 of Clean Energy. I'm your host today, Vichuan. Our underwriter is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, which is a program of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. But today I'm very pleased to welcome our guest and my good friend Dennis Kurakawa of Mana Energy Partners. I probably destroyed the word Mana Energy Partners. We're going to be talking today about sustainable energy infrastructure for low income communities. And the objective is to reduce their cost of living by becoming 100% water and power independent. So Dennis is going to tell us all about that. So Dennis, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Mitch. And good to be here. Yeah. So I'd like to have the first opening screen slide one up there because it shows the picture of Mill Village and what it was like almost 100 years ago. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about Mill Village. Well, so Mill Camp was a company housing for the Waialua Sugar Plantation, which was I believe the first and largest sugar plantation operation on the North Shore. And the homes that are depicted on that cover are plantation homes. And I think that picture was taken in the 1920s. That's a string of recently built plantation houses. And so that's the vernacular that exists currently at the Mill Camp Village. And that's actually a style that we're going to try and preserve. Well, they're pretty nice looking houses actually. So I'm sure that they really enjoyed their houses. Of course, they don't like that now, but they're over 100 years old. And they look at... So we'll be coming in with totally new construction and really 100% new infrastructure. And it's the infrastructure that's so I think compelling because it's all designed for sustainability. So let's flip to the next slide and let's talk a little bit about an overview of what the project's all about. I mean, you gave us like the 60,000 foot view, but let's go a little bit more into the details. My objective in terms of the infrastructure and sustainability is it's really driven by the needs of the site in particular. So one of the issues that we have is that we're pretty close to the ocean on the shore. And the climate is perfect, obviously, for solar. And we've got a really nice, fairly level ground to work with that's already dressed with streets and trees and wonderful water system that's intact. But the sewage system and the roads and the water all need upgrades to meet current standards. And of course, if anybody's ever taken any drives out there, the roads are particularly awful. So we don't like to give the impression that we're going to be just dressing up the site from scratch or to rebuild what's there. We're going to actually start from scratch. So can we go to the phase? Let's go to the next slide. So what we have is we've got a series of new home sites that we're developing and those total between 200 and 300 individual home sites in phases two and three. Phase one is where we're starting. And phase one is an entirely newly reconstructed area where we're going to be putting the current retirees who currently live at the Mill Pan. And we're going to be putting them into new homes in phase one. And once they've been put into phase one, then we're able to then completely renovate the infrastructure of the original home areas, which are particularly in the phase two area. So in phase one, how many apartments or buildings are we talking about in phase one, Dennis? So in phase one, there are approximately 80 retirees. So those folks would be, they are all old. And it's, we're going to be putting them into group housing that's like fully handicapped, accessible in like four plexes. So the group housing itself would be a limited portion. And then we would be doing an additional number. I think about eight and other 80 units like single family, but group housing, more clustered. But it is for, it's intended for families. It's not, that's not exactly here. It's all, essentially the first phase would be to provide the site for the sewage treatment plant and the, you know, and provide a large amount of solar for the homes that are there. And each group parking area would be an area where we're looking to put a significant amount of solar on, you know, on rooftop or on covered parking. But all of the homes will be sort of maxed out with PDB. And those will all be knit together to a microgrid. So let's move on to phase two, I guess. Phase two is, it really is a wonderful sustainable infrastructure. So the site itself is designed so that there is no runoff of water into the ocean. There is no discharge of sewage into septic systems or, you know, it polluting the ocean. We have to treat everything so that it could be reused on site and retained on site. So none of the water that's potentially contaminated on milk camp or by milk camp, all of that pollution needs to stay on. All of the storm water is intended to be absorbed into the lands. So are you planning to have a wastewater treatment plant there for the, for the village? As you go back to the phase one, you can see that there's a sewage treatment there. And the architecture that we're doing would be to separate black water from the storm water and treat the black water to a reuse standard of R1. And R1 is defined as waters that have essentially unrestricted reuse. So what we'll be doing with the R1 water is irrigating as much as we can on our site and to the extent that the farmers that are in the surrounding lands need water, we can offer them recycled water as well. Okay. So water's a big deal up there, I'm sure. Right. I mean, the issue is, isn't that we can't access water because this project came with its own water source. But the issue is, is that you cannot get, you cannot allow that water to flow off the site. And there are no right city sewage treatment plants to send the sewage to. So we have to build our own wastewater recycling. That's part of the first phase. Which is, you know, honestly, it's the responsible thing to do. Because this is a substantial amount of density that we're, that we're writing here. So these are 5,000 square foot lots. And these lots are, you know, sites for a single family house. So I kind of go to the next slide. What you can see is basically, you know, on the left, you see a series of lots, right? There's a typical lot. And each lot would have gray water gardens, which are irrigated from laundry and showers. So those would be you know, really strong areas for growing vegetables. Not necessarily all vegetables, but papaya trees, and flowers, and corn, and you know, a great number of so. So that would help reduce their cost of living because they could be growing their own, a lot of their own food. Absolutely. The size of, and the layout of the each lot is actually designed to really maximize the amount of usable yard. And that really goes hand in hand with the absorption rate of the storm water and the absorption rate of the right, the treated wastewater that we've got to return to the site. But if you notice that in the back of the house lot, so towards the top of the page, you see bioswale storm water. Right. And so what we have is the truck is on a paved portion of the road. And the shoulders are our pervious paved, the parking areas of pervious paving and basically. So what do you mean by pervious? The water can percolate? Yes, the water can percolate through it. Okay, good. So and then we cap it with a solar carpet. And each one of these homes were targeting about two kilowatts of solar on each of them, which is a substantial amount of solar relative to the energy load of the house. Because really what we're pushing towards is towards electric vehicle loads being, you know, additional to the household. And so in order to really provide for a sustainable community, we're really going to need to maximize the amount of power that we can generate. So basically, you're going to be providing them with very low cost electricity. You're going to be providing them with very low cost water. You're going to be helping them with their food supply. And you're also going to be helping them by recharging their electric vehicle. So for transportation, so they've got it, you've got it pretty well covered for a low income family, you know, who, who, you know, those those costs are significant in their overall budget. It really helps them out a lot. It's a tremendous savings that because well, you know, once you put the solar in those, then the electricity is largely a fixed cost. Okay, let's go to the stormwater management system and tell us a little bit more about that. So, you know, as I was saying, the, the, the roadways are at the high point of the site designs. And, and the cross slope actually helps in terms of moving the water along the, you know, from the roadway down towards the biosphere. And one of the things that is, is important here is, is that by elevating the homes, we don't run into a situation where we're, we're confounded by accidental flooding because of, you know, incredible stormwater or rainwater events. And it allows the water to, to sheet flow down towards the bioswales, which then the bioswales are, are directed to, well, first their size to hold the 50 year storm. And then there are some additional lands that, that I didn't point out. There are additional rainwater detention zones. But in general, the, you know, as long as the site is landscaped, it's going to absorb water at a pretty high rate. And, and the soils that underlie everything are degraded corals, which have a high, high porosity. So, so this is going to keep stormwater from also from flowing into the ocean and screwing up the reefs and the water quality. That's exactly what it's designed to do. Great. Well, let's talk numbers. Let's talk a little bit more about the power that you're generating here on the next slide. A lot of, a lot of, why don't you just run us through how this is going to work? All right. Well, so we're, we estimate a total of 4.3 megawatts of PV panels aggregated over the homes and the parkour groups. And, and for five hours, you know, we, we average, I think five and a half hours of sunshine on the North Shore there over the year. And so that, that'll produce about, right? 24 megawatts a day. 24 megawatt hours a day. That's a lot of power. It is a lot. It is a lot. And, but right, one of our big targets is actually to provide power for electric vehicles. And electric vehicles are energy pigs. So, which is why we're, we're really, you know, right now trying to size up the amount of solar. So, we're, we're, on a daily basis, I think we'd be looking at like a megawatt and like one and a half megawatt hours or two megawatt hours just to run the basics of the homes. But, but we need additional power to, for those, you know, large energy spikes that happen during the, you know, the peak periods. And then we're also going to be using hydrogen to absorb a lot of the extra power that is generated during the day, which will be a ton of it. Well, we'll use electrolyzers to turn that, that power, whatever can't be stored in the batteries to be turned into hydrogen for long term. So, I see here you're planning to have like at least 14 days of power reserve backed up by the hydrogen supply. Right. So, the, the objective here is, all right, well, you know, the seasons change and we get some extraordinary weather events. We don't want to have a community that doesn't, you know, have enough reserve capacity that we're going to, you know, need emergency bails, bailouts. Actually, you know, we want to actually have a substantial enough hydrogen reserve or energy reserve wherein we can help the community. Right. Oh, and right. So, on the next point, we do have to be connected to the grid. Okay, I was going to ask that about that. Yes, it's a requirement by law that that homes that can be connected to the grid. So, we will offer our energy storage resources to HECO through their new programs of battery storage and I forgot the acronym, but the smart grid programs. So, yeah, we intend to, to work with HECO to improve grid quality for that whole North Shore area by providing energy storage as well as dispatchable power. And in fact, already started making contact with HECO on some of the, like, the community solar. Right. So, that'll be good for them too, because you can help manage their duct curve and other things that there were that they need to be managing. So, let's go to the next slide. I want to talk about one of my favorite technologies, which was developed here in Goodall, Hawaii by Paul Panthio on Blue Planet, which is called EMCC. So, basically, let's go to that slide and they characterize it as the Swiss Army knife of telemetry. But basically, it's the system, a command and control system where you can monitor each house. So, Dennis, I don't want to steal your thunder. So, tell us how that's going to work, because you're essentially setting up a microgrid here and EMC is the, tell us what it's going to do to help here. We're looking to, we're looking to use a variety of technologies as well as technology providers in order to provide both energy storage as well as dispatchable energy and control the power quality in our microgrid. Right. And we're also putting in the capacity to aid the grid by using our dispatchable power within our microgrid to support the HECO grid. And the amount of, or the EMC square, as I understand it will allow us to add technologies in the future that we can't anticipate currently. So, we've been confronted with the option to go with package solutions, but that's not going to work for us because we're designing something for growth. So, just like a one-shot deal. Right. And once again, this is developed here in Hawaii, and it's a real game changer. And we're going to be hearing a lot more about this as we go forward as Blue Planet expands. So, let's go to the next slide. It's a little bit of a wiring diagram. Why don't you work us through your energy microgrid here, Dennis? Well, the idea here is that the HECO utility grid is on the right-hand side. There's a microgrid controller next to the HECO grid time, and that would be the EMCC as well as inverters in that box. And then you can see that each phase of the project would be a grouping of solar cells and batteries. Right. And so, the power that the phase PV and batteries generate goes through the controllers and towards the loads. What's not shown in here is that we, and because it's so new, that we would be able to feed power back into the HECO grid through the microgrid controller. But let's just go back to the other part. So, in each phase, the PD plus battery array would be, so let's just assume that the batteries get topped off, then the power would need, so excess power would go through an electrolyzer and which produces the hydrogen. And then whenever we have the need, like for instance in evening times, we would produce electricity for our loads both by depleting energy stored in the batteries as well as generating power through a fuel cell, which would be consuming the hydrogen. So, that's, and you can see that we have electric vehicle chargers as being part of the loads. So, let's talk a little bit more. We've only got a few minutes left. So, let's finish off talking about the electric vehicle chargers. I mean, this is a very cool technology. So, tell us about this cool technology down. Well, it's, I mean, it sounds all sexy. It's actually pretty straight ahead. I think that a lot of rooms already have EV chargers hooked up to their Tesla battery, right, their wall packs. What we're talking about here though is the ability to use our stored hydrogen to produce much more power than we would be able to deliver in lithium cells. So, by filling up large cylinders of hydrogen, we can run fuel cells at a high output and charge several electric vehicles in rapid chargers. So, what does that mean? That's level three chargers. Level three chargers, yeah, which are normally a huge demand on the grid. But this is a self-contained unit that's not connected to the grid at all. So, you can really slam a charge back into an electric vehicle. And by using a stored hydrogen, it does not require an infrastructure if you, for instance, have that system on wheels. So, one of the things that we're working on is to deploy EV chargers on wheels that are developed through this GM and power program. Right. That's General Motors, everybody knows. It's not just some little grad shop. The company Renewable Innovations is engineering and deploying these systems to utilize hydrogen around the mainland. And it allows the development of level three chargers in areas where they're very far from the electrical grid. Or the grid is just a can't hack it in that neighborhood because it's already overloaded. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. Okay. So, we're going to have to wrap it up here, Dennis. We're actually going to breeze through our 30 minutes. So, we're out of time. But I really appreciate you coming on and presenting your wonderful project, which should act as a model for us to really get after low income housing here in Hawaii, which we never seem to be able to get a handle on. But this project does. I mean, 300 homes is a lot of homes we're putting on the grid are to be converting over to low income. And we handle food, energy, and water, and transportation, you know, for these low income families and really reduce their out of pocket expenses to make it totally livable. So, it's a really, really awesome project. So, thanks for sharing this great project with us, Dennis. And I want to thank our viewers for tuning in. So, I'll meet you on, we'll be back in two weeks with another great show on Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Aloha, everyone.