 Hey, welcome to Stan the Energy Man, Stan Osterman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies here. I mean, a really exciting day today. It started off when Jay sent me an email and it just so happens that Pacific Business News has Hawaii ranked in the top 10 United States for doing hydrogen work. That was a great piece of news to open up to this morning because we take a lot of pride in the effort that we put into putting Hawaii on the map with hydrogen. And it's also beginning in December which starts off a lot of military activity over the next week as we commemorate the 75th year of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and County Marine Base and School Field and a lot of the Wheeler and a lot of the air stations around here. So make sure you think of that and look at the activities next week, participate if you can. Hey, today we've got some two great guests, some folks that I've been working with for probably a year and a half, almost two years now. I met them, first of all, via the Energy Accelerator Program here in Hawaii. They're not from Hawaii but their company was selected by Energy Accelerator a while ago. As one of the companies that they wanted to see develop and do things here in Hawaii, and they were part of the Spiders Project with Paycom and the military. And so I got to meet them and talk to them because I'm doing microgrid projects at Paycom. I figured it'd be good if we talked to them and to see what they could lend to our program. So today we have Lisa Loftner and Darren Mormon from Go Electric. And welcome to the show today. Thanks for being here, both of you. Thanks for the invite, Stan. Thanks for having us on, General. We really appreciate you coming out here and talking to us because your technology is a little bit different. And one of the things I told our electrical engineers is when we went into our microgrid, I know that the big companies Seaman, Johnson Controls, Honeywell, they do big stuff all the time. I was looking for companies like yours that were a little more cutting edge, had something a little bit different. Somebody that would fit our microgrid and help us to really stretch the envelope as it were and do some different things. So we figured your company was right in that lane. And that's why we're looking and talking to you. But thanks for being here. I know you've been busy this week and we can talk a little bit about some of that stuff. But first of all, Lisa, why don't we start with you? What got you into doing what you do with microgrids and the technology that you're into business doing now? Sure. I'm an engineer by background. Don't do much engineering anymore. We've got great engineers on staff who do that. But I've got actually a startup background. I spend about six years at Rolls-Roy spinning out companies. It was so much fun. I decided I needed to do that on my own. Wanted to kind of move more into a renewable energy industry. I really have a strong passion for leaving the Earth a greener place. And in Indianapolis, which is where we're from, started poking around the entrepreneurial community to find a couple of entrepreneurs that had a great technology that could help accelerate renewable energy adoption. And our two engineers, Tony Sovereigns and Alex Krevistin's name just kept being brought up. So I met with them, loved what they had already had patented, figured out a way we could work that into a product that was not only great for microgrids, but also great for uninterruptible power from renewable energy. And we launched the company in 2011. And here we are. Wow. What's your turn? What got you into the renewable energy world and what you do in a Go Electric? Well, I've been with Go Electric only since May. Lisa quite recklessly installed me there as the business development director. And I'm really very honored to have that role with Go Electric. And it's given me an opportunity to continue my work that I've done in renewable energy and in distributed generation since about 1999. I've worked for companies such as General Motors, Detroit Edison, Caterpillar and Power Solutions International. And so I've been involved in distributed generation for since about 1999. I've done more than 75 distributed energy projects on five different continents. And I've never been more excited to go to work than I have been here with Go Electric. Because what we do, I think, is so important, not only for our environment, but also from a security standpoint. When you think about energy and how important it is to the safety and the health of our citizens of the whole planet, not just our country, but the whole planet, it really does give me that motivation to work that much harder to help support our really just truly brilliant people who brought this revolutionary product to the market. And I think we live in some pretty exciting times because a lot of people focus on climate change. And regardless of where you stand on the cause of climate change, the fact of the matter is we should be doing everything we can to be cleaner and greener anyway, regardless of whether you think it's tied to climate change. And the technology and stuff is ramping up so fast. There's so many new technologies, new batteries, new control systems, new, I mean, even photovoltaics are getting better and better, more efficient, more efficient. Transportation side, we have the hydrogen stuff going on. So you've worked on a lot of projects, Darren, and obviously you too, Lisa, and it's just exciting, exciting times, so much is going on. So what are some of the things that Go Electric's involved in now, especially in Hawaii? What are some of the projects you're looking for? Sure. Well, we completed a large microgrid project with quite a few other partners at Camp Smith. This is the Spiders Phase 3 microgrid. It was a third of three phases and the most aggressive. So Spiders Phase 3's goals was to take the whole base off the grid. And Go Electric was a new technology company invited for the Phase 3. We delivered two of our large battery energy storage slash microgrid control boxes and also delivered two large diesel generators. And that was a lot of fun, Stan, because Caterpillar was our supplier. So think about that, a small start of trying to figure out how to work with a large company when it's not the other way around. But that system did an operational demonstration in January. All in all, our systems are controlling a three-and-a-half-megawatt microgrid, providing uninterpreable power support to one of the Barrick buildings, doing some peak shaving. So we're also doing energy efficiency as well as energy security and working with some great partners on that project. So and important to Hawaii because it's going to keep Camp Smith secure regardless of what's going on with the grid around it. And just that's been a stepping stone now for us doing some other projects that we're starting to plan, both here on Oahu and on the Big Island. Was that originally the energy accelerator, was that tied together or was that something totally different? We actually met the energy accelerator while we had had already been awarded the Camp Smith project. But what we wanted to do with energy accelerator was learn more how we could take what we had done from a military product perspective and then apply that to what would a utility or maybe a commercial and industrial customer wanted. And being from Indiana, it was really hard for us to try and figure out how can we get in front of Hawaiian Electric to kind of get their feedback on here's what we have. Is it useful? We think it can really help with your renewable energy goals to get to 100% by 2045. And through the energy accelerator and their go to market cohort, we did that project in 2015, and they were outstanding helping us get in front of Hawaiian Electric learning what was important to them, where our technology fit. And through that process, we have a much better understanding of how we can add value and really help Hawaiian Electric both with renewable energy acceleration adoption and then also demand response. Great. Are there any other projects that you'd mentioned the big island you're you're looking at doing some work over there possibly? Yeah, we're planning a microgrid project over on the big island. And we're working with another energy accelerator cohort called Bluepillar on doing a project up at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. As well. Awesome. I want you to what are some of the products you said you worked in several other countries in fact, prior to coming to to go electric, what are some of the projects you've worked on? Previously, I worked in advanced engine controls where we could take gases could be anything from biogas to flare gases from oil production and use that to make an ultra low emissions fuel for a gaseous fired engine. Did that for several years also worked for a cogeneration company working in facilities that were geared towards supporting the community through municipal locations, fire and hospital facilities, things like that. So I think it's been what what's what makes it more fun coming to work with go electric is that is that it's a step further along in the technology and it's more of an enabler of what you said the environmental aspect of this that I think all of us should be better stewards of the planet. And I think our technology enables that it enables that the better implementation and application of renewables, but it also makes it more manageable from a utility standpoint so that they can manage that penetration of renewables as they come online. A lot of people, you know, in fact, I've even had state legislators come up to me and go, this grid stability thing, it's just a bunch of PR from the electric company, but it really is a problem. And, you know, maybe you can help help the public understand a little bit of what the challenges are for a public utility like Hawaiian Electric. When you start getting a lot of renewables on the grid, because you guys design the equipment that helps make those adjustments and right up it. What are some of the important things that public should know about? He goes challenges with I think very simply, you know, the sun goes down at night, and the wind stops blowing. And so with that, when you think about and clouds come overhead, and when that happens, there's the variability aspect to it. And the utility is responsible for making a good, stable, reliable grid infrastructure for everyone to use at all times. If there's if there's a problem on the grid that's brought on by the variability aspect of renewables, no one's going to blame the solar company or the wind company, they're going to blame the utility. So I do have a lot of empathy for the utility and their plight and what they're trying to do. And so what what our system and what energy storage can do is it can pull that that those renewable energy resources, the energy from that so that you can store it and use it when it's when it's most advantageous to the utility or the user. So economically, you can make better use of it. But also, it's it's a more manageable source of energy for the utility, so that they can make a good, solid, reliable source of energy. Okay, so you pretty well define the panic factor on he goes, because they don't have control over those things. And their utility that's been in control of their generation and distribution. And so they've had complete control of that generation and getting it out there, and the requirement to keep it smooth and stable and keep everybody covered without brownouts and power outages. So that's their fear factor side. So what at least what does go do to help them control and balance the the intermittent with what they produce already. Yeah, we can actually provide two things for them to help them control and and balance out the intermittent see from the renewables. So from a control perspective, as our systems proliferate here, through a demand response program, Hawaiian Electrical will be able to see what's what's available to them in terms of battery energy storage, and also in terms of distributed energy resources that could be brought online quickly. If you have a situation where the sun's starting to go down, people are coming home from work turning on their air conditioners. So you now have a load and a generation mismatch. So through a DR program, you can actually call up those resources to help stabilize that mismatch and control it or ask for the control. Then the other thing we can do because we automatically monitor what's going on with the grid health, because our product also is what's called an uninterruptible power system. And what that is, I'll use an example, battery, batteries that a data center or a hospital will have in between the hospital loads and the generator. So if the grid goes out, the batteries carry the loads start at the generator. So you have the smooth transition. So our systems are constantly monitoring the health of that. And we can provide an export back to the grid to make sure that that load generation balance is always in sync. And one of the challenges there would have to be the timing. It is a timing but because we control real time, we actually can do any kind of power injection, power transfer or even a load shed, if that's what the grid needs. Subcycle that's part of our patented technology. Okay, well, we're going to take a quick break here and get back to in a few seconds. And we're going to take about a minute. We'll be back to go electric. I'm Ethan Ellen, host of Likeable Science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2pm, you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. They'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas, you'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2pm here on Think Tech Hawaii for Likeable Science with me, your host Ethan Allen. Hello, and Aloha. My name is Raya Salter, and I am the host of Power of Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to figure out how we're going to work towards a clean and renewable energy future. We have exciting conversations with all kinds of stakeholders, everyone who needs to come together to talk about renewable energy, be they engineers, advocates, lawyers, utility executives, musicians or artists to see how we can come together to make a new renewable future. Tuesdays at 1pm. Hey, well, five seconds. Hey, welcome back to my lunch hour. Stand the energy man here with Gold Electric, and they're going to tell us a little bit more about how their system can maybe help Hawaii a little bit as we start to pick up some of the renewable sources. So we kind of cut you off there in the middle of talking about controlling and some of the other power sources. So when you have an intermittent solar wind arrangement, as Hawaii will obviously start picking up because we can't tap so much in the geothermal like the Big Island can as readily, and Hawaii is going to have a lot of like residential solar. Not sure how much more wind we're going to get, but those are all intermittent. You've got to have a way of storing that energy when it's excess, and then being able to like you say dispatch it back into the system. So what is your what does your system do that that helps us how it could help Hawaii Electric do that? Sure. So our system is basically a lithium ion battery, although we can connect because we have a microgrid control built right in. We can connect to a fuel cell, hydrogen fuel cell, a fly wheel, another battery system, a generator, and then any renewables too. So literally it will form a microgrid with all of those assets and then turn what most people think with renewables as kind of variable generation. Well, when you supplement that with battery energy storage, all of a sudden you have a really a firm generation source. So as the grid is starting to fluctuate as the sun comes down or for cloud goes over, our box can supplement the generation needs of the grids to make sure that that load in generation is always in balance. And we do that in a unique way that's just altogether one in one box. And I think that's what kind of what separates us from other microgrid companies who either are more on the software and control side and rely on other folks to deliver the hardware side. Well, we decided that a plug and play was really a much better way to go, because that same box can provide grid stabilizing energy services for the utility. But it also provides peak shaving energy efficiency and energy security to the building that it's connected to. So it's resiliency is, you know, kind of goes around circle. It helps the grid because it's providing energy resiliency at the fringes of the grid on the customer side of the meter. But if anything is going on with the grid that cause it to brown out or black out, it's right there supporting the customer. In fact, it's so fast if it does separate and operates as a UPS, the customer doesn't even know they're off the grid. And I think that's what people are looking for. A lot of times folks ask me about being off the grid, and do you have big interruptions and how do you smooth it out? And a lot of times the batteries like the intermediary and makes help smooth things. It does. And like so hydrogen wouldn't react as fast as a battery and super super capacitors react even faster than the battery. So if you put the right mix together and have the right controls, you can actually make it pretty seamless. But when you talk about your system, though, almost sounds like it's for a certain scale. Is there like a scale limit to your system? Or could you go to the mega gigawatts scale and go really big? Or is there kind of a sweet spot for your technology? We actually have standard product sizes at 30 kilowatts, 75 kilowatts, 125 and 250. But I'll use camp Smith as an example, we paired two of our 250 kilowatt boxes to provide a half a megawatt. And then with that, we're linked into four diesel generators that are providing another three megawatts. So because we can, I'll call this get a little geekier, operate in parallel, we can add systems together and go to the megawatt size. Okay. So with your system, would he go be able to look at a system like yours as a solution on a grand scale on a utility scale? Or would that be a stretch for a system like yours? I'll, I'll caveat that we, we aggregate our facilities together so we can look like we're a large megawatt. Okay. But what we've done is we've taken individual systems at many different facilities through a portal that looks like it's all one tied together system, even though electrically, it's not they're all in different distribution circuits. But we don't aspire to be like a grid scale, grid side of the meter solution. We're really very focused on commercial and industrial military customers on the customer side of the meter to provide them energy resiliency and energy security, energy efficiency. Yeah. And that's kind of where I was going. Because, you know, HECO has a huge challenge. I mean, they're trying to pull industrial scale, you know, power customers with residential scale and hospitals with, you know, businesses, and they all have different needs. And they're doing all of it. They're doing soup to nuts. But there's probably some value to breaking up the grid into areas that could take systems that incorporate your scale, and could actually give our whole community a lot more redundancy and security. Because in a disaster or something, when HECO goes down on this island, it's a day at least a day, usually a couple days before they can get the whole island back up, because of how they have to bring their system back up. But if you have pockets of islanded systems that can manage themselves, those things could pop up all by themselves, and HECO could reconnect in a few hours. Because once everybody's on the same frequency, and that's talking together in the right frequency, boom, they can connect. And they're back on the grid. So it seems like if we looked at it in a more strategic level, and said, we could probably take this grid and redesign it so that this community has a couple of these microgrids set up. And then in the industrial areas and stuff where a grid has to be kind of robust, HECO focuses there. But they also help design the other things out and they all work together. Is that a reasonable? I think it's one of our key attributes is that when our system is integrated as the microgrid controller, and there is a grid outage, we keep the renewables online. They don't go offline. One of the unpleasant discoveries in the wake of any natural disaster when the utility goes away, people think, well, thank God, we have our renewables here. When the sun comes up tomorrow morning, we'll be able to have electricity and it's not the case. But with our system, that is the case. Our energy storage would provide that ride through and we still commutate those renewable assets so that they stay online. And it has been our focus and our target to get our systems integrated into the community where it can do the most benefit. Now, obviously, that would be police and fire and hospital. You know, the first responders in the event of an emergency outage. But at the same time, people have to eat, people have to fuel their vehicles or things like that. So we've also looked at that. And in fact, Lisa and the team actually were one of the winners in the Rise NYC program, which was a program that was put together in the wake of Superstorm Sandy and actually won a major contract to do four completely resilient energy programs there in lower Manhattan. Awesome. Any other kudos you've gotten? I know it. And I got to apologize to her. We actually had some photos we're going to try and throw up. And one of them was President Obama with folks who go electric in the background. So we're we try and give people a chance to show that stuff. We didn't get the photos in in time. But maybe we can throw them up on your next visit. But what are some of the other things you've been noted for? We've had a really fun startup story. Last year, President Obama had his had a first ever innovation day at the White House, and we were actually personally reached out to buy his staff to participate in that. So so I got to fly in, set up a little table right in the White House, got to walk around all the different rooms, you know, and then kind of take the tour by myself. So and then after quite a few VIPs came through to talk with everyone, he stopped by and gathered everybody in one of the press rooms and talked about the importance of small business and innovation to help grow America. So that that was really fun. But we've also had, we've been very successful in presenting to awesome organizations that help the startup world like the NREL Forum, South by Southwest ECHO in Indianapolis. They have the innovation showcase. So it's been a lot of fun leaving the corporate world and doing the startup world and having the opportunity to get that kind of exposure. Yeah, and it is a great time right now. It really, really is. I'm fortunate I'm kind of like you. I started at H-Cat about three and a half years ago, and I started part time even, so still in the National Guard doing a lot of stuff. And it's just been fun to watch how the energy stakeholders and the energy industry are starting to really get an identity. One of the revelations I've had is that we no longer have a transportation energy and a grid energy issue. We have, they're together. As the more plug-in vehicles we have, then you not only have more demand on your grid, but you also have storage on your grid. And you have, I mean, things start to connect that were never connected before, and they'll start to present challenges and opportunities that we've never had before with the power companies and such. And I know that like the Air Force Research Lab that we work with, they've taken an Air Force station and put in so many plug-in vehicles that they're using those plug-in vehicles for storage on their little base grid and trying to see how that works. And they're having some challenges, probably because you guys aren't running their controls. But you know, they're finding out how it works and they're seeing where the bumps in the road are. But it also does present some great opportunities. And this is an exciting time. Yeah, I think one of the most exciting, probably the most rewarding thing about working with Go Electric is the fact that parts of the technologies that we use today, that we leverage today, go all the way back to when the really intelligent people in our company were helping, and I was working there as well, when we were doing electric and hybrid vehicle development for General Motors. And this goes all the way back to the turn of the century, so 1999 to 2000. But that same technology is now actually being leveraged to where it can really do some good for the environment. And that's particularly satisfying to me. Yeah, I agree. Well what's coming up for Go Electric? What are some of the exciting things you're looking to in the future? Sure, well we've got, we've won a few contracts this year, so we had a pretty good year. There was a microgrid project at Twilly Army Depot in Utah. We're going to be participating on that next year. Darren mentioned the Rise NYC project. We won one of those awards. We have four small businesses that provide services to the New York Metro. We'll be installing and demonstrating our systems there, keeping those businesses very resilient, energy resilient, which in turn, if the grid goes out they can help support their community trying to stay resilient by either providing gas or food or pharmacy things. So we are working on our next generation of product, which is going through UL certification. We're going to finish that up in about a month. That will incorporate what they call open ADR utility software which allows our system to talk with utilities for demand response programs. So we're really, really fired about that because now our box, our system, when installed in a utility demand response program can help, like I said, the grid and the customer stay energy resilient, but those are income earning programs for the equipment. So now we have a battery energy storage, which is also UPS, that gets a paycheck every month. I don't think that's ever happened before in the UPS world. We're going to show and share this with President Trump, President-elect Trump. This is one of your jobs programs, sir. Go electrics like creating jobs for everybody. So we're up against our time and I'd like to thank you so much for being here and sharing some time with us and bringing this up to date on what Go Electric is doing and what you can help us get forward in Hawaii. Thanks a lot, appreciate it. Thank you, man, yep.