 Goodbye, Cole. Hello, Green Energy. Hello, Howard Wigg. Hello, Code Green. I'm Jay Fiedel and I'm going to be host for the show. And Howard, are you going to join me as our esteemed guest? Are you ready, Howard? I'm ready as I'll ever be. I'm quaking in my boot. Yes, well, you should be because on September 1, no more Cole, NMC, no more Cole. Goodbye, Cole. And hello, Green Energy, although that's kind of misnomer because we've been doing Green Energy for a long time, Howard, you know. But let's talk about the end of Cole and what it means, what it means to Hawaiian Electric, the KIUSD, what it means to the Hawaii State Energy Office, and what it means to you and me, Howard. And are you concerned that there will be brownouts? Are you concerned that we won't be able to find replacement energy for the end of Cole, Howard? What do you say? I am totally, totally anxiety-free. I have utter total complete confidence in the engineers at Hawaiian Electric and they've been planning for this for a long time. It wasn't supposed to happen this way because the long-term plan was that all of these beautiful big solar farms with battery backup were going to come online before this date. When the legislature passed this law, what was it, three years ago, that was the plan. And then something called COVID hit. And when COVID hit, China shut down, shipments shut down, the manufacture of chips, which are always important for everything, shut down. And we were left holding the bag, which was okay because we didn't, we had adequate energy. And then COVID sort of went away. Everybody needed everything. And we needed solar panels like mad. And the solar panels were in China. China shut down entirely. And we were left holding the bag. So what the Hawaiian Electric is going to have to do is just fire up all their fossil fuel fired power plants. I'm sorry, I thought you said fire up their fossil fuel power plants. I thought you said fossil fuel there a minute ago. I didn't say fossil fuel. Unfortunately, because that's all we have in the short term. As you probably read just a few days ago, the first of the plan, massive new plan solar farms fired up or didn't fire up, heated up just a few days ago. And that is 39 megawatt worth of power and three days worth of energy storage. That's the good news. Bad news is that the coal fired plant produces 180 megawatts. Minus 39, we still got 141 megawatts to go. And the very smart engineers at Hawaiian Electric will be needing to use fossil fuel for a while until the whole confluence of good green forces comes to bear. And we can ratchet, ratchet, ratchet that down, that deficit down and reduce the production of fossil fuel. And there's a whole bunch of new technologies, new techniques, policies coming down the pipe, which will do exactly that and get us very, very close to clean green energy in the not distant future. A few questions for you, Howard. Sure. What kind of new technology is coming down the pipe? Just give me some examples. Okay. First and foremost, no surprises here. More solar farms and battery backup. What in the world is with battery backup? We already have so much photovoltaic energy in this state that in the middle of the day, especially a sunny day like today, we're producing way, way more energy than we are consuming. What are you going to do? Dump it into ground? No, you're going to store it in batteries. Not your car batteries, but batteries that kind of look like refrigerators. And they store a lot of energy and you can stack them up rows and rows and rows and rows of them. Store all that up until you need it. When do you need it? Towards the end of the day, two things happen. Number one, the sun begins to go down. So your photovoltaic production goes down commensurately. And number two, everybody comes home from work and from school and turns everything on. And now that tourism is back, all the tourists are coming in from the beach, from shopping, from touring. And everything in the hotel comes on and they're going to be hungry and thirsty. All the restaurants, all the bars come on. So we have what's called a peak demand. The demand for electricity goes way, way up just when the sun has deserted us. That's where the batteries come in. I thought we already had batteries. We have batteries. We don't have adequate batteries. So what makes you think that we're going to have adequate batteries now? Something called planning. We've been planning, we're planning a whole battery farm, which will be coming on, not long from now. And just to get it down to the residential side, the other part of the good news is that we have extended the energy tax credits for photovoltaic, both federal and state. And people are taking advantage of that. And they are now, this is at the residential level, installing not just the PV panels, but their own batteries to store. I was interviewing the largest solar dealer in Hawaii just recently. And I said, what percentage of your residential installations include batteries? And without blinking an eye, he said 100%. Yeah. And you meant to say new installations, right? Yeah. Because if you have an old installation and you want to bring batteries online to support your old installation, you're not going to get a state tax credit, because that bill has been lingering, languishing in the state legislature for about five years and has still not yet been passed. I don't know why it wasn't a campaign platform issue, but it has not yet been passed, right? I am taking your word for it. I was not aware of that. That's a major, major deficit. You're absolutely right. Yeah, we're not too bad. But let's talk about the efforts of the Hawaii State Energy Office. Because you mentioned, instead of showing up that the Hawaii State Energy Office is working very hard to make sure we don't have a gap on September 1st, which is coming soon. Actually, that is virtually entirely, we're more the long-range planter type. The people who will be filling that gap is Hawaiian Electric. And they've been aware of this impending problem for a long time. Very capable engineers. There's a lot of fossil fuel power plants to fire up there. And that's exactly what they're going to have to do. Do you mean to say that there are power plants that have not been functioning, which are now going to be, quote, fired up and will function again after a hiatus of some sort? No, there are what are called peaking plants. These are smaller, not so energy efficient power plants. And in the old days, we had to fire them up and make the peak. But we managed to shave that peak with batteries. Now we're going to have to reinvigorate those old power plants and just fill the gap, hopefully only during the peak time. You're not talking about the peaking plant in Kapolei, the one that runs on gas, right? That's something different. No, that's one of them. Okay. Yeah, I've seen that. I've been there. So there was a press release one week ago, roughly, by Hawaiian Electric. And they said that prices would go up because of the efforts necessary to what I want to say, fill the gap left by coal. They said that prices would go up on the average for a customer, 7% or $15 is the average increase in the cost of a month's electrical service. And they also said that that would last that or something like it. I mean, maybe it would maybe get worse, who knows, until 2024, which is a couple of years away. So what are your thoughts about that? How much of a trauma is that going to create for people who don't have $15 or whatever it is to spare? And generally speaking, the confidence of the community in declining prices here, we have an increase. Well, let me put a rosy coat on that, the new solar powered plant that I just mentioned will be is delivering kilowatt hours at 9 cents, a kilowatt hour. Unfortunately, it's just a fraction of the total, but that is a harbouring of things to come. The more plants we bring online, the less the average cost of a kilowatt hour is going to be. Plus, let me throw in my special cap, which is energy efficiency. And technology is improving at a mile a minute, example, LED lights, light emitting diode lights. We've been working with Hawaii Energy, who subsidizes energy efficient technology, and they've been working with the retail stores, and they have been providing LED lights at a very, very low cost. And if you compare that with the old incandescent lights, you may be too young to even remember incandescence day, but they were I have to really stretch to get back that far. Yeah, yeah, little small kid time, as we say. So they were very, very inefficient. The efficiency ratio between a typical LED and a old incandescent lamp is good, solid seven times. They got about 15 lumens per watt. The average LED is delivering 90 lumens per watt. That's average. Plus those incandescents were hotter than blazes. You could set a fire with them. And the LEDs let them burn for a long or go for a long time, touch them, and they're just barely warm to the touch. So we are not producing that heat anymore. So we could just be more comfortable, or we can turn down our AC or just be more comfortable in non AC. That's fun. And that's something that we're pushing. They're very, very hard working with Hawaii energy. Hawaii energy has been trying to incentivize people to get LEDs for years, for 10 years anyway. What makes you think that with your pushing, there's going to be a remarkable change in the adoption of LEDs around the community. So as to soften, you know, the effect of switching off coal. Oh, we're going to have a dramatic increase now in the public's use of LEDs. Good question. Yes, I should speak nationally. We haven't taken local polls. But nationally, 80%, that's a fairly old figure, 80% of all lamp sales were LEDs as of just a few months ago. It is probably even higher now. And let me give you a real world example, because I know you like the real world, Jay. I personally spent quite a bit of time at Lowe's and Home Depot in the lighting department. Just about a month ago, comparing I wanted to compare the efficacy efficiency of the LEDs versus the screw in CFL compact fluorescent lamp. And one part of the news is that I got the average efficiency as 91.1 lumens per watt LEDs offered. Number two, I went over to the CFL department. Where are they? They took them off the shelves. That's all you can get is LEDs, at least in the major department stores now. That's a major. And then when it comes to the long tubular fluorescence, they have been efficient for a long time. The LED tubulars are much, much more efficient. Yeah, I know that for my personal, our personal use at ThinkTech. But let me ask you, talk about credits, tax credits for solar, both state and federal. I wonder about the tax credits for LED or incentives of some kind from Hawaii energy or, for that matter, from the Hawaii State Energy Office. How are we going to make this 100% Howard? I speak to somebody in Hawaii energy virtually every day. We coordinate really, really closely what they're doing just with the LEDs. This is just the symbol of a much larger array of technology. What they're doing is working with the retail stores and saying, hey, retail store, you're selling LEDs at, say, $3 a lamp will give you or subsidize you a dollar for every LED you sell, goes down. But it gets better. They got extreme. A little while ago, I walked into a hardware store and there were all these nice looking little boxes stacked up against the wall. And here's the Hawaii Energy logo above it. And I said, are these LEDs? Yes, sir. How much? A dollar? And he said, yes, you mean it only costs a dollar for a lamp? And he said, no, sir. The LEDs are so small now, there are two lamps in that little box, 50 cents a piece for LEDs that get 80 lumens per watt. I bought half the store out and gave them to everybody known to men. There you go. Christmas all year round, Howard. So that's just, that's an extreme example of us working together with Hawaii Energy. Yeah, is that government money or is that money that comes from the utility in order to emphasize and incentivize clean, rather, energy efficiency? That is your money, Jay. Thank you very much. I appreciate your contribution. Whenever you pay an electric bill, if you look on the back of the bill, there's all these miscellaneous charges. One of them is, forget what it's called, but it's usually about a dollar 50 per electric bill residential. And that money is collected and it goes to the PUC, Public Utilities Commission. And they're just a pass through, they pass that money through to Hawaii Energy, who then determines the best use of that money to get people to buy the most efficient appliances and equipment possible. Well, now is the time for that, isn't it? Now is the time when this is more important than it was over the past 10 years. It's not so much an option. It's got to be a requirement on a community-wide basis because we have the risk of not being able to fill the gap. What happens if we don't fill the gap for any reason? What happens if we can't get the batteries, the additional solar farms in place in time for the termination of the AES co-plant? What happens to the system? In other places, when you run out of supply, you get a brown out or a blackout. Again, I can only go back to Hawaiian Electric. They've got very, very, very bright engineers there, very bright management. They knew this was coming. They are totally, totally prepared. And it's going to result in an increase in the electricity cost temporarily until we can bring additional efficiency online and crank up Hawaii Energy even more and get all those nice new solar farms with the battery backup online also. And one of these days, we're going to get wind farms permitted. Where and when? Probably out in the ocean. We've had a lot of, especially on this island, a lot of controversy about land-based wind farms. So Scotland, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, England, especially that region of the world, they have been producing tremendous, great, big, new ocean-based wind farms. And speaking of which, in this country, the biggest wind farms of all are in West Texas. Nothing but a bunch of cattle out there, they don't mind the wind farms. And they are feeding that wind energy into the major Texas cities. Yeah, sure. We didn't have as much land as Texas, though. Maybe we have to go into the ocean. And I recall that Ted Beck, you remember him? He used to be the state energy officer a few generations ago, a few administrations ago. But is there anything happening on that? Because as you say, there's controversy over it. And regrettably, since we saw wind mostly on Maui, maybe some on the big island, we haven't seen a whole, oh yeah. And there's been wind on the North Shore here in Oahu. But regrettably, there's been a fair amount of nimby pushback on it. And I don't think we've seen as much wind development as was originally anticipated. Yeah. So how can we clear the Braille for that? Because wind is very nice. It works in so many places, and not only in Europe, but really all over the world. But Hawaii, which needs and is committed to clean energy, can't seem to get its act together on ubiquitous wind. What can we do? Push, push, push. Be patient. We are pushing. And for one thing, the environmental impact statements, being what they are, are really, really complicated. What's going to happen through the surrounding area of the ocean when you get your wind farms out there? And then you need to get the power from the wind, the machines to land and distribute it. It's a complicated process. It's taking a long time. Of course, we would have liked to head them up yesterday. Well, we don't have any in the ocean yet. Oh, we don't. And there are, you know, there are, what do you want to call it, environmental risks of another kind. That is, if you have high seas or high wind, you know, they could break. They could, they could fall down. So you have to have them built in a certain way. Or is this not only weather, but extreme weather. And you and I know, Howard, that extreme weather is coming. Well, extreme weather is here. And it has been extreme for actually centuries in the North Atlantic where these wind farms are situated right now and working very, very well. And I don't think that even when we were kids, Jay, we would want to be swimming out in the middle of the North Atlantic, given those conditions. I'll grant you that. But what I'm talking about is climate change storms, hurricanes that are very strong, stronger than anything we've seen. That's coming. And it's just, you know, just as a matter of science, it's coming to Hawaii one of these days. Yeah. And if we have, you know, equipment that is not resilient against that kind of extreme weather, we'll lose the equipment. Absolutely. And what one of many technological developments we're working on is alternatives to different metals. And we're getting what are called composite materials, a lot of carbon in there, a lot of plastics in there, they're lighter and stronger than anything that a metal product can deliver. Well, you know, a lot of the delay that you were talking about at first, I mean, some of it is due to the effects and secondary effects of COVID, you know, in the supply chain world economy would have you different effects in different countries, different supply chains. But some of it is due to the problem right here at home. That is the problem with the building permits and all that. And Code Green is a wonderful show here on ThinkDeck and you cover code. And code is handled, those code issues are handled by your office over many years. And you've actually brought Hawaii into the forefront. It may be the most sophisticated clean energy code date in the Union. Quite remarkable. Congratulations to you, Howard. The question then is, you know, what about approvals at DPP and that is Department of Planning and Permitting and other approval organizations that have notoriously held up applications for solar and other clean energy facilities? Can't something be done about that? Can the Hawaii State Energy Office, can your office dealing with code issues do something about, you know, the delays, the extraordinary delays that we have had in planning and permitting offices around the state? Yes and no. Just sticking to the issue of codes, specifically the way we upgrade our codes every three years and that process starts at the federal level and we participate actively in the federal hearings, especially promoting technologies that are welcome or work well in warm climate such as ours. When the federal code is adopted, it goes to the states. Every state has an energy office, comes to us. I chair the Hawaii Building Code Council and we get together with a whole bunch of interested parties including the four county building managers. They're all sitting around the table, virtual table these days and no code provision, either an amendment or mainland or the national code gets passed. Those code people accept unanimously. It must be a unanimous county vote before a state code is adopted, then it goes through the individual counties and they can adopt as is or they can amend further. So we bypass the DPP process that way. So we've had the newest energy code at the state level for quite a while and the counties are set to adopt that code by December 14 of this year. I'm in continual contact with the counties. They're all set. Does that help speed it up? Even if you use the old code and we've had huge delays under the old code and now there's a new code and the DPP officials have to learn it and the contractors have to learn it, the property owners have to learn it. Does this improvement in the code improve the time within which these projects will be approved? Because the big problem in getting the benefit of clean energy is to actually have the projects approved and a lot of them have not been timely approved. I mean sometimes it's very untimely and I wonder you know what the connection is, whether the new codes help or hinder, whether there's anything your office or the state energy office can do to make this process work faster. Okay, two parts to that answer. One, we provide training all over the place on whenever new codes are coming down the pike or are in existence and we have two ways of getting a lot of people there. Number one, we get the AIA, American Institute of Architects, to buy in and say this is good for learning credits. Number two, we work with Hawaii Energy and we offer Zippy's gift cards. That gets them to the table right there. Everybody loves Zippy's. So though seriously we do a heck of a lot of training and the training we have planned since the developers, the big builders out there are the primary recipients of the new code, our next training session will feature not Howard Wiig, not our consultant, but spokes persons for the four major developers. They will be the ones talking about the energy efficiency and just to put a nice light on your otherwise gloomy prospects, Jay, something we were pushing for just years ago and it was a tumultuous subject was PV ready. When you build a new home you should have a cable going into your garage, oh that's EV ready, cable going into your garage, little flange in the garage so when you're ready to put your EV charger there, you just unscrew the flange and boom, there's your receptacle right there, saves a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of money, a lot of money and then PV ready up on the roof. When you're installing all your wiring, you put cables right up under the roof. When the owner is ready to put PV up there, boom, you just cut a little hole, boom, you're all set up. Again, saving immense amounts of money, so much cheaper to do things during construction. Oh yeah, but is this required now? Will it be required or will it be an option and if it's not required now, when will it be required? Okay, excellent question. It has been required in Honolulu for over two years now and Honolulu has 70% of the state's population. Number two, I have been in contact with the two largest developers who are building the most homes out there right now. Guess what they have with their installing voluntarily? You ready? EV ready? PV ready. Voluntary. This is called market transformation. Everybody knows that we need to optimize efficiency and renewables. It's become part of the culture. I believe that homeowners now ask about green features. So it's being installed voluntarily. Biggest builders. How's that? Does it apply to multifamily buildings and condominiums? I mean, it's very hard to get a charging station for your vehicle in a condominium parking stall and I don't know how hard it is to require condominium designers and contractors to make sure the condominium is ready for whatever PV is necessary on the roof. I hope you're ready for some good news, Jake. I'm ready. It's been, that has been Honolulu law for over two years now and it is a provision coming up for state law. Very good. That's a great contribution. It's worked very well in Honolulu. So we're just copying what Honolulu is doing and sticking it into the state law, both EV and PV ready. To me, at the end of the day and the end of the show, we really always have to talk about energy justice and that means clean energy justice now and we have to incentivize clean energy for people who can't afford rooftop solar. We have to build solar farms, large utility scale solar farms and we have to make sure that the benefits of solar are available to everyone, even those who cannot afford but whatever reason to put a $40,000, $50,000 installation on their rooftop, either directly or by installment payments or somehow on a loan-debt basis. So my question is, how are things going in that regard? What's the level of energy justice, if you will, that is helping people who cannot otherwise afford solar facilities? We have, number one, a group of young people called the Wayfinders as part of their interns in the state energy office and a good part of their job is going out into the community, especially the disadvantaged communities, and promoting energy efficiency and renewables and then you ask the question, well, these people by definition don't have that much money. We have pushed very hard something called community solar. That is where you buy a large solar farm with your batteries and you allow individual homeowners or renters to buy in to that community farm and you get the benefit of the clean energy from that. About the tax credits, you mentioned that those tax credits have traditionally benefited the single-family residences, do the tax credits also benefit the solar farms, community solar? Yes, they do. They can pass that savings on. Okay, that sounds pretty good and I guess my last question to you is, are we going to make it, are we going to get 100% clean energy, renewable energy by 2045 or even 2040, as was discussed a few years ago? These events that you have described are disruptive in our efforts and we have to work all the more diligently and efficiently to incorporate clean energy devices, systems into our energy supply and query, are we still on track Howard? All the more so because of something that happened in Washington, D.C., well it's been a succession of events, even as we speak. Let's see, it's about 6.30 p.m. on the East Coast time. Our president may be signing the tax reduction act. And that does have an effect because it incentivizes electric vehicles and regrettably the state of Hawaii terminated its incentivization of electric vehicles years ago and has never renewed those tax credits but now we'll have the federal tax credits that come with that act and that'll be good. It incentivizes clean energy, you're right and it's important to note that and he is signing or has signed it within moments and this is very important to us. So how will that affect, how will these tax credits affect the state of Hawaii? How will it affect my pocketbook? It will affect it in a very nice way. Your pocketbook will get bigger and a lot of that, those billions of dollars are directed by the way at low income disadvantaged communities, reach out to them and lower their utility bills because the slice out of their economic pie that is taken by the utilities is much bigger than the slice taken out of a middle income pie. Presumably then I'll be incentivized to buy an electric vehicle more than before, although I for one would like to see a state tax credit as well, I don't know why they gave it up and to a stroller in general will be incentivized so you know you have a good point that maybe this will help offset the you know disturbances in our timeline and make it more than less likely that we'll reach our goals however aspirational they are of 2045 for 100% clean energy. I hope you and I are both around Howard and I hope we're there to see that day you driving your electric vehicle, me driving mine and we can wave to each other Howard and I'll say that that's Howard Green. He was you know responsible in large part for making this happen and then Howard you could turn to me and you could say there's Jeff Beidel. He asked me a lot of questions about it and made me answer him isn't that nice and so together we are working together for this very important goal for the state. Howard what what words and wisdom would you leave with our listeners today that you would like them to carry forward? Yet efficient they take advantage of advanced technology. Real simple example I certainly gave the LED example if you have an old clunker of a refrigerator 20 years old or something it's very possible that you are using 1400 kilowatt hours a year and I'll translate that into 36 and that is a good solid $500 a year in electricity use that you're paying for that old clunker refrigerator traded in for an energy star refrigerator with all the new bells and whistles and the Hawaii energy rebate and your yearly consumption goes down to I hope you're sitting down Jay 400 kilowatt hours a year from 1400 to 400 do things like that sit back and enjoy and when you're doing things like that you are helping to create a green world reducing carbon dioxide production and enjoying the full benefits of a brand new super duper refrigerator. Okay and now my comments my comments to everybody is you know a great state deserves great art and great energy both and these days that great energy is so important going forward for Hawaii it helps our economy it helps our people it helps every individual who lives in the state and so we all have to be highly aware of the need for it and we have to make our legislators and our officials highly aware of the need for it except Howard Howard is already highly aware of the need for it thank you so much Howard Wigg clean energy green energy code green here on Think Tech Hawaii aloha thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at thinktech hawaii.com mahalo