people is really hard. What's competent? What does that mean? We have to start with training or what? If you're in the trades having some basic skills some basic backgrounds because you have that last you're really as she said a statistical employment you almost you have to either find somebody who is not doing well or relationally or whatever you want to move on. So basically you have to hire somebody from somebody else or you have to bring in somebody from the mainland which is fraught with all kinds of challenges. Fraught, fraught. It's very challenging. That's why what HCC what the community colleges do is really important because it's taking people who as you said are potentially historically low skill workers who after you do that for a couple years you get a sense of gosh it would really be good if I build some skills. My personal opinion we have in our educational system our secondary educational system we've made a mistake because we have eliminated the trade school route we have taken people who are going into blue collar schools we put them into a college prep environment where they're bored and when kids are bored they make trouble and so it really it wastes their time they waste the time and create an unhealthy environment for those who want to be college prep and it ends up being really a very deleterious kind of environment we really need to reinvigorate the trades at the secondary and the immediate post-secondary site so that we have people that can be confident in doing the trades we have a lot of people, especially the trades who are older and are going to be all the baby boomers they're in the approaching retirement if they're not later in that stage so we really need to reinvigorate our trades education. Let me throw this at you this is in the middle of the Abercrombie days when the energy policy forum organized a tour actually unions organized a tour Dwight Takamini was the director of labor at the time and he had a big part in this and so we went around from union facility to union facility especially the electricians to see what they were doing to train their young apprentices who come into the industry and want to learn and although I agree certainly that the school can have a trade school system maybe the junior colleges KCC HCC is HCC but here the unions have the capacity and the motivation for that matter to train people for example installing solar and we went to a number of these facilities where they were talking about installing solar training kids not so young but they were out of high school sometimes out of college and they got trained and now they would be journeymen and they would be more valuable in the union marketplace for this work I don't know what happened with that I don't know if it was as successful as they were planning for it to be but I just throw it at you because I think that is one way that you develop trained people and the unions win too everybody win-win-win if you have the unions do the training they're good jobs, they pay well they won't be out of a job they know their stuff yeah let's look at the other side you're in a position to see it all if there is a lot of installation going on I need a lot of people to help me put that together I need people to help me build the infrastructure they have to be trained they have to be knowledgeable and they have to be up current on the latest technologies and installation techniques and that's kind of the catch because it's not just the trades now but it's IT that's really a big part of these installations not too long ago we weren't concerned about can you get the profile from your home computer what your system is doing or can the utility communicate with you or the aggregator two different skill sets completely different your installers will have one skill set and you're right the really critical which is a higher level and higher paying skill set is its comms or low voltage electricity people who can deal with installing meters calibrating and configuring inverters connecting those to communication systems so that you can see what's going on in the inverter that's a very well paying job have to be licensed I don't think so and the unions were trying last time I looked were trying to train people to do that but I'm sorry I didn't let you get to the end of your question did I throw this one at you we have seen courtesy of Marco Mangelsdorf and his various research adventures around the state trying to figure out how the solar industry is doing we all rely upon him he's fabulous thanks Marco it's very helpful in large part with a few exceptions it's been down for the past couple of years dramatically down in some of these companies that went out of business or found other models we see it all the time if you don't have a lot of installations going on Westlark as Shannon reported it would be really good a big project and a lot of people but for the most part if installations are down the way they generally are then jobs are down right, am I right they are people did lose their jobs for sure when NAM closed in 2015 there was quite a slump but luckily the skills you have in order to do installations are transferrable so the construction industry is pretty solid the last couple of years so they just go into construction so there is, I think people probably move to Mainland too to find other work but it's not like you have this special skill that isn't applicable in any other way and the same would apply to the IT world right, that it's the if you are able to make sure something's connected get the profiles right be able to connect it to the utility and all that if you have that skill what are the other parts of that IT industry so is this a career some people say well in the 2040 it will be all done we will be finished we will reach our 100% everybody can go home now, pencils down that's not how that's going to happen because let's move forward to 2040 we are going to have somewhere between depending on who you talk to and who you believe somewhere between 4 and maybe 6 or even 8 gigawatts of solar must be something that I said I got water but I think I'm good right now I think we have about I think about 2040 we have about a fifth of that I think about 800 megawatts of installed solar in place today that equipment has a bunch of all maybe that equipment is going to be aging out between now and then there's repairs and maintenance and troubleshooting that's going to need to be done it's amazing to me and I've been watching it pretty closely there's probably a half dozen to a dozen players out there getting into the O&M business there are hundreds of operations and maintenance so your equipment the nice thing about solar doesn't have any moving parts but I would venture to guess that there's quite a bit more solar that's not performing as designed today because it gets dirty I had a system that was out you got to clean it, that's one thing I had a fuse that blew the whole string was down for several months and I was watching it so we were able to troubleshoot we called in a guy who knew how to work in burners and he knew how to do electrical and he troubleshot it and I was confused but there's a lot of that I pay attention to the stuff that we manage there's a lot of stuff out there that people if you own a building all you pay attention to you don't have a third party you don't have a contract for the operations and maintenance you're not monitoring it you can have a significant amount of those panels or strings that are down and not even know it surely there will be technology to let you know when you look at a screen technology today what's the useful life of a panel we've all seen panels 35 years it can be shorter or longer it can be the predictable useful life that's actually probably on the long side for some of the earlier stuff there's stuff on the North Shore that panels sold in the 90s that's still or even the 80s that's still kicking out zoomies I can see the need for putting in electronics that will tell you when the panel is less efficient the predicted life of an inverter is about 12 years same thing with the inverter everything doesn't go at once like the deacons chariot remember that remember the deacons chariot the deacons chariot it's a poem it's a 19th century American poem it's about a deacon who was going to build a chariot to last for 100 years and he did he built a chariot to last for 100 years and on his 100th birthday everything fell apart that's the deacons chariot early American literature anyway so the other thing that upsets that apple cart is the fact that there's new technology I can tell you this as a matter of fact even though it's a speculation that new technology that's going to come in on the inverter side and on the panel side sooner than 35 years that is going to speak strong influence to every owner and say you buy me now because I'm going to be more efficient for you about the remainder of the useful life on your 35 year piece of gear isn't that going to happen? well it'll happen different depending on the different site if you have a site that has a NEM a net energy median contract and they built a system that covers all their load free is a lot better than better so as long as they're billed and they're paying their $18 a month they're probably not going to touch it they might upgrade the inverter because they want a little more bells and whistles and the utility's been controlling or that control and having inverters now you have to if you touch your inverter it goes to put for whatever reason or you decide to add more panels to an existing NEM and just do behind the meter self supply you need to upgrade all of your inverters but what customers are finding that they bought before doesn't exist anymore so now they're going to get another inverter same manufacturer probably but yeah it's not exactly the same now it does all the bells and whistles but maybe the output is slightly greater so things will change and evolve yeah maybe those new inverters are going to be so good and people need to know let's just modify what you said there so people don't freak out companies like satcon if you had a satcon inverter which is really a commercial inverter SAT they went under but if you had an N phase or an SMA or a solar edge inverter you installed so many years ago those companies are still around and they're still doing as well as any company in the solar industry so they're going to be around to honor warranties I think people will be concerned it would be important for you you know if you have a like I have N phase on my roof I have a couple systems that we work on that are we have SMA we have solar edge you want to make sure those companies are out there and healthy and doing well it just raises a very interesting point it raises a very interesting point it's sort of global leadership and energy people see Hawaii as a global leader and sometimes I think that's accurate and sometimes it's not accurate you can talk about the trade school where the fellow or girl knows how to install the stuff and knows how to integrate it and all that but you can also design it you can go to the college of engineering and design new equipment new software what have you HNEI doing this actually right now and then you can actually have a company you can have an entrepreneurial moment an established company to compete with all these the ones you mentioned you know that's a really good point because one of the things that you need to do depending upon what county you're in is on Oahu for commercial systems you have to get an engineering stamp so you might need to get electrical mechanical or electrical structural civil depends on what the system is but it has to be a Hawaii stamp and I do know that these companies here in Hawaii do compete with the engineering but you have to have a Hawaii stamp and on the big island for residential and commercial you totally advantage if you're local because there's another example that the work is being done here it's not going to work so we have to build an industry how do you do that as you guys suggested you got to train people you got to offer them opportunities to become expert to level scientific technological scientific training if you want to have them do entrepreneurial things but how do you organize this industry what do you do how do you have 20, 30,000 people who are dedicated to careers in energy here in the state how do you do that including not only the installation but the development, the science all that stuff that the world will be how do we establish that do we need government help for that do we need industry help for that how do we do it math and science and school support that do we need to for example an organization both of you guys are associated with distributed energy resources okay but do we need to trade association that maybe yours is the one that represents the notion of creating a sector of energy development I don't want to say union but you know an association of trained energy specialists do we need anything like that there's if you talk to people in the tourism world they'll talk about carrying capacity if you look at our energy system we simply don't have the carrying capacity for installers an installer base at that size it's my contention and I've been I've thought this for over a decade now that Hawaii is not a really good fit for an R&D center because R&D centers require a real critical mass of of money and universities that focus in that area so Boston is kind of an R&D center the Bay Area in energy in energy innovation in particular we might aspire to that but I think that's a really you know the university would really need to retool itself around that objective it would take a level of coordination and commitment that I'm not certain we're going to get to I do think though that Hawaii is a very good place to be a center for art for not research and development but test and evaluation so basically the world the world's entrepreneurs with new technology we would create a sandbox that entrepreneurs can come and the utility can have a really big role in this yeah I think that's a great idea and that's on the way to maybe bigger things in the future it is testing and development but I really do see Hawaii as kind of R&D in the field well that's test and evaluation but you know there are a lot of different kinds of systems that are going in here right we're deploying SEMS is a great example NSYNC is a great example Go Electric is a great example where people develop some concepts they get them to the commercialized stage and they deploy it in this market and validate that it's a commercializable product commercialized technology that's viable I think your point about testing it's a way into that in other words first you become good at testing testing is really important anybody electronics will tell you that so now you have specialists and you have accumulated equipment and you have designed equipment to do testing and integration at some point right but it's all about an incubator for good ideas some of them are market ready some of them are just smart people that have this thing they're going to do we want that we want to reach critical mass programs that are focused around the test and evaluation level not the R&D level the pure physics pure electronics once somebody has kind of put together something the incubator is a good place to go and do a testing site project a pilot for that I can tell you as a matter of fact that these inverters will become better there are better possibilities more control we call bells and whistles or more sophisticated electronics whatever it is it's going to happen and it could happen here why because we have the test bed and we know what goes on it's like designing hotel software this could be one of the best places in the world to design hotel software because you have hotels but let me ask you it's got to work so let me ask you a big question you were beginning to read a list of jobs I would like you to sort of tell the people what jobs are out there you know those who might consider careers in this area and give them an idea about how much they could make now and in the future okay ready go that's a hard question I actually can't speak for the money exactly but I do know generally speaking that they're good paying jobs 60,000 yeah I think that's fair if you're an electrician you're going to make a lot more than that a lot more 70,000 80,000 there's a license for electricity so those who will work can make well of six figures so there's work in the trades there's work for designers there's work for engineers there's work for sales people things have gotten a lot more complicated it's hard to explain they're good jobs there's work for people like me to we need more of me I know that home cloning kid didn't work well if you ever seen her around that didn't work well whenever I don't behave right so working with policy working with the commission dealing with permitting, planning so there's really something for every type of personality and skill set what about entrepreneurs Ted you've been close to the entrepreneurial end of this is there you know vigorous young I didn't say young forget that vigorous business person who has an entrepreneurial kind of bent on things come in here and whip some companies what do you think what kind of companies would they be we have an open position right now for an account executive so somebody has to sell what all these installers are installing so there's absolutely room for that I mean establishing a new company from the ground up are there entrepreneurial possibilities there are there are speaking as a business owner having old previous businesses that say it's not for the faint of heart there's a lot of barriers it's a complex business environment I think people are well intended but the amount of laws that are in place you know in fact my I'm kind of on a kick to kind of say to a lot of people get upset when we've talked about this department of planning and permitting it can be difficult to get a permit to do something here on this island you heard this here on think tech I talk about problems that TPP has had historically where they are today I think they've made great progress they're still working to make better progress but all DPP does is execute the ordinances of this city it's really city council needs to start figuring out and with count with advice but how can we are there things that we can remove ordinances that don't really serve a robust purpose that we can get rid of and we can you know because we really need to reduce the cost to deploy equipment that actually brings me to my last question and it's something that Ted said it is something you know like it or not we're changing the world I mean the energy initiative in this state is changing the world we're involved in that and it's very exciting you know it's a transformation not only of that industry but of our economy and our way of life we're not only a model for ourselves we're a model for other people so is a transformation happening we should never forget that but transformations mean testing legal barriers transformations require lawyers and I ask you are there enough energy lawyers in this town and what kind of a career does that offer is that a worthy career is it a high pay career what do you think it's a very complex market space there aren't enough there aren't enough I mean really and they're all probably all conflicted out so problem so it's you know because there are so many clients and there's so many attorneys and you can't take on a client that's in conflict I mean it starts to get as you know very dicey so I think there's room for more climate change attorneys energy attorneys all work soon together the work is definitely there is there any money in it you know I kind of guess it depends on who you work for I think for some there's probably a lot of money well if you work for Ted you're going to be fine if you work for government you're going to be okay you're kind of in there if you're in a private practice I don't I think that obviously attorneys might have to take other work it kind of depends like a new attorney they probably don't get all the really fun jobs they're going to get other things that they're going to need to do doing something like that I do I'm probably not going to retire next year or anything like that but I love what I do and it's worth it well I think the interesting thing about it is it's a specialty and we know among the three of us that that specialty will grow in the future as the industry gets more complex as the legal framework gets more complex we'll need more lawyers and the lawyers in the future we'll need more lawyers and the lawyers in that field will make more money and they'll be able to concentrate the problem with getting into a new legal field is people pulled you away for other things you get distracted client comes in and says I don't care about your energy thing help me with this real estate and say okay well I'd like to do that I'll do that and then you're not specializing anymore you're abandoning what you've decided the old story and so many specialties in Hawaii have been degraded because of that process we're still a small town in that way but if a person is determined to be an energy lawyer I think there's a great future in that they stick to it they're good speakers and writers they can put up with it sometimes closing words Ted you first want to leave with the people about jobs, employment and the energy field here in Hawaii well regardless this isn't just specific to energy but the reality is be entrepreneurial with your career you are the master of your fate it's kind of in your hands the decision you make it really is a lot of elbow grease working hard like you're saying for energy lawyers it means that you need to come to understand the field that you're lawyering for you need to understand that a lot of folks go into lawyering because that math and science wasn't really attractive or they weren't really gifted in it well you got to kind of get back into that that'll learn the math and science but it'll reap an advantage so I think people just need to be adaptable they need to think about what direction and why I want to go talk to people in it be willing to do some pro bono work to get into it if you want to do when I change careers when I did the change my pay dropped significantly you work at it and you get there Leslie I think that if you want a job in green energy the job is there just be curious work hard talk to people and as we went down all the different kinds of jobs I think there's something for everybody so it doesn't hurt to experiment and try different kinds of jobs the opportunities are definitely out there and be willing to start at the bottom there's a lot to know it's really important to have the context just because you have the skill you're a math whiz that's not going to be enough you need to really understand the politics you need to understand what went before and why certain ideas haven't worked not just that they didn't but why but the work is there and Hawaii is such a great place to be and we're going to do it the whole world is looking at it so they should call you huh they should call you Ted call these guys Ted Peck and if you call me I'll give you his number and Leslie Brooks call Leslie and the one thing you guys haven't stressed enough for my money is it's fun it's exciting when things work I just sound so happy about that it's great I can't talk about it just yet you'll be back don't leave town Leslie Carl Brooks and Ted Peck thank you so much great to see you thanks for having us