 Welcome to Stand the Energy Man on another beautiful Friday in Hawaii and happy Independence Day in the 5th today, yesterday was 4th of July. Great day, great events in DC, good fly-bys, I like fly-bys, that's probably why I like the event so much and just thanks to all the veterans and to all the folks that celebrated and had a good time. Thanks to Hank Rogers for letting some energy folks up to his place to watch the fireworks from his nice viewpoint and if you didn't catch the special show that Jay and Chief Westcott Lee and I did for 4th of July on Wednesday, it's now on YouTube and you can catch it on YouTube and that might be entertaining at least for those of you that are patriots and want to check that out. Anyway, today's show is going to focus back here in Hawaii on a subject that we don't really talk too much about and that's wind power and also in general what's going on in energy and the legislature, we're going to talk a little bit about both but we hardly ever talk about wind power here and it's certainly something that's been looked at over the years here in Honolulu and on the neighbor islands and we just kind of want to talk to a little bit more in depth about it so today we have a very special guest, Senator Gil Riviere from the North Shore, he's got probably one of the biggest districts in the state, maybe some bigger ones on the Big Island but for Oahu for sure one of the biggest districts and where the wind turbines happen to be so we'll be talking to him about some legislation and the wind turbines and the impact on his constituents. Senator, thanks for being on the board here today. Thanks for having me on board. So I've been on your show at the Senate over there and you've been on here I think at least once so can we catch up a little bit this last session? We had a couple bills come through that I know helped the hydrogen guys which I'm really thankful for so I know that we have now the definition of electric vehicle includes hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and I know that the hydrogen what they call it special fund or a rotating special fund or whatever got embedded in some language that's making high-tech development corporation into a more robust corporation reorganizing some things under D-bed so those were two things that I was really happy to see and I kind of missed a bunch of the other stuff was is there anything special that pops out in your mind that energy-wise that you thought was really a special this time? Probably the biggest change was the kind of reshuffling of the energy office there's now a Hawaii State Energy Office which is a reconfiguration basically takes it out of the hands of the director of D-bed directly and that is probably a good thing probably a good thing to focus an office directly on that instead of having it just subsumed into the larger D-bed. Did the legislature have I mean besides restructuring have more direction in mind for them like they want them to they've been kind of an advisory and a statistical office gathering a lot of energy data and providing some policy guidance to the executive branch does the legislature kind of want to expand that? There's a new chair of the Senate Energy Committee this year Senator Wakai took over and I think he's got a different focus on it he's more kind of task-oriented and he's got a vision for it that I imagine will be seeing some refinements coming over the next year or to address and fill in those kind of areas that maybe you're left to be resolved. Maybe I should drag him on the show and probably should drill him personally yeah okay that'll be good well looking forward you know as a as a state senator I know there's hundreds of bills that go through the legislature and probably dozens and dozens that are energy-related but you get a sense overall that this the reps and the senators and they're on board now have have a kind of a vision for the future energy wise or I mean have they been energized by the climate change discussion and you know all the all that have and can you see looking forward whether we're gonna put more emphasis on really trying to move to clean energy? I think I think it's very clear that we're moving towards clean energy I actually pause when I say that because I sometimes I think we rush headlong without actually looking into the details and the impacts so I think I think the consensus is yes let's do more and more and more for clean energy but I think is missing is the critical weighing of the pros and cons I agree in fact I criticized some of the actions yes this week when I talked about the patriotic show saying we've lost the art of critical thinking and we tend to go into too many things with the first-order effect in our face and go that's it and forget that their second third fourth-order effects that may not be so good and we need to avoid. Here's an example there was a there's an agency official who was we're in the middle of a debate let's say and this person said but everybody wants to get to clean energy and you've seen the movies on climate change and every one of those movies they have windmills as the solution so how do you argue against that and that's my I think I think it's clear that that's not very scientific review of the data it's a wishful thinking when you say well that's that's the answer let's go there no matter what and some solutions that work in one location don't work in other location right you know I mean there's there's different geologies there's different climates there's all kinds of things that impact what choices you have in fact that work that we do with the Air Force you know we our work has to be able to be demonstrated in the Arctic and the desert and high altitude and sea level and high salt environments and real dry environments and real wet environments and we have to do everything and figure it out and test everything before we say yeah we're gonna go with that technology right because each of those environments has different side effects for example you mentioned windmills and we have windmills we have 100 megawatts of a nameplate value which means on a perfect day with perfect winds consistently blowing we could potentially have 100 megawatts of power coming out of our district that doesn't happen because the winds are not always going perfectly and and they change and on average you get about 30% of what they what they advertise rated yeah so here we have windmills and people are saying yeah 100 megawatts but it's not really 100 megawatts it's a third of that on average and you notice that they don't have windmills on kawaii I say well why well because there's too many endangered species too many endangered birds on kawaii well we've got endangered opea pea the Hawaiian Horibat here and the wind turbines throughout the state on the three islands where they do exist have grossly exceeded their allowable take on the Hawaiian Horibat so we have to look more carefully at that we can't just keep turning a blind eye right and this is one of the things I feel very strongly about yeah in our background today we have the wind turbines over on Maui and I was there for a talk with some with some media and with the folks that run those those turbines and they were focused on the ecological piece they've actually set up rookeries for endangered birds they have bird dogs and for some of the birds and they have bird dogs that go out every day underneath those turbines to look for dead dead critters dead birds bats whatever and they even test the bird dogs they'll throw out stuff they'll plant stuff to see if they catch them so their data over there I think is is pretty good and they've they've actually found that that there is a lot of mortality they're a lot more than they expected anyway they have a process for searching they don't go every day I don't believe I think they visit them they said they went every day or they tested every day they tested every day and then what they do Kauai Law as an example above Waimea Bay they had a search area the turbines are 150 meters so 130 meters I forget they're 500 feet tall basically and they had a search area where they would go out a hundred hundred fifty meters well after the first year or two of searching they now only search out to 75 meters that doesn't make sense because they said they've done their initial study and analysis and therefore they only need to go 75 meters now think about how tall the turbine is twice as tall as the the radius that they're searching they say yeah but we take that into mathematical effect because if we find a dead animal it'll count for more than just one we do statistical analysis but my question is yeah but if you don't find any then you can't add that factor to it so I'm not a scientist and I don't I don't pretend to go there but there's just some yeah curiosities never lie but Liars figure you I know there are people that are very dedicated very devoted in the endangered species recovery committee they're biologists and they know their numbers but it just seems odd to me that yeah if you have a situation like today where there are our greater numbers of death of bats that you shouldn't be reducing the search and saying you'll make up for it statistically it seems to me you should that should warrant a more detailed sure and watch these are mainland species like hawks and things and they play in the wind turbine and they get hit but they don't get hit 75 feet from the base of the tower they get hit out near the ends of the blades which is probably more than 75 feet out and not only that but the wind is blowing and it blows them even further away from the turret the tower then when they got hit so if you're only looking 75 feet around the tower you're definitely not picking up everything there's 75 mirrors and then there's sometimes they're built on hills Kahiava is built on a hill so it's it's difficult to search exactly down below it's difficult to search downwind Paquini Nui has a concern now where they're coming in this is us near South Point and they're working on having a instead of a complete circle for search they they're taking into effect the downwind area and they're going to search a great area so those are some of the improvements that we are seeing good and I'm happy to say over the last several years that I've become aware of these problems and been tracking the endangered species Greek the ESRC recovery committee they are doing a much much better job so I think we should give them credit for really really standing up and doing a better job these days yeah I mean as long as they're really being practical and objective about doing the searches makes sense but just to sit there arbitrarily say here's our circle and that's all we're gonna do and if it's seventy six meters out that doesn't count yeah that's not that's not doesn't go on their numbers that doesn't know my bird dog doesn't search only within a meter yeah it it smells something it goes for it and it won't go down steep terrain I mean she'll go down there but I can't because yeah I don't want to bat bats only way a couple ounces yeah and so their persistence is only a few days and they won't last more than a week no matter what right and if a mongoose gets to it before the search animal yeah it's hard to hard to say and most people don't see many bats in Hawaii but I have property on the big island and I I can guarantee you every night that when the sun goes down I can sit there and watch the bats flying around catching insects and stuff from right off my eye and they're there you don't see him because they're nocturnal and my cabin where it said is really dark just the night sky behind it you can see them and you can tell their bats because of the way they fly and they're not real big but like you say they could be in the ground hit the ground and you know mongoose could pick them up and they're gone but they're there and it is that it is an issue so I'm glad they're at least you know improving their techniques to make sure they were pressing I'm pressing hard as hard as I can but that's only one issue I know when I talked to you earlier about wind turbines you initially told me that you're the folks in the North Shore were willing to give it a shot because the electric utilities and the contractors made a good case about not impacting but then the red lights on top of the towers were just flashing all night long in people's windows they had to shut them I mean literally put blinds in so they get sleep yeah and actually noise becomes an issue too so just refresh me on some of those issues yeah a couple of things a few weeks ago my wife's niece was in town so we went back up into Waimea Valley and if you've been back in there in the last few years as you get towards the waterfalls you will hear oh whoosh whoosh whoosh and people don't necessarily know what it is they think there's something wrong but they don't recognize it's the turbines that are towering over the turbine the gentleman one of the gentlemen that I mentioned to you previously with the red light I called him just last week because a Christian science monitor reporter was in town and she was asking you know anybody that have comments about windmills and I said of course I do and I called this gentleman and he said he's too upset he can't take it anymore he's tried he's spoken he's spoken out against it but the red lights and the noise and everything is just just drives him crazy and at this point he can no longer calmly it's just been wearing on me that's the kind of person you have in front of a reporter then yeah as you know I'm sure that the utilities you know are trying to do the right thing the bottom line is they're selling a product they have a mandate Hawaiian Electric has a mandate you see the state has a mandate to deliver more renewable energy it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be centralized power from inefficient wind turbines that generate the ones above Waimea those generate only 22% of their nameplate value so they are complaining that they can almost never turn them off because they can't generate enough electricity but the point is when the turbines operate at a slow wind speed bats are more likely to be prevalent so it all circles back to it's not the right product for that environment yeah we're gonna take a quick break here and we'll be back in 60 seconds to spend some more time with Senator Rivera hi I'm Rusty Kamori host of beyond the lines on think tech Hawaii my show is based on my book also titled beyond the lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence leadership and finding greatness I interview guests who are successful in business sports and life which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness join me every Monday as we go beyond the lines at 11 a.m. Aloha hi my boo hi my name is Amy or Tega Anderson inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii with think tech Hawaii we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday we invite you to listen watch for our mission of empowerment we aim to enrich and lighten educate entertain and we hope to empower again Maraming salamat boh my boo hi and Aloha hey welcome back to stand the energy man on my lunch hour at least for a couple more weeks when I depart state employment become a fully retired gentleman and I can come on think tech whenever the heck I want so thanks for joining us again and we've got Senator Gil Rivera from the North Shore and we're talking wind turbines and you know are they all good are they the right thing for Hawaii and you mentioned a couple times about the rated output of the turbines and talking between 20 and 30% rated output on an average day I think that there's a couple points being missed by a lot of people that's one of them you're not getting even 50% most of the time those things I think like to operate around 30 knots or so somewhere in that range and we average like 15 to 18 knots of trade winds most of the time but not all the time for sure and it drops off a little at night but the other thing is when the utility has to use wind or any intermittent even solar and it starts going up and down because the wind speed changes that's not good the utility doesn't like that and so they'll curtail renewable energy because they don't want it messing with their their stability on the grid so they'll actually curtail even even though this wind turbines aren't putting out a hundred percent and they're only in the 20 30% productivity then they'll curtail another 20% you know until I'm shut a couple down because destabilizing our grid so there's a there's other issues that the utility has to deal with with that technology that's usually not talked about much and so let's go back to the gentleman and have the red light flashing in his bedroom window every night and you said he was really upset and was so upset he really didn't even want to talk to reporters anymore you know in his mind he was living in a nice pristine place with a great view and and that was his home and he settled in and he invested money in it he's got you know improvements on the property and now he probably wants to move but where's he going to move to and you know is that the right thing that we should be doing to our folks and for tourism the tourists really want to come here and see wind farms all over our mountains I personally don't think so I certainly don't and I know when we started talking about Maui and Molokai doing a lot of wind turbines and then putting undersea cable to Oahu that went over like a lead balloon you know it's like why should people on neighbor islands give power to Oahu and go through all the expense and everything and mess up their view on mountains and things like that so we on the North Shore were supportive of the ideal of wind energy and we were welcoming of it in 2010 when the wheels were turning and it came and we asked questions like what will it look like and the sales rep I swear he said oh those folks that live up in Pupu K are gonna have the best view and no kidding those the ones with the red lights that they can't sleep at night and they said well you'll see them just because they're so tall when you're down by the beach at Chun's and Laniakea you'll be able to just see the tops of them over the over the poly there the hill and but that's not true you see them from everywhere you can't miss them and so we feel many people on the North Shore feel like we were betrayed on the visual impact the impact we thought there'd be more energy we didn't think there would be the you know the effects on endangered species and the folks who live in Kahuku have had windmills longer than just about anybody they accepted you know the first wind farm in this new generation of wind energy and now they're looking at getting another wind farm on the other side of town so they will be completely surrounded by wind turbines and there is a concept called environmental justice which says that it's unreasonable to dump things on to a small community because they can't defend themselves right and I've been bringing this up again and again that it is unreasonable for Kahuku to have more windmills when they really don't on them and the turbines that are there now are 428 feet tall the ones that are proposed that are going to be next to the high school and on the other side of town instead of 428 feet they're going to be 568 feet tall the tallest building in this town is 428 feet if you put one of these things up against diamond head it'd be just about as tall as diamond head they're gargantuan and they're going to some of the houses may have shadow flicker which means that if you've ever seen a fan behind a light it flickers but the wind company said that's okay it's only going to be a couple few minutes a day on certain days which goes back to your point about your quality of life and did they sign up for that and how do they benefit how do the people of Kahuku benefit exactly so the wind developer has said that they will give ten thousand dollars per year her turbine now originally they were proposing 14 turbines with the potential to expand beyond that now they're down to eight turbines and so instead of a hundred forty thousand which was originally conceived now they're offering eighty thousand to the community because if they reduce the number of turbines but they're going to make the same amount of electricity and the same amount of profit and they're going to make more but they're just giving less to the community so these are the things that I just think are terribly unfair when I bring it up to folks I mentioned that the greatest wind resource on this island is right offshore diamond head that's where the most wind is the most consistent winds are just offshore diamond head and I say why don't we put a wind turbines off a diamond head who can't do that people laugh if they involuntarily laugh I say that's my point yeah so why did why did the Kahuku people have to have them when they're not willing to have them in Kahala so that's part of the equation but they're just not generating electricity and at great expense the Kauai Loa wind turbines are 23 cents per megawatt hour per megawatt to build it yeah no to that's what they're selling is it per kilowatt hour per kilowatt hour yeah that's like it's that's 23 cents yeah that's that's outrageous you know we're not and that was sold back when they said but it's guaranteed you can go to market guarantee oil is gonna be $200 a barrel and this is gonna save us money someday it's not saving us money now it's not going to save us money near future so our electricity rates go up we're in danger species the visual blight the noise and everything I think a lot of the funding models for these wind turbines are based on federal tax subsidies or tax breaks right they can't afford to build them without the massive tax so we're paying taxes on the federal side that are subsidizing the construction of these things and they're still charging 20 something cents a kilowatt hour I think when we had net metering the electric company would pay 19 cents a kilowatt hour to a residence that was giving them power back when they would pay them this this all bothers me a lot because you know if we're curtailing power and Hawaiian Electric's paying somebody to curtail power but they're getting the money from me to pay somebody not to produce power it's free free energy right it's wind it's free and it's renewable this this math isn't working out for me and I'm not a rocket scientist but basic math doesn't as a fact far out you know to your point about the height of these turbines and the size of my son and I used to do a lot of fishing off of Kaneo a and the windward side we can see those turbines the ones that were in cuckoo we can see them from over 20 miles out at sea because the buoys out on that side you buoy and LL they're they're they're out there because the waters you know not as deep as off wine I side and so we'd have to go pretty far out to go to the fishing grounds and we could easily see the turbines from that far out and I think there's talk about putting turbines in the ocean like you saw Kaneo point in that area and there can they're going to be probably no farther than 12 miles out because that's the international limit outer limit there's a three mile limit there's a 12 mile limit and then there's a 200 mile EEZ but at 12 miles you're still going to see the turbines and the water is so deep out there you know at that distance out it's probably over two miles deep maybe three miles deep because only a mile offshore of wine I is a mild deep water the shore drops off really fast out there so how are you going to land cables I mean on the Great North Sea where they got a lot of wind turbines it ain't a mile deep water it's it's relatively shallow and they can anchor those those units to build them like an oil rig yeah they just anchor right to the bottom right what are they going to do with these things at 12 miles out where it's three miles deep or two and a half miles deep the ones they're proposing are I think as close as seven miles seven or eight miles to and a point which as you said are going to be highly visible they're going to be 700 feet tall or possibly tall which is almost twice as big as any building we have at home and they'll be right in and yeah they'll be right in the the migratory path between Oahu and Kauai they'll be visible many where they can see that area and they also want to put posts so this there's kind of point but also off of Barbara's point they want to off the south shore anybody sitting in Waikiki watching the sunset will have a great view of the turbines when they're watching the sunset so I don't know how that's going to go down for maybe in Holland but not in Waikiki so these are a problem the the cables and the chains that are going to be required will be massive there'd be a massive network of cables and chains and it's not going to be good for whales the migratory whales that frequent those waters are going to be good for the Navy who has to operate in these waters so a lot of problems with it a technical issues I I know our community is 100% against putting those things off shore I'm glad you're in the legislature so that when these things come up there's at least one voice that's looked beyond the first order of good feelings and great intentions you know but you know it may not be the right place for turbines turbines may work in other places where there's less environmental take and side effects you know they say every every magic has its price and I think the price of turbines in Hawaii is too high well I know I went to Texas about two years ago and they produced 20% of their electricity from wind turbines in Texas and they average between two and eight cents a kilowatt hour right and they can make a profit at four cents a kilowatt hour off of wind turbine that's a far cry from what you just talked about in the 20 cents a kilowatt hour to put them up and run them so the Palihua project up above Maka Kilo I think they're talking about something like 10 cents so it's there is bending the curve there on the cost but once again now that people in non-acouli got to deal with looking at those turbines and inefficiencies it okay well believe it or not we blasted through 30 minutes already and I want to thank you for the advocacy you you put forward in the legislature and I know your constituents will keep voting for you as long as you keep doing what you're doing because it's tough to be a small community and not have your voice heard so thanks for doing what you do thank you Stan thanks for having me on the show today it's been fun anytime and so until next week see you next week on Stan and Your Man Aloha