 Welcome to Stand Energy Man here on Think Tech, Hawaii. I went to you live and direct from Pioneer Plaza here in beautiful downtown Honolulu. And you know, with all the energy stuff going on on the East Coast, and I call that hurricane energy, I almost did today's show on just natural energy. A couple years ago, I did a show with the godfather of ocean thermal energy, and it just so happened we were having thunderstorms that day, and I pointed out that when you have a thunderstorm, it releases so much energy in the form of thunder, lightning, and rain. How does all that millions of gallons of water get up into the sky without an incredible amount of energy to move it? I think one of these days, we're going to do a show on weather and talk about the energy in weather, because when you really get down to the nuts and bolts, the amount of energy in weather systems is incredibly powerful, incredibly huge. So our hearts are out to the folks impacted, especially in the Bahamas, and the folks on the East Coast that are still feeling the effects of Hurricane Dorian, and I hope you can recover quick and get back to normal. Today's show, we're going to talk a little bit on the more practical side about solar energy. We kind of got led up to that by a couple of discussions we've had recently. Starting with Ryan Wubbins, and we started talking about, you know, how practical is it for the individual to just start doing stuff to become a little bit more carbon neutral. Our guest today is Bill Brooks from the Big Island. He's a friend of mine that's lived on the Big Island quite a while, and done a whole lot of solar panel work and solar energy work. And we're going to talk to him a little bit about some of the things that you want to think about as you consider putting solar on your facility, whether it's a commercial facility or personal residence, private residence, you know, what's the practical sides of it, you know, how many panels do you think you might need, what are the weather and climate conditions and locations that affect how much electricity you're going to get out of your solar panels and things like that. So Bill, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining me. I appreciate having you on. And if you could start off, could you give the audience a little bit of an idea of your credentials yourself, you know, what got you into doing solar work and give us a give us a little bit of a picture of your background. When I moved to the islands 47 years ago, one of the first things that I noticed was the state back at the state was 98% at that point depended upon imported fossil fuel from countries that didn't like us to create our electrical energy. It didn't take much for me to realize that there had to be better alternatives. And so I started it, got into the solar business, became one of the first solar contractors in Hawaii way back and have been tied into the industry ever since in one capacity or another. Currently, I'm an independent consultant to represent a number of different entities, contractual entities and specialized, obviously, in solar and storage mediums, as well as conservation measures. So at an extensive background in every facet of the business from the conservation side of it, as well as alternative. OK, so are you up to speed on some of the newer solar technologies? Like what kind of efficiencies are we getting out of the current solar panels? And is there a quality difference between solar panels like maybe made in China versus made in the USA? Is that an issue? Well, I mean, only from the standpoint of you always, no matter where the company is from this manufacturing, the main thing you want to look at is the financial stability of the entity that's the manufacturer, because you're dealing with the technology that has a life span here. So you want to make sure that the company that's manufacturing the panels that you're buying is going to be around 25 years from now or 15, 20, if you have a warranty issue. So that's the biggest consideration, I would say. As far as the efficiency increased dramatically over the last 20 years. And now we're seeing just recently, you know, panels that are coming out the same size panels that we were dealing with before. There were, you know, even less than 200 watts per panel. Now you can buy panels that are as much as 380 watts per panel. They don't take up anything significant more in the way of space. So that 300 to 380 watt panel is what size? Is that like two feet by three feet or two feet by four feet? What's the typical size for a 300 to 380 watt panel? There's going to be a little over five feet and a little more. OK, so so we're having a little video issue with with Bill. We're going to try and connect him back up. But the reason I'm asking him these questions is because when you start to do math to figure out how much solar you're going to put on your roof and if you have enough room on your roof in the right direction to start lining up your solar, you know, you first have to decide how many watts of solar you need and storage and things like that and whether it's going to fit on your roof. We're trying to establish here the amount of solar you can connect to your roof. So if you know how many watts a panel is and if the panel is like three feet by five feet figure out how many how many square feet you got for roof space, does it face the south or pretty predominantly the south? And if so, how do we how do we work on calculating whether or not you can hook up that much power and make it fit on your roof? So, Bill, you know, we're talking about the efficiency of the new solar panels. And with 380 watts of power between 300 and 380 watts of power on the typical panel, how big is that panel? And that kind of gives us a starting point about at least how many panels will fit on the south side of someone's house. So what's the typical size for a 300 to a 380 watt panel? Yeah, it's going to be a little over five feet by a little over three feet. But keep in mind that the wattage of the individual panel if the 380 is definitely not average, that's like the higher efficiency panels. One of the things you want to keep in mind is one that you're not restricted to your south facing roof with social voltage, where solar thermal is the importance of direct solar gain is much more significant. Whereas with TV or photovoltaics, the efficiency isn't as directly impacted by going to like a southwest or southeast or even east-west orientations can work. And whether or not you want to go with the most efficient panel would depend entirely upon the availability of roof area. In other words, if your demand is such to where you've got plenty of roof space or the panel area needed, then you can go with the panel that has with the reputable manufacturer and a less efficient panel and accomplish the same thing at a lower cost. You're going to pay premium obviously for the most efficient panel and the place where that comes into play and is the most valuable is where you're really tight with roof space availability and where that is a critical factor. Okay, so what are some of the main considerations for deciding whether it's right for, especially as a residential customer, to if they wanted to completely go off the grid because I know you do energy storage too and that's kind of important. If you were going to decide to take your house completely off the grid, I tell people that the first thing they need to know is from their electric bill what their average daily use and kilowatt hours is. And then we can kind of get a rough idea of how many panels you need, but then you also have to take into account what are your surge or your peak loads that you might have on your system. It's not just the average amount of energy you need across the day. But when you really stress your system, what are some of the shock loads or the peak loads that you're going to have? And that's probably where your battery storage or your storage system and your inverters come in to be sized right. Could you give us an idea of that relationship between overall, how many panels do you need, size of inverter and number of batteries and stuff, how those kind of all play together when you're figuring out your residential solar system. Yes, you hit the nail on the head. In other words, it's not just about coming up with how much power you need to produce every day. But it also determines here, like you're saying, the load factor of the home. In other words, if you've got large electric ranges, et cetera, you need to look at, okay, what's a peak load going to be on that system at any particular time? And then you have to size in burgers and storage capacity to be able to deal with that. One of the factors that most people overlook is conservation. When you're sizing a system for your home, when I'm doing that, I look at, okay, what's your daily, average daily consumption? That's the first place to start, correct. But then you want to look. When I look and I'm doing a site evaluation, I see they have a nice school. First thing I do is I go into that pump room and I look. If they've got a conventional two horsepower pump in there, then the first thing I do is say, okay, before we do anything else, you need to replace this pump with a state-of-the-art pump with a terrible frequency drive and microprocessor. And if they want to create about that, it's going to cost a little less than $2,000 or whatever. And I point out to them, yes, but it'll pay for itself much, much faster than anything else you can do. And a system like, for example, that usually pays for itself in less than two years, between a year and two years. And whereas once you start looking at ways to conserve that are more economically viable than the alternative energy, then that's one factor. The other thing that comes into play with anybody who's going to do solar, and especially where they're looking at offsetting their entire load and wanting to be independent, is you need to say, okay, what's happening in the future? Do you see an electric vehicle in your, if now if you're going to invest in solar, do you want to invest in enough to where you can have, stop paying for fossil fuel as well? Or a lot of people will start thinking, well, you know, if I don't have to pay health code, 38 cents a kilowatt or 40 cents a kilowatt or whatever it is, or then, you know, I'd really love to do a jacuzzi or throw in a jacuzzi or a sauna or whatever. So we show their amenities that they were not doing when they were so concerned about their electric vehicle. So all of those factors kind of come into the picture and that's sort of counseling and what you have to do where you get to a calculation of what the projected energy consumption on a daily basis will be. And then from there, that's when you start doing the engineering to design and figure out exactly how much you need in the way of panel production capacity and energy storage capacity, as well as charge controllers and inverters, etc. Do you have kind of a rough rule of thumb that you use? So that, you know, like when you're talking to a residential customer and let's say, for example, his average use per day is 30 kilowatt hours per day. And can you give us a rough idea of how much a system like that would cost if you wanted battery storage and like off the grid capability, what would like a 30 kilowatt hour day house run? And of course, we're not going to hold this to a bid, but just some... No, no, no. And not only that, but it's really kind of hard to think that it can vary significantly. In other words, I try never, when people ask me bad question as a general rule, I don't want cheap numbers in my mind or that kind of stuff. That's why I do the engineering. But the other factor that comes into play, it could vary from say, you know, 40 something thousand to 70 something thousand, all depending on the, you know, the quality of the panel that you're going to use as far as efficiency goes, which battery storage systems you're going to use. In other words, do you want to go with a more lower end battery system that's not going to last you as long? Or do you want the best? And there is a significant difference between the two. The best, as a general rule, actually pays, of course, has a better price per kilowatt hour of storage capacity than the cheaper ones, but you've got to pay for up front for it. So these are all things that come into play when you start actually coming up with a total number of what an installation has come to cost. Okay. And that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. I tell you what, we're going to take a quick break here so that we can talk about some of the other shows on Think Tech. We'll be back with Bill in about 60 seconds. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at 1 o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently, I interviewed Alex Gempel, who I have known for over 30 years, about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about, human stories about law and life. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Wendy Lowe and I want you to join me as we take our health back. On my show, all we do is talk about things in everyday life, in Hawaii or abroad. I have guests on board that would just talk about different aspects of health in every way, whether it's medical health, nutritional health, diabetic health, you name it, we'll talk about it, even financial health. We'll even have some of the Miss Hawaii's on board and all the different topics that I feel will make your health and your lifestyle a lot better. So come join me. I welcome you to take your health back. Mahalo. This is Stan Ennergy Man with Bill Brooks and also a reminder for those of you that are faithfully watching Stan Ennergy Man every week and you set your clock so that you can pick me up. We're going to do moving time slots on the 17th of September and Stan Ennergy Man will start broadcasting live at 3pm on Tuesday starting September 17th. So that show on September 17th will also be brought in live from the Big Island. I'll be on the Big Island and I'm planning to talk to the folks at Blue Planet Research. And Bill hangs out at Blue Planet Research so maybe we'll even have him on again on the 17th and talk a little bit more with Paul. Anyway, thanks for joining us and we've got Bill Brooks, an energy specialist in the island for almost a half a century. And we're talking about solar panels for your house. And he's been around the block once or twice so he pretty much knows this stuff inside and out. So Bill, one of the things that we need to look at is like you said our future needs for our electric household and granted some things are getting more efficient like LED lights and things like that. But if you want to put a car you know electric car in your future and you wanted to charge it on your house there's different kind of chargers and I know that that makes a huge difference. So can you talk to us a little bit about what you would recommend to a customer if say they had a Nissan Leaf versus a Tesla and they wanted to put it in their house and charge it at night? Yeah the main thing that comes into play when you start choosing the EV that you want is looking at the driving patterns. In other words I have a client who's home, has a business at his home and he has a Leaf. Now he is an underwater photographer drives his longest trip as the general rule is to the airport to fly out to some place else to do photography there or Costco or something like that. So in a situation like that you know that type of vehicle works really well. I mean at this point in time in his business his home and his transportation basically all covered by the sun powered by the sun and at this point he's already covered his investment and he's doing it all for free. So it depends a lot on the distance that the person is going to be traveling and because the capacity of the vehicle very dramatically you know like a Model X who you know has 90 a little over 90 kilowatt hours of storage just within the vehicle so that's usually a feel of what it would take to charge the vehicle from zero to 100 percent. So versus a Leaf which is going to require much less and then also you need to look at okay how critical is it for me the time to the time that it takes and that's going to be the determining factor whether you want a high voltage and charging station at your home that will charge relatively rapidly versus something where you can just plug it in and program you know stay I guess set your plan your battery storage scenario to where you can come home at night and you've got enough storage to power your home and to charge your vehicle through the evening and take plenty of time to do it. So all of those factors come into play and these are things that the average individual has to look at in order to make intelligent decisions about what's going to serve them best but it's kind of just definitely one of those things where it's not one shoe fits all kind of thing it all depends on a lot of extenuating circumstances and there's going to be more and more there's already quite a few options out there in the way of the possibilities and associations to get involved with your own electric vehicle on the big island there's associations that are have been created and they definitely stay in touch with each other to surprise each other so state-of-the-art technologies and things of that nature and nutrient you know remote charging stations etc. Yeah so the the that was really a focus of having you on the show today is just to talk about some of these variables that people need to be aware of when they actually start working with a contractor to build their system to be aware of some of the things they need to keep in mind about designing their system and not just that the contractor kind of sell them what they want to sell them but sell them what they need which is you know if they do have a higher capacity vehicle in the future that's electric then when you when you said that was a model x is like 92 kilowatt hours of battery storage that's huge the big buses that we build for the air force only have 28 kilowatt hours of battery storage and that that's that's like three times with our bus runs with so that that's a heck a lot of batteries but anyway we digress what's one of the issues with the electric company now if you want to have solar on your roof especially this is how cool i know you deal with a lot with big island so that we'll deal with the hawaiian electric light company if you were a homeowner on the big island and you said hey i just want to be off the grid or i want to stay connected to the grid just in case i need you what are some of the factors in there when you're when you're deciding how to be configuring your house well there's there's something i'm glad you brought that up because there's they have for those people who have an existing system already under the old net energy matering system nem program say for up until just recently if you had that contract with the utility you could not alter your system at all without avoiding that agreement they come out with a nem plus agreement where you can actually expand your system add storage to your system and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of your system significantly that was not available so that for them the people who have a nymph system but those who do not have it didn't get in on the nymph program when it was available now they have a customer generation they have several different facets of that and it's basically such that for the average person if you're going to add solar you want to do storage because you do not want to pay 50 to 70 thousand dollars for a solar system and then turn around push your energy into the utility and have them sell it back to you and that's basically the way that the customer generation system works you can store your energy in the grid but when you pull it back you get a nominal you know 15 cents or so a kilowatt hour or the power that you're pushed in pull back out and you're paying for the difference and what the utility breaks that we have here on the big island obviously it does not make sense so anybody who's doing that as a general rule is going to go with storage even if they're going to stay grid tight and there can be some advantages of that where you don't have to worry about having a generation a generator and what have you that you would definitely want to have if you were going to be totally off grid you'd want a hybrid system to where you have your own generator and you can definitely do that we have systems where we can sit you up totally off grid where you have your own solar power system your own storage system and if anything happens and for instance your battery storage gets down too low it will automatically turn on a generator and keep that system charged up until the sun comes out again all those things are possible that way if you're going to stay grid connected then you're just simply using the grid the biggest advantage of being totally independent is that if there is a you know major earthquake or hurricane or what have you that impacts us to where the utility is down for a significant period of time that means that you need to be able to rely on your system totally itself and that's the advantage even with the grid type system of having the batteries then you're not dependent upon the grid and your system does not go down when the grid goes down so those are all factors that kind of come into play with making a decision about whether or not to stay grid tight or to go totally off grid some people who are already off grid and it's going to cost significant money to bring in utility to begin with then it makes a lot of sense just to do your own off grid system okay well we that's perfect and we have about two minutes left and the two things I want to hit on are number one if you're going to hire a contractor to do this how do you pick a good contractor and I'll let you answer that one first well in choosing a contractor again just think look at the same thing that you would look at from uh choosing a panel manufacturer there's no problem in going with Asia made panels there's some extremely well made panels and even you know like are you see out of the northern Europe and what have you they're manufacturing in Asia and what have you so you can have high quality panels from anywhere with contractors the main thing you want to look at is is this person going to be around you know 15 years from now when I have an issue and I need my system service because the bottom line is no contractor likes to go on a roof after another contractor because whoever is on that roof left is the one who is liable and so as the general rule that I would say is the biggest thing to look at look to make sure that this is someone that you feel confident is going to be around 15 20 years or more from now and there's a company that has that kind of stability and staying power and ideally that has other uh how can I say sources of revenue in other words an electrical contractor that's not strictly dependent upon the uh the you know in a grid type solar or whatever uh to make a decision in other words that means that if something happens to the economy there's likely going to survive the downturn etc that makes sense and it does make sense so my last question is actually a little bit more on the mechanical side um if you what what's the average voltage system that a residence would have I mean our car uses a 12 volt DC system but I know that uh when you're when you're building some of these systems you want to go with 24 or 48 volts what's kind of the typical residential voltage system you set up with your DC electric yeah with the current uh state of the art technologies now you want as a general rule 48 volt okay the minimum and you can go or even to higher voltage systems especially if you're going into commercial or larger scale scenarios there's you know you can go with much higher voltage systems but as a general rule the if you're doing a typical even typical residential I would recommend you know 48 volt system okay and at at the very least all right Bill the old days I mean the old days of 12 volt systems had uh hard for all intents and purposes gone okay well we could we could start getting into series and parallel connecting of 12 volt systems but that's going to have to be for another show because we went out of time already but uh Bill I want to thank you for joining an especially short notice like you did and helping us look at our individual you know thoughts on how we might convert our own homes to solar and things we have to think about so I appreciate your time today I look forward to seeing you next week when I'm on the big island there you go and thank you for what you guys are doing Stan with uh educating people and the more people learn about sustainability and how they can be part of the whole trend in that direction the better off we as a state are going to be and the planet is going to be so thank you so much for your efforts my pleasure and we'll see you next week and for the rest of you uh I'll see you next Friday on Stan Energy Man Law