 Yeah, welcome back to Think Tech. This is our four o'clock show. It's energy. Hawaii, the state of clean energy we call it. Been running this show for a long time. And today we have a special show. We're calling it the Hawaiian Electric Hour, even though it's a half hour. And Peter Rossek, the spokesman of Hawaiian Electric, is down here to tell us what's going on at Hawaiian Electric. And more than that, what's going on in electricity and energy in the state of Hawaii, because he knows. And we're going to get a good smattering of all the events that are in play right now. Hi, Peter. Thanks for coming down, Peter. Hey, it's a pleasure, Jay. It's nice to be here. Thank you. Well, we know that you're having these open house arrangements all over the state. And frankly, I think it's very important to engage and answer questions. And elbow to elbow with the people. I would say hand to hand, but we're not shaking anymore. We don't shake hands anymore. So it's just elbow to elbow. That's exactly right. How's it working? What are you going to do? It's great. You know, we actually have had one already as of the time of this taping, but there's still plenty of time for people to get involved. We had a very nice turnout in Kona last night. You know, sometimes these public meetings, these open houses are, you know, 25 people from the utility and five people from the community. And I think it was the other way around. We had a very nice showing there, but there's plenty of time for people to get involved. Tomorrow night, that would be Thursday, the 5th of March, if you catch this in time. Hero High School, 5 to 730. Then next week on the 10th of March, that's Tuesday, here on Oahu at the Hawaii Pacific University multi-purpose room down at Aloha Tower, their new campus. And then on Thursday, we'll get back on the neighbor islands, be over in Maui at the Kahului office that everybody knows of as Maui Electric Companies office, so on Kamehameha Avenue. So these are each from 5 to 730. The first hour or so is kind of an open house. We have a bunch of displays of boards that people can look at the various things that are going on right now. And that includes something near and dear to my heart, the electrification of transportation. It includes the community solar. It includes solar on the rooftop. And it includes renewable energy acquisition. It includes other an opportunity if you're interested to find out about having a job with Hawaiian Electric, which is a pretty damn good job, if I may say. And a couple of boards of panelists talking about this thing, this IGP. And if you can't make any of these, and I'll repeat the dates and so forth. But IGP, there's, it's also online. HawaiianElectric.com slash IGP. And IGP stands for Integrated Grid Planning. Integrated Grid Planning. What do I know? Because I've been around so long that I remember when we did Integrated Resource Planning. It's now called Integrated Grid Planning, and there's a reason for that. For 120 years from Thomas Alva Edison, basically the electric utility didn't change, grew, but it didn't really change. You had big central power plants. You sent the electricity out over the wires, over the transmission and the distribution wires, and it reached the customers. And until relatively recently, that was the way it was. But that's not the way it is any longer, as we all know. First of all, the utility is still important. It's still in the middle of all this. But we're not the only generator. We've got, you know, a number of renewable energy generators, wind farms, solar farms. We've got H-Power here on this island. We have Pune Geothermal Venture, which we hope to have back online by the end of this year. And these are all generators, plus 80,000 plus homes. All of them generating electricity from their roofs. So that's changed. And instead of power going one way from our little, our big power plants out to the people, to the customers, to the homes and businesses, customers themselves may be sending power back into the grid that goes to their neighbors and so forth. And finally, we're seeing storage. Storage that's attached to some of these renewable energy systems, like the wind farms and solar farms. And we're seeing storage in people's homes. So people can use electricity they generate in the middle of the day into the night. And they may not have to take any electricity from Hawaiian Electric at all. So that's a completely different kind of arrangement. So integrated grid planning tries to take all of this into account and tries to do generation planning, resource planning, needs planning, all kind of at the same time. So it's going to be an ongoing process. You know what I get out of that, Peter, though? Yeah, integrated resource planning was the old term for this kind of conversation, but I like integrated grid planning more. I'll tell you why, because it suggests to me that there's a lot of different elements in the grid. Some of them are utility elements, some of them are individual homeowner elements, some of them are storage and battery elements, some of them are contractor elements, you know, in what do you call it, contracts that last for a while to generate electricity for the grid. So it has the implication to me and you can comment, if you will, of one great big family. It's a family of business organizations, government organizations, utility organizations, all on the grid, all hanging there together, cooperating to, you know, level the playing field to provide the energy both ways, all directions. You know, a grid these days means all directions and to, you know, sort of equalize the system so that everybody is involved in sharing. It's a sharing word. That's why I like it. That's right. And like every other family, grid analogy, family, like every other family, we all agree completely on everything that has to, oh, no, wait, no, wait. We don't all agree. And that's why we need to get together and talk it over. We have different ideas about what's the best thing for my community, the best thing for your community, the best thing for the big island. So how do we, you know, like a family, we ought to, you know, hash it out, we ought to talk it over. And ideally, we'll talk it over sooner rather than later. You know, we've got how lately we had pushed back on the Kahuku wind farm and there's a pushback on a Maui solar farm and so forth. I'm not saying those wouldn't happen. I'm just saying it would have been much better if we had all talked it over before anything got in, you know, shovel went into the ground. We all understood where these ideas came from. And we all had a chance to say whether we like them or dislike them or whether we like them better than the alternative. And then whatever was chosen, you might not like, but you would have had the chance very early on to get involved. And this is the these IGP open houses are really the beginning of this opportunity. So if I go to one of these open houses, what's it like? Well, what kind of experience am I having? What's the agenda? That's great. What you're going to find is first of all, you're going to walk into the room and it will take your fingerprints. No, no, no. That's wrong. What you'll find, what you'll find just seriously, and I want to get too much trouble. My boss may actually watch this. What you'll find is a room full. It's a little like a science fair. There'll be a room full of poster boards and there'll be two or three people standing with each set of boards. And you can walk around and either go to one or two or all. I think there are eight or nine of them there. It's going to be one on integrated grid planning itself, one on grid modernization, grid scale renewables. Those are the big guys. Rooftop renewables, that's you know what that is. Community based renewables, so a community solar. One on resilience, which is going to be increasingly important. One on the electrification of transportation, which is very important. And one on careers, if you are interested. So you'll have about an hour and there are poo-poos. I will, as I've said before, the most important part of this invitation is poo-poos. There will be, you know, we're not going to feed you, you know, royally, but we're going to give you enough to sustain you through the evening. So you're going to be able to nosh on a few poo-poos. You're going to be able to talk to people who actually know what they're talking about. Not executives, but work-a-day, you know, people, the engineers and the people that are in these programs. And you're going to be able to look at the posters. And I'm sure there's some handouts and stuff like that. Yeah, I love when the Department goes down to these events, like you know, community events, and they send millions of people, their staff, people to participate and work with the kids and do community things. Well, I'll sneak it over time. No, I'm still kidding. But then in about, so that starts about five o'clock. And then about six or so, there's going to be a panel discussion. And each panel discussion is going to be a little interested. And let me just, it's a little different. Let me just tell you, for example, on Oahu on Tuesday, March 10th, we'll have a woman named Cynthia Rezents who's with the Nanakuli neighborhood board. She's the chair. She's been involved because Nanakuli is really in the front lines of a lot of the utility infrastructure. She's been involved in the back and forth with the utility for a long time. She knows our pluses and she knows one or two of our, you know, negatives. Well, upon initiative, sending Murray Clay, a very thoughtful person, they put a lot of their own effort and omidiars money into helping us get to renewable energy and to get to food and, you know, trying to, you know, make this place a little more protected from the waves and torments of the outside world. Pono Shim, who is president of the Oahu Economic Development Board. Josh Stenborough, who is the chief resilience officer and executive director, office of climate change, sustainability and resilience, which if you can say that without looking at his notes, I give him a lot of credit. He's a very articulate guy. He's a very articulate guy and he's a passionate guy, a little younger guy and he's really, I mean, he's worried about his own future and his family's future and he's worried about Oahu and what's going to happen on this island and of course other islands as well. But they are really, they have been the leaders in trying to get Bill 25 through the city council, which is trying to rework the zoning codes and rework the building codes so that we can begin to make some of the changes we need to make over the next 25 or 30 years to, you know, to shore up against the changes in the weather and in the climate and so forth. Brian Miyamoto is executive director of the Farm Bureau and this is important because we're going to see increasingly disputes about the use of land. People are already getting a little nervous. I think they'll drive through Mililani, Central Oahu and they see these big solar farms covering up acres and acres. And, you know, so if you're thinking about farming, you're probably thinking, what's going to happen? It is a conflict. No question about it between how we're going to use our land, between housing and food and energy and just simply open space. How are we going to resolve those? Nobody's got a, you know, clear franchise. So having the Farm Bureau there is very important. And from Hawaiian Electric, Colton Ching, who's the senior vice president for planning and technology, and here's a guy who really has his finger on the pulse of the company in terms of what we're trying to do and what we're trying to plan. So that's a good guy, smart as a whip. And so that's going to be the panel that's going to speak for about an hour and a half on Tuesday, I'm sorry, the 25th of March. You know, hearing about this, Tuesday, the 10th of March. I got to keep getting out of trouble. 10th of March, he's going to be on the panel there. It's going to be an excellent panel. Let me just quickly run through the panel on Maui coming up on 12th of March, Thursday to 12th. Riannan Chandler-Riau, the executive director of the YYOLA waterkeepers of the Hawaiian Islands. Colton will be there as well. Rebecca Dehuff Matsushima, who's the director of renewable acquisitions for Hawaiian Electric. This is part of Hawaiian Electric that goes out and gets people to bid to build renewable energy projects like wind farms and solar farms, that sort of thing and then decides which ones we're going to accept. Dick Mayer, who's the coordinator for the Alliance for Maui Community Associations. And Michelle McLean, who's the director of the Department of Planning for the County of Maui. So again, you've got a very prestigious, it's not a one-sided kind of panel. It's not all friends of the utility. It's not all people who think we got to do everything the way the utility thought they wanted to do it. This is a group of people who care about the place they live and they have a different point of view and they're going to talk it over and people are going to be able to ask questions. Now, you know, aside from the diversity of things, it does point something else out. And it's something maybe we didn't focus on 20 years ago. And that is that the utility is really, it touches everything, electrical generation, grid distribution, all that. It touches everything in the state. And to bring these people together and have them in the same room is really meaningful to me, because, you know, so you talk about climate change. You guys were not thinking all that much about climate change 20 years ago, but you are now an agriculture and industry and how the homeowner operates. And all these things are now, you know, in the, what do we call it, the community of ideas. And I admire what you've done because I think this is the modern way of looking at things. And ideas will come out. Here's a thought for you. Ideas will come out of this kind of discussion now and when you do it in the future that are extremely valuable. Government doesn't necessarily get these ideas, you know, but you as a business organization, you can bring them together and you can, you can then, you know, publish them essentially. So my question is, how are you going to publish them? How are you going to take all the ideas that surface in these, you know, these board meetings, these, what do you call it, open house meetings? How are you going to put them out to people who did not attend? Great question. And something very much on our mind, because we obviously know that if 100 people show up at one of these open houses, they're all going to be harder, you know, they're all going to be people who are there because they're interested, but there are a lot of other people out there who care, who need to be interested. So first of all, if you can't go or even if you can go to any of these sessions, you can go to hawainoelectric.com slash IGP, integrated grid planning, IGP, and you can have a virtual open house. It'll be up on this on the system until the 20th or so of March. So you can see these things in action and we are, we take video of the sessions themselves, we'll be posting those and we are going to be certainly anybody that came and signs up or that signs up online is going to have an opportunity to participate some more. There are actually five working groups under the integrated grid planning system and those are resilience, which is incredibly important, storms, and all kinds of bad stuff is coming our way, whether we do all the right things or not. Distribution planning, which is about whether we're going to have more wires or we can find alternatives to having so many more wires and substations and so forth. Forecast assumptions, that's the third one, because all of this depends on what people believe we're going to need and what people believe we're going to see developing. So that might be a bunch of houses in part of Maui or it might be a new hotel in Hilo, or it might be a new hotel in the Kona side, whatever, but we've got to start getting a handle on how we're forecasting what we need because that's going to drive everything else. There's going to be a working group on competitive procurement and what that means simply is, Hawaiian Electric is not going to build most of this stuff ourselves. We're going to continue to be kind of the den mother of this group and part of the group, but we've got to get other companies, we've got to get companies to invest in Hawaii. That can be very challenging at times as you know because people get nervous about making big investments in Hawaii and how long is it going to take me to get my permits and how do I get the community to accept me and so forth. So competitive procurement and making sure that everybody who wants to have a chance to get these contracts can get them. That's great. For generation or for storage or for what we call grid services where you aggregate a bunch of our home owners who have rooftop solar and then you make money by being the intermediary between them and the utility. So we only deal with you, you deal with your however many rooftop solar people and you provide what we need so that we can keep the grid stable. Everybody can play. Everybody and we're trying to make it as open as possible and we want this is why the competitive procurement working group exists so that everybody can see that the fix is not in. There is no you know there's no decisions that's been made before it's gone through this process and finally what's called a solution evaluation and optimization committee. I don't even want to go there but you know somebody has to at the end of the day decide okay here's how we're going to do it how do we make those decisions you know it's not something that's going to go before the legislature. It's not even something that PUC can handle. How do we as a community kind of decide well look you know there's this new housing development out on the west side and one way to do it would be to build a substation and put in some wires and so forth. Another way to do it might be to have some solar farm and a lot fewer wires and not you know let the let it be a kind of a self-contained situation attached to the grid. Which are we going to use and somebody's got to look at the price which is less expensive which has which is more reliable because no matter what kind of generation what kind of wires and so forth you want the lights to go on when you flip the switch you want the air conditioning to be available when you want it and you want the refrigerator to keep your beer cold. Unquestioned so somebody's got to figure out how we get all these moving parts to move in synchronization to move and make the decisions and say okay here's how we're going to proceed on this particular problem and it's going to be different on Maui it's going to be different on Hawaii Island I think it'll be different from the Kona side to the Hilo side. Different communities are you know have different levels of of of tolerance for things. Maui has got to several wind farms and some of them are highly invisible they seem to be able to live with that may not be their favorite choice but they can live with that here on Oahu you know we're a little more crowded with a little less remote areas we you know we get pushed back and homes are nearby everything so every island is going to be different and that's why it's really important if you make one of your the sessions on your own island do that if not you go to hawainelectric.com slash IGP and look at the information same information basically and then you email back to us and say look here's my opinion or here's I want to be involved in this particular working group I want to be actively involved or I just want to get the I want to get the reports or I just want to know when you guys put out something that I want to know that you put it out and that I can read it and then if I want to get involved I'll get involved yeah and I want to do that now rather than the day the bulldozers arrive you know because that's pretty late for everybody that's raising all boats and it's also getting people aware of things that affect them and their future where they might have been oblivious before we can't tolerate oblivion actually no you're absolutely right I mean I always point to buying a light bulb you know 20 years ago you went to the store to buy a light bulb you knew if you wanted a 40 or a 60 or a 75 end of story right you may be able to choose a cheaper one or it may be one from GE or maybe occasionally buy a yellow one or a red one if you were in a certain kind of business I don't know you but you didn't have a lot of choices right today you have to have a you know at least in AA preferably a BA in engineering because you know you've got a whole range this is a 60 watt is a 515 watt bulb but it's actually the same as a 60 this is a dimmable one this is not a dimmable one either you know this is an LED this is a CFL you know where the where the old-fashioned Thomas Edison light bulbs no we don't do those anymore you you know it's not simple to live in the modern world no it's not like you you know or you can make a call or something you know or go into Lowe's or Home Depot and they're going to tell you you have to know about these things they can't tell you what you want what you want you got to tell them what you need you got to tell them I say well here's my situation I want it for this arrangement one and everything you know I I'll hand it to this to the you know to the cell phone providers they have made it you know they make it confusing but they hide that behind making it simple it's very confusing if you really want to which plan should I get but you know when you walk into the store this guy we got the best plan for you all right that's that's the end of the discussion but we can't do that with electricity because it it's combines all these elements what's happening in your home what's happening in your neighborhood which is the whole life the whole island and your whole life and how you live it I'm not home the whole day what do I need I'm I am home all day or grandmother granny's home all day alone with the with the four dogs who don't like hot weather what's you know what what do I need to do and everybody everybody's different and everybody has a different sense of that and the only way your own interest can be protected is if you want to come and you know participate you don't have to make a career out of it but you do have to pay enough attention so you can say wait a minute I don't want another big wire coming through the middle of this neighborhood is there some way we can do what's called a non-wires alternative at the same time yeah it's the same time we all have to cooperate in allowing this to happen sure nimby doesn't work I mean if everybody is doing nimby we wouldn't have any progress at all no we wouldn't and let's face it when we say backyard this whole island is our backyard you know whether you live in cahooka or you don't whether you you know whether you live in central oahu near the solar farms or you don't this is all you know we're just two close together we're two in one little group it's really a progressive idea but let me ask you about changes that I've heard about you know for example uh scott shoe is now the CEO of the company right uh young local guy well educated uh you know really well placed in the community yeah uh he is a community person for sure and he's a Hawaiian electric person for sure this is a great selection we didn't have to go far away to find him he was right here um and so I'd like to know about the transition I I met Alan Oshima in a store today I shook a shook his hand you know which is not easy these days yeah and he looked great and very relaxed I saw him today myself really so you know how is there a change here is this is this going to represent a new kind of administration or is it a continuation scott's hair is gone completely white not yet not yet he's still got his hair it's still black uh you know scott is going around right now he's going island to island and uh here on oahu he's going plant to plant and so forth he's been in the company 26 years uh pretty you know essentially his whole working life after uh after college at stanford and and uh uh you know some other short term jobs he's been at the company his whole life and he's gone through a number of departments but he's going back to those departments to reintroduce himself he's going to places that he may have visited you know the yard uh in on the the windward side or so forth he's going to places uh that he has been to but has never you know hasn't been there as president and he's he's doing it a very low key way he's just sitting talking story with people uh that's the first step we have a lot of initiatives underway right now that to try to to get management in the bargaining unit more aligned on how we work together so it's a perfect time for a new guy who knows the company and has worked hand in hand with these with these folks to go out there and and uh you know shake hands again and we've got a it's called a code of excellence process where uh management pays more attention to the to the union guys ideas and the union guys uh are able to have much more input to management and we're all you know we always have been pretty much a family but there's always been tension as you would expect so uh scott's going around right now his biggest effort is to get out to as many people in the company as possible and uh you know after that's done and and he's reintroduced himself as he puts it to uh people in the company then i think he's going to he's always been heavily involved in the community but then i think you're going to see him out more and more uh on the panels and the events and so forth that uh everybody will have a chance there isn't a nicer guy or more approachable guy i can't you know he can't promise you that he'll do everything he asks but he he listens he's a great listener he's been a great boss of my the department i work in uh so i'm i'm very optimistic as you said he's local uh command made of schools he went to stanford to get his his engineering degree came back he's his wife's very active in the community as well as kids are growing up here alan oshima was great he was a utility lawyer uh who really was not very well known in the company when he came to work for the company and uh he now knows a lot of more people there but it was a different experience scott as you said is a born and raised as he said he's growing up at hawaii electorate well it all sounds very resilient you know and it has to be as you mentioned uh you know there's the possibility of extreme weather coming down a pike with part of climate change uh and there's corona virus we haven't talked about it but that certainly affects the whole economy uh and probably would have an effect on everything in the economy including the utility and uh in electricity and so forth uh so you know it's a great beginning for us to talk about this and i hope we can do a hawaii electric hour again soon it's like piling an hour into a half an hour peter but that's okay we can do it we can do it we'll just do it more often i think that's the the solution because it is going to be a very active time for us thank you peter peter ross expo spokesman for hawaii electric aloha peter aloha to you jay thank you