 Welcome to Stan Energy Man on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm host Stan Osserman and our show today will be called What Hawaii's Grid Will Look Like in 2046. So for all of you that don't don't do the math, that's the year after we're supposed to be 100% fossil-free on the grid. And before we get into the rest here I'd like to actually go back to last week and thank everybody that participated in the Verge conference at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, the state energy office, and all the sponsors that put on that great event. It was the first time we had a hydrogen panel, and the hydrogen panel, the members on there, Abaskadarzi, Steve Samanski from Potan on site, and our own director of transportation for Fujikami were on there with myself and a moderator, and it went really well. I only expected a handful of people in the room and we actually packed the room. So it was a great event and the first time that hydrogen got on the agenda. So thanks to all who participated, especially the folks that came to the hydrogen breakout. So we're going to take a trip into the future. That's right. We're going to do time travel here on Think Tech, Kauai, and we're going to see how our Oahu landscape is going to be paved over with PV. Will you really not be able to throw a dead cat within the city limits without hitting a wind turbine? Will you take a cyber attack? Well, take a cyber attack for us to pick up the pace on creating a survivable grid design. Will we still be breathing poison from internal combustion engines, or will we charge our mini Cooper Teslas at work tax-free, no less, as part of our employee compensation package? My guests and I will answer all of these questions and possibly even a few more because I've finally broken the code on how to see the future. So let me explain. The world can be divided up into three basic types of thinkers. You have your left brainers, then you have your right brainers, and finally you have your confused and conflicted brainers. And those are the ones who try and coordinate everything and different approaches and get some logic to all of it once and they just get all messed up. The left brainers are linear thinkers. They tend to be great organizers, planners, and able to sort complex ideas and solve difficult problems. The typical left brainers are your scientists and your engineers and your efficiency experts. Your typical right brainers are more abstract thinkers. They're the creative types, the artists, the inventors, the ones who don't feel constrained by static rules or boundaries. As for the conflicted brainers, they're the fastest-growing group in the western hemisphere and western society in general. And by the way, they're characterized by a strong desire to follow the rules and logic, but can also quickly point out why the rules do not apply to them personally. And so in that way, it makes them absolutely no sense to anyone. They're just totally confused. And this group includes inexpensive lawyers, most politicians, as well as modern news media executives and personalities. And all this discussion about lefties and righties leads us to why I have discovered how we can see into the future. I have eliminated all aspects of conflicted brain thinkers and brought together just the pure lefty and pure righty to solve the complex tasks of painting the logical picture for the future. I, your humble host, represent the righties. I'm fully accredited by BFA in design from the University of Hawaii and a master of arts in international relations from the University of Oklahoma. And I'm so far right, I'm not even allowed to play on team sports. I don't do taxes by myself. And the third most used app on my phone is a calculator. My special guest today, balancing my obvious shortcomings, is Mr. Ryan Wubbins, who's a linear academic. Credentials are, they're just legend. We don't even need to talk about him. He's also so far left that governments don't let him drive in the UK or any other country that drives on the opposite side of the road is the US. And he's so logical, he can short circuit my attention span in nanoseconds. He does trig and calculus in his head for fun. And together, we're going to unfold the untold secrets of Hawaii's fossil free future. Mr. Wubbins, thanks for joining us again here on Think Tech. And good to have you on board, helping make good on my threat to bring the regular people into track with the 21st century here. Welcome aboard. Thanks, Dan. So what do you think it's going to look like in 2046 when Hawaii is totally fossil free? We meet the 100% renewable goal in 2045. It's not going to look like today. That I think is the easy answer. I think you could even pull that off of your side of the table. But it's definitely going to change. To give an idea of how much it's going to change. We also want to make sure we're kind of talking about how. Complex the grid is today. So changing something in such a dramatic manner is is not just a bunch of plugging in more solar wherever we can throw up a couple more wind turbines. It's it's just so much greater than that. The grid today is probably one of the most technologically advanced machines in the last century that we have and that's even counting the iPhone if we want to put that in the in the picture, which is I think 10 years old right now. That's right. So we're talking 2045. We're talking. We're talking like iPhone 24 is when we're gonna, if you want to do the iPhone, probably can cook on your iPhone. I think that's what it'll do. It'll tie your shoes if you set it down on your foot at that time. So the grid today is extremely complex. It's a market that has to happen instantaneously. It's a market so different from anything else where you might make something set it on a shelf and wait for somebody to buy it. If you want to consume power immediately, you flip on your light switch, you're actually receiving and purchasing something that was produced instantaneously. It comes to you the moment that you turn on that light switch. Nothing like no other market operates like that right now, which is incredibly just complex in its own nature where we're we're sending and receiving power. So we're really complex today. So when we talk 2045, we're talking in order of magnitude of complexity, but we do have technologies that are going to help us get there. What is it going to look like to go completely renewable at 2046? You're going to be taking energy from anywhere that you can get it. If you can put solar on your rooftop, you're going you're going to put it there. If you can convince the local neighborhoods that wind is going to be a good application in a certain place, you want to start taking capturing and using that energy. I don't know the stat on how far you can throw cats to find out if you're always going to hit solar when it comes to wind turbine, but we could look into we could look into that stat another time. People are sensitive about dead cats and whites. And we need to take that into account. Okay, so that first time maybe we we could probably pencil in some some fear. Yeah, just get an idea what I'll work on that with my calculator. Okay. So we're going to use as much as produce as much energy as we can because we're trying to replace the current non renewable assets that that we use to produce energy. It's not just wind and solar. There's just not enough space to to produce that power. You're going to on a lot. I mean, we can't even park in most places, because it's just way too constrained. And it's going to continue in that path. We're not going to add land to the island. We probably will be adding power requirements. So yeah, yeah, power requirements will will generally go up, even though our constraints will will stay the same as far as the land. Load consumption over time becomes more efficient. At the same time, our HVACs get get more efficient. We just get better at using our power. But at the same time, we increase our demand in what we want to use, like the iPhone. You know, how many years ago, we didn't have cell phones that were charging. That's a small load, but vehicles are one way that that may add to our overall load. As far as producing power, renewable power and what that's going to look like, it's a lot of solar and a lot of wind, but we won't get there with just that. So it's going to be increasing the technologies that we do use today with with biomass and geothermal really capturing as much as we can from those and then seeking other places where energy is produced and maybe not used to its fullest yet. Today, it might not sound like it's an economically sound decision. But to get to that to get to that 100% line, it may be considered at that point. So maybe there's some use of older technologies that we've ruled out that actually we need to get back in and start reengineering because they weren't financially then something like using ocean thermal to refocus our efforts and bring that back into engineering that to be economically viable. So it is a complex picture of a lot of different resources. It's not the let's just put down a bunch of solar. We have a lot of shortcomings on what what solar is capable and what it's not. Let's let's talk a little bit about what physical changes would probably happen in the grid. Are we looking at more dispatchable power islanding rather than one big massive grid or are we looking at HECO probably trying to simplify their their problem set or their complexity by by taking communities and islanding in them them to make them easier to control with all this intermittent renewable? Is that do you think that's what it's going to look like? Or are we still going to have just one big massive connected grid that HECO is going to have to try and balance with all this really fluctuating power? That's a good question. It's more likely going to be distributed. Mostly based on the idea that it's not easy to drop down one large centralized power plant that is just the mega renewable plant. If you considered nuclear, then we can change our decision or our talk on what's going to be there. So considering the large scale technologies today that would take to get to 2045, we're not going to just drop down a huge geothermal plant on Big Island that we don't even have the capabilities today to send it over to Oahu for consumption. So you're going to be distributed because you're going to want to take you want to take advantage of the space that you have. HECO would likely be be helping communities be their own island or microgrid or community solar is something they're actively working on right now. Absolutely. And the communities will help basically build that that infrastructure and with the technological advantages with HECO they can help manage and support that project. You'll see that happen on in a lot of different places with that. Again, we'll go back to the complexity where we are today. You can't just pop up all this generation around because we're not, we're not built for that today on the grid. It's built for a little bit more centralized power that goes out and down. Now it's going to be a little bit of power everywhere. And if something fails on one side, you are going to actually move power. Maybe it's the direction it's going today. Maybe it's the opposite direction it's going today. It'll be distributed and the calculations that we have to do to make that happen, we can do it. What do you think are going to be the implications of, you talked about the complexities of moving instantly like what they call it just in time supply of electricity. That's going to depend more on sophisticated switchgear breakers and maybe even transformers and inverters and things. And those are probably going to be driven with computers and such. Does that make us more vulnerable in a lot of ways? Or is that just one of the things we have to build into the equation? The safety and cyber protection aspects of a grid have to have to account for more complex switching equipment and things like that. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a bit of a double edged sword. We gain a lot of capabilities and with those capabilities we're able to be smarter and more efficient with the power used and where and how we're distributing the power. When we add those capabilities, that cyber attacks just waiting there to go in there and change those capabilities. Not for better but for worse. I just read an article before getting here about guys going in having a white hat attack on wind farms that were built years ago. They just go in plug in a little computer for 40 bucks and go in and start doing an attack on that system alone. And that's that's a system that we consider not dumb but less capable. It's it's more of an isolated system. We're talking about adding a large magnitude of control and oversight over the grid. So it will absolutely be there as a cyber threat. So we have to be smart on the technologies we use and put in. But then we also have to be smart about how we use them. So some of the other advantages of we talk about islanding and distributed generation and things are you don't have a line loss when you're pushing power just from one station all the way out into your network, you know, in one direction. How about spending reserves in communities? Would they be more predictable? And therefore, maybe you could instead of spending a lot, you only spend big reserves in high industrial areas and residential areas, you could spend a lot less because there aren't the big fluctuations. Or when you have that much renewables that you're just gonna have to spend a lot or have some other store and things like that. Sure, spinning reserves is needed for a couple reasons. And can we reduce the spinning reserves? I think is one part of your question. And then where would those be is is another part. spinning reserves, we do like for a couple reasons. One we're ready to to pick up when solar drops off. Now spinning reserves I should clarify is not does not mean fossil fuel. It could be five wheels. It could mean five wheels. It could be it could be renewable. It could be a bio diesel. It could be basically are the the biomass burning. Right now it produces a steam and that's a rotating machine. So we consider that a spinning asset. The nice thing about spinning assets, they're very good at frequency control. So they're gonna control the sine waves right at where we need them to be. It also is going to give us a amount of short circuit that can shell out a lot of current if we need to clear for a fault. Those technologies might change as we go to 2045 on how we're detecting and clearing faults. But spinning assets will still be a vital part of the overall grid power quality. Okay, when you island a community and a community wants to say, hey, I'm, I'm producing my own power. I mean, you're helping me set it up and and you're helping me distribute it between players. But if there is an outage, whether let's call it weather related maybe or a car crash takes out a powerful that community may be in a position where they want to say we are generating our own power. Can we use it? And so now we add in that islanding capability. At that point, they may need maybe not necessarily a spinning reserve. It'd be it'd be helpful in many cases, but they need something to help them with their power quality and really their power coordination. Okay, a spinning reserve might be the answer for that. energy storage can can support that. We're gonna, we're gonna take a quick break here. Because I think my hand's gonna explode. And we'll be back in 60 seconds with Ryan and maybe we'll talk batteries and stuff. I'm Richard Concepcion, the host of Hispanic Hawaii. You can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational, and also we tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think tech Hawaii Aloha. Hey, welcome back to my lunch hour stand energy man here with Ryan women's from burdensome McDonald, a big engineering company that does big things with electricity, which is why he's here to explain all that stuff because I don't get it. Anyway, we were talking about what the future is going to look like in 2046. After we're we're all renewables here on Oahu and throughout the state. And we we kind of were touching on spinning reserves and some of the some of the things that he go has to deal with to make sure they're always covering with good clean power. And we started to get into what spinning reserves a discussion of batteries and energy storage. So what does the battery look like in 2046? Are we really going to make the kind of technological leaps we need to have cool safe battery storage at that time and what will it look like? Sure. A battery today. When we say battery, we always are constantly thinking like that lithium ion battery that's on on your battery or maybe the battery that's sitting in your car. The chemical process there gives us a very quick electrical power that we can consume. There's other types of batteries and other ways we can talk about let's focus just on that lithium ion type of battery right now. In 2045, we will end up using using some of these batteries as an energy storage. There's there's a lot of technical positives for using these batteries. I do want to say they're not necessarily needed. But there is a there is a political push to add energy storage onto our grids for energy security that that can be a great need. And we can start to justify some of our energy storage for that. So what does that look like in 2045? I think it is a basically more of a high tech version of what we're doing right now. It's a little bit safer from a fire protection standpoint and maybe a little bit more capable on the output and the amount of storage we can put within a square footage. We start to distribute these assets around the grid to support a little bit more of the islanding activities. Well, let's let's say if we we need a some fixed number of storage and we'll just call it 100%. What percentage do you envision as mechanical like flywheels and things and what percentage battery and maybe what percentage other gas storage compressed gas hydrogen, whatever, and then maybe some biodiesel or whatever some other mechanical. What what does that storage pie look like in terms of percents? Do you think I know I'm kind of asking you to really lean forward that left brain ears and stretch out there but that one's a big one. I mean, is there like a sweet spot for batteries in that in that mix that you see where they're gonna have to be at least this much and maybe the rest of it can just be spread out. It's absolutely going to be diversified that I consider now that the battery market you're not going to see 100% battery storage where if we're talking energy storage we might as well just say battery. It's not going to be a one for one it's going to be a diversification of the asset. It's the same diversification of generation asset that we have today where we we might be operating on coal we might be operating on wind we might be supporting with solar that diversification is important for the power quality and really the overall sustainability of the grid a certain weather attack here may affect the wind turbines but not affect the solar might affect one power plant but not the other. So the same question gets applied to storage I can tell you it's not 100% battery it becomes that diversification and really economics will start to divide that portfolio but you will see that all the way across from your traditional say traditional because it won't be traditional in 2045 but you will have your your battery storage then you're going to have to start with fuel storage as well if it's if it's a different type of maybe it's a synthetic gas that that we're able to produce renewable wise maybe it's a type of hydrogen product maybe it's actually in the form of ammonia and maybe that ammonia isn't even maybe it's built here on the island but maybe it's it's brought in from from other places but that energy storage will be diversified across different different types of products. You mentioned ammonia now we can start talking about maybe even into our new agriculture system which we're we haven't really talked much about energy and agriculture but if we're going to have biofuels and we're going to do maybe even more steam reforming from hydrogen from methane sort of natural methane's like out of out of digesters and things like that we're not just going to grow crops for fuel we may grow some for fuel but we're going to have a lot of byproducts from crops that could be used as fuel generation what are some of the options of as we start producing our own nitrogen you know as we refine and and make some of these making ammonia for making our own fertilizers and things like that I mean I know you're an electrical engineer not a chemical engineer but you know you're smarter than me so I mean there's kind of like a symbiotic relationship between as we start to morph the grid there are other sectors of our of our economy and and our business and our environment that start to overlap like just a simple one is that we're electrolyzing water into hydrogen we've got pure oxygen medical grade oxygen that we can we can provide to them to the hospitals and welders and things like that so are there similar things that you see when you start talking chemical storage of energy that you can see kind of filtering out into agriculture or other industrial processes yeah and it's it's hard to really right now kind of get an idea of where those might flow out but what you what we do know is that as we approach 2045 2046 by such a large shift in how we operate the grid and what energy we're using the markets around will start to change because of we're going for an overall more efficient use of energy as a whole if we're able to produce more ammonia on island let's say it there will be a market that will start to develop for use for that maybe it's even an exporting which would be a good thing for the on as well to help selling resources instead of buying it at all long time. Oxygen is a is another example that we start to produce a high level of oxygen if we're electrolyzing hydrogen that at such large scales you you allow yourself into a market that is not here today or industries you open yourself to new industries. Absolutely I think we also start to rethink just any place we have energy right now if you go to a water treatment plant you may start to think okay this is how we're handling the sludge today but can we reprocess that and actually recapture as a renewable energy and use that as well we break it down further and really apply any technology we have at any research any piece of energy will be consumed and basically purchase installed. In the end it gets us a lot more efficient which is what we're looking to do to support that 2045. Well the average consumer have to become a little bit more we'd say in Hawaii Akamai are smart on on energy things in their house in other words like right now all we think about is turn on switch the powers on turn on the stove the stove's on I mean what are you kicks on by itself we don't have to really think about it HECO takes care of everything else is are we going to still be able to do that or do you see people kind of having a more independent like being able to go as a single family house off the grid and understand how their systems work at least at a basic level or do you see HECO still maintaining that role as kind of the major designer and builder of all things electric. I think HECO will definitely be there that's where the real capability and knowledge is going to be at basically at any given time they're going to be that great support system even if you do start to become a little more individualized even if we become smarter on our own systems but 2045 being iPhone 24 I'm sure I don't even know how to operate iPhone 9 so the younger generations the younger generations they're going to grow up around this they're going to have a different mindset as far as energy consumption than we do today and I don't know what that's going to be. I think it'll be their culture it'll be natural for them to think when they're using any energy and where that's coming from. Kauai I think just wrapped up a one year experiment if they were to charge 25% less in the midday so that they can help recapture some of that solar production. See what drives people to change when they consume load and there was very little change now two maybe slight reasons for that one we it's hard for you and I on our day to day basis to just move our loads. I think some of your maybe of a dishwasher maybe of a dryer just your lights and your AC can really shift when in the day you're doing those things but the technology may start to change to where it will time up to be a little bit more of a point of use. Maybe your house is smart enough to to sequence all that stuff. Yeah, you are at this time and turn on your dryer automatically at this time and wash your dishes. Yeah and they'll they'll be programming whatever their phone or their glasses who knows what it is at that time to to operate all of that because they're they're gonna have the mindset of I need to start using now that's when my my best time for energy use is. Hopefully that's the case but hard to tell which way but I do know there'll be a cultural mindset for the younger generations on just energy usage. Okay, well we haven't even touched on transportation. I hope we get there because that's gonna have a big impact on our grid or our electrical requirements as I see it. I mean, I'm thinking even if we can find a cleaner fossil fuel or something some fuel replacement, we're still going to be converting a lot of vehicles here in Hawaii into electric vehicles. And that's going to have a big impact overall on our electrical system. So believe it or not, that that's about it for us today, Ryan. And that brings us to the end of our show on a Hawaii's grid in 2046. And we have enjoyed bringing it to you. I'm your host Dan Osserman and our guest has been Mr. Ryan Womans and we've been talking about Hawaii's clean energy future. I'd like to give our thanks to our production engineer Robert McLean, our form manager Cindy Manu Fekai. That's the first time I've tried pronouncing it so forgive me. And all those have contributed to our think tech productions. If you want to see the show again, go to thinktechhawaii.com or to youtube.com slash thinktechhawaii where there will be a link to more shows just like this one. Thanks for watching and we'll see you all next week.