 Okay, but actually, Peter, you know, what is the electric cars in this state? We only have 10,000. We have a million cars, but only 10,000. What's going on here? Well, 10,000 is an accomplishment. We last month saw, past that mark, you know, Confucius said, you can't get to a million cars without passing 10,000 cars on the way. So you say, what a wise man. Yeah, he was very clever. And we have passed that 10,000. It's not huge. It's not as big as we like, but it's a milestone. And in honor of that, anybody who has an EV on Wahoo, on Maui, or on the Big Island, can take advantage of a car wash for only $10 in participating dealers, a little way of saying thank you. This is through November 10th. So even if you're not listening live, you can take advantage of this. You may recognize that voice and that face. Let's see that face again. Where is it? I'm looking for that face. I don't see that face. That's how cold the opening is. That's why I call it cold opening. Anyway. That's Peter Rossig, OK? And actually, at this point in time, we should probably say what the show is, Mitch. Yes. Welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy, sponsored by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. So we have Peter Rossig from Hawaiian Electric, and Shane Eugenio also from Hawaiian Electric. Through the magic of our technical staff, we have Karen Shue all the way from California. We only have her picture. San Carlos, I remember. And she's with N-L-E-N-E-L, which is N-L North America. Whenever you want to make, I was thinking maybe Think Tech one day would be Think Tech North America. There you go. Think Tech Global, I thought. And that's Mitch Eugen, who just introduced everybody. One more question, Mitch. What are we talking about tonight? We're talking about smart chargers and electric vehicles and demand response. And the Hawaiian Electric guys and Karen are going to tell us all about it and what it is. Yeah. So welcome, everybody. Welcome, Karen. Nice to have you here with us. I hope you can do this again when you're here in Hawaii, Ney, you know? Yeah. Definitely. We'll be onsite next time. So Peter, you were saying, and we want more about the Car Wash program. Okay. This is actually organized by Drive Electric Hawaii, a consortium that we're a member of along with Ulupono and Blue Planet, the county governments and the state departments that are involved with energy and transportation. We've been around about two years now, Drive Electric Hawaii. In honor of this milestone, which is a big deal, it's a small big deal, but it's a big, big deal. If you know what I mean, we were passing 10,000, probably sometime late last month, we passed 10,000 electric vehicle sales and registration here. So a number of car washes are offering $10 car washes, which is a bargain for anybody with an EV. You have to have a coupon, which you can see on the screen right now. On the way you get that coupon is by going to Drive Electric Hawaii, driveelectrichi.com, and you'll see a site there, and you'll see a link to click on, and you can get that coupon. And that coupon, it'll show you which car wash is, a couple of Mon Capulani here on Oahu and Lahain and Maui, and one on each side of the big island, I believe. You know, a lot of these car wash places offer gas, too. Yeah. So if you get your car wash, they fill up your tank. Does it include the gas? Well, if you have an electric vehicle and you need gas, you're in the wrong line. But seriously, since you can't afford, you know, since you're not going to buy gas, you can't afford, you know, you don't get the cheaper car wash, you'd have to pay for the, you know, no gas car wash, so that's why this is actually a very good deal. And you know, we like to keep the electric vehicles clean, and because everybody's looking at them, everybody's admiring them, those Teslas, you know, those lanes. Sure, people love their electric cars, they love them, you know. Drivers love them because they're fun to drive. So this is just a way to say thank you, a way to, for the, these car washes, to really say, you know, even though you're not going to buy our gasoline, because you don't need our gasoline, we want to, we want to participate and we want to help you out. And Drive Electric Hawaii is the organizer of this, and we put a lot of, a lot of work, I didn't personally, but people I know, put in a lot of work to get these folks lined up, and to get the coupons out there, and as I say, if you want a coupon, you go to driveelectrichi, driveelectrichawai.com. Well, it's all part of, you know, Hawaii's leadership in clean energy is what it is. And, you know, we've got to, we've got to be a leader. We are a leader. The rest of the country is not coming along as quickly as we are, and we have to keep on pushing. We have to be out there. We have to be out there in solar. We have to be out there in hydrogen. To the extent we can, geothermal, gee, what else, wind. We have to, we have to push all of these things and meet or even exceed our targets, you know? Absolutely. And then we have to tell the world, I have this dream, repeating dream, but people just like you guys, including Karen, you know, who go around the country extolling the virtues of the programs here in Hawaii, showing the country that, yes, you can do it, yes, you can, you know, save us from climate change, basically, yeah. Well, Jay, you know, it's already happening in many ways. Hawaiian Electric folks go to conferences. Our president, Alan Oshima, is at one right now in Florida. The American, American Edison Illumination Association, I think I have that right. And, you know, he's getting an award, actually, and he's talking about the fact that we built the Schofield Generating Station, which is using biofuel, and which is doing a lot of remarkable things, and it's safe from hurricanes and tsunamis, because it's up in the, off the waterfront. So we are already doing that. Shane's going to talk a little bit about our DR program. We go to places. He and his boss go to conferences about demand response, which is perhaps not the sexiest thing, but, Shane, thank you. You know, Peter gave you a good segue here. Thanks for having me. So what are you doing for Hawaiian Electric, and why do you care about electric cars, and why do you care about charges, and why do you care about Karen Shue? Well, it's going order. So for Hawaiian Electric, I work with the demand response group, and I guess if you're not familiar with demand response, I guess the theory is it's basically trolling customer-cited, like demand-side resources kind of in aggregate in order to deliver like a grid service or some type of beneficial service to the grid. So anything behind the meter, I guess behind the meter is the term you hear a lot, can be traditionally demand responses, like water heaters, air conditioners, in commercial settings, it could be like a building management system, like HVAC or lighting or anything. And basically what we do is we... Your plate is full. Well, this is the legacy stuff that was in place before I started working. So if you were to send these, our system operations department would actually kind of take a look at the load, take a look at the generation forecast and everything, and make a call that they'd want to reduce X amount of megawatts of load based on what they see, and that load would be coming from customer resources, just not demanding electricity at the time. So the traditional resources worked well, but we're starting to see now, like you alluded to earlier, there's a lot of PV installations out there, there's a lot of battery storage. We have these electric vehicles driving around. Those are all new customer-cited loads that we're seeing as being a lot more agile than traditional resources, like water heaters. So basically, what we see is the EVs providing a flexible resource that can connect to the grid and be managed by an electric and provide these grid services. So why do you care about Karen Shu then? Well, Karen, she, generously from NOX, offered to partner with 20 Electric to allow our customers the chance to acquire free EV charging equipment for their house or for their small business. And in exchange, we would, I guess, guide them through demand response demonstration to kind of proof out the concept of using EVs as a resource. So it's kind of a collaboration on this project. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Okay, how much of what he said, Karen, do you agree with? Oh, 100%. I mean, I think Shade only cares about me because we're offering something free to his customers. So now I'm just kidding. She's been great and we've been partners, you know, really trying to push out, leverage smart grid chargers into the territory. And then with a partnership with Elemental Accelerator, we're connected to HIKO or Hawaiian Electric, basically, to offer this free program for EV drivers to adopt a level two charger in their homes. And then we have 350 chargers available at this time for free for any Hawaiian Electric customer. So it is a really good deal because you're not really having to pay anything normally. We're charging about $600 for our solution. Mitch, I have a question, Karen. So what's the secret sauce for your device? I mean, what's so special and why do you call it a smart charger and how does it fit in with a demand response program? Yeah, so it basically reflects everything Shade had mentioned. It is smart grid connected with the intent to make sure that we're providing the EV drivers the best rates that are available for forward-thinking utilities like Hawaiian Electric and then also leveraging the cleanest energy that's available on the grid to charge their cars. So like, for example, if I go and plug my car in at any old time, theoretically, then your smart charger, depending on the cost of electricity and the availability, would not charge my car until the cost of electricity comes down to some targeted level. Am I correct in saying that? No, we never want to say that people can't charge at any time because, you know, it's like pulling up the gas station and then the gas station says they're out of gas or, you know, you can't charge or you can't pump gas at this time. It's really up to the customers. So normally people 80% of them charge at home, right? So I come home at the end of my work day, I plug in, I forget about it exactly like my other appliances. So it's a lot of time that the utilities will be able to kind of play around when the charging should happen. And then we always notify customers of, you know, any type of management that the utility would like to do and get their consent in order to manage the system. And then we reward them with a thing called juice points where they could redeem it via PayPal for incentive money, just by participating and allowing control of the stations. So they get a text message on their phone then when an event is going to happen? How does it communicate to the client? I mean, you know, you drive your car, you plug it in, you go inside the house and you're watching your TV. How do you know that something's going to happen? So our smart chargers are connected into a mobile application or software web portal. And then so we'll send a push notification, exactly like the ones that you'll get when Yelp has a new restaurant that opens to the customer saying, Hawaiian Electric would have an event in the next, you know, two hours, can you participate? We would reward you this amount of money by participating. And it's important that this is a demonstration project and being funded, as Karen said, by the Elemental Accelerator to get this program going. So part of the question is, when are people actually charging? We know kind of anecdotally that people charge at home. We know that, you know, something about their charging, but this is going to be a much more scientific way to know exactly when people are charging because the smartness of the charger will tell us that. And then, then, you know, the future steps will be, will be, we'll do some tests to see how this works for demand response, how this, how we can be sure there's a certain amount of energy available or certain amount of energy not being taken. And in the future, especially as the number of cars goes from the 10,000 to the million point here in Hawaii, we'll be able to use that to support the grid with with the kind of weird stuff that I never understand called grid services. But it takes a lot, it's more than just the electricity you use, it's the ability to push that electricity out through the wires, it's the ability to control balance the grid. And those are what we call grid services. So we think we think that these electric vehicles will be a big part of that. And we want to test that out. Yeah, I can see how this is valuable to Hawaiian Electric, to get the data to know when people are charging or not, and to develop a good response, good response, response, magic word response to that very data. Yeah, well, I guess you guys brought up a good point as well, too, that I guess typical human behavior for cars to come home, get off work, plug your car into your charger, and then you kind of get on with the rest of your evening. Coincidentally, at that time is when the sun starts to set, and we're starting to lose solar generation, which means all of our fossil plants are going to have to start firing up to basically their max capacity. And, you know, these EVs are not insignificant loads on the grid. Each one is Well, and as Peter said, it won't take too long before they are much bigger. But even just per house, I mean, an EV, especially with NOX's chargers, they can use as much as or more than a full house load, you're looking at 7.5 kW or something. So it's kind of in our best interest to get ahead of it and try and see if we can control it and make it more grid beneficial than just to have customers kind of just use their typical human behavior to plug in and then try and, you know, in hindsight, try and go ahead. So I love smart things. And does that mean that, you know, the electronics in these smart chargers are going to be updated from time to time? Is it like a little Internet of Things IP address and all that where the information is going back and forth? Is that right, Karen? Yeah, absolutely. So it works exactly like, you know, your Nest thermostats at home. The software is always being updated. Currently, it's also integrated into, you know, Amazon Alexa, Google Homes, making a home at the end of the day. And you just tell Alexa, hey, I need my car out by 6am the next day. And then everything on the software smart technology side will know exactly when to charge the vehicle. Jay, pretty soon, you're going to be able to have Alexa glasses. So they now have an Alexa ring, Alexa glasses. So you're not going to have to look around, where's my little, where's my little hockey puck? You're just going to look up into the sky and say, Alexa, I want my electric vehicle ready to go at 6am tomorrow. Is it great to be alive or what? So that's, that's, that's for real? Well, the glasses, yeah, they're not available. They're available to select audience right now. But there's also a ring that people can wear. So you see these pictures of people, like in the old days when they used to pretend they were listening to the on the microphone, you put your hand up by your ear and you talk to the ring, and it's Alexa. So yeah, it is, you know, there's a lot of bad things about the internet, including taking your privacy and all the rest. But there's so many good things. Yeah, really, this is really a good thing. Technical questions, Mitch. How does it work? Ask about the special technology involved in the electronics sauce? How does it work? You know, is it all in the software? Or is there is there also hardware involved? Yeah, what also you have to do you have to pay a fee for the for the software? Do you have to pay like an annual licensing fee for it? And if so, I mean, kind of, I mean, how much is that? Yeah, like, like every other computer or software service? Yeah, it's just so when you get this, this unit, and I understand the street value of the advertised value of these units is five to 600 bucks. So this is real valuable. Is that it? Or, you know, you have to subscribe to something and and send money somewhere in order to keep it going year after year? Karen? Yeah, so absolutely. On the residential side, when you're putting these boxes in your garage, we don't charge you anything for the software. We actually build a utility that they want data and control. For the commercial side, if you're looking to, you know, maybe collect payment and we have to keep the stations activated on the cellular network. That's when we start charging for the software component. But on the residential side of the technology is free. It comes with the box. You don't have to pay extra to use Alexa. And essentially, I don't really know what the magic sauce is. I think that would be a lot richer. Magic sauce behind the juice box. But it is, you know, hardware that goes into your garage. It kind of looks like the standard, you know, panel box that you already have. Let's see a picture. Karen, we're going to show you a picture. Okay, we have a picture of something, a device black and looks like orange orange hanging on a wall with some cable. And there's an electric car right nearby. What is that picture? Can you tell us what that is? Yeah, sure. So that's our flagship product, the juice box. We have a couple versions of these that are available on the free program. Pro 40 that charges at the 40 amp level and then a pro 32 that charges at the 32 amp level. The standard Tesla chargers come at a 30 amp 32 amp to 30 amp level. So the 40s actually get the Tesla drivers out much quicker. And then the other component that, you know, is inclusive of our boxes, it is semi portable. So as long as you have a dryer socket that is 1450 NEMA, you can actually plug it in directly into your standard dryer socket. And we also sell adapters so that if you didn't want to switch out and kept, you know, slow charger, you can put it into a standard outlet. But we should be clear for people in Hawaii, if you want to take advantage of this free offer. And there is an installation cost, which would might be upgrading your the wiring in your garage or, you know, who arranges that Peter, are you you the customer? There's a list on on the website, which we should mention here pretty soon. And you go there, you sign up, you qualify. It tells you here are some recommended installers. You know, this, this is a serious electrical equipment, it has to be done correctly. And so if there if there is a cost, and some people may encounter that, you would have to pay that yourself as the customer. I understood it seems only, you know, if you were buying, if you were buying any get the device, that's what you get, you get the device for free. You do have that responsibility to take make sure it's it's char it's put in properly with it with an installer. But you would do that have to do that anyway, if you were paying for the 600 bucks for the for the equipment, you'd have to still have to go get an installer to help you. So is this happening right now? Yes. If I'm watching this show right now live, it is live, right? Some of us are a lot colder. Yeah, what do I do in order to get in on it? Because it's only 350 have to act now. Now, one thing you can do is you can go to the Hawaiian Electric website, go look under electric vehicles, there's a big box there with that same picture of that same lovely juice box charger, you can click there and that will take you to nlx. You can go to I think it's nlx.com slash store, is that right Karen? And to to sign up. And either way, probably the simplest is to go to HawaiianElectric.com and let us link you through. Get there, you get the explanation, you'll see what where to go, you get the explanation, you see what's required. You read the small print, don't forget to read the small print. And you have to own an electric car. You have to own or lease, we don't really care. And you can if you buy one tomorrow, you still can qualify for this and also for the $10 car wash if you buy an electric vehicle. It's like ordering from Amazon or anyplace else. You got to go through that that motion and sign up. But it's about as pain free as you could possibly make it, I think we certainly as we made it. Yeah, I'll say. Well, do you think this will incentivize electric cars in Hawaii between the one program and the other? Are we going to see a boost in the sales and leasing of electric cars now? Because we need to we need to have these programs to remind people yes, is a great thing to do. Yeah, we hope so. I mean, from what we can tell, it's a great deal for customers to get a free charger and a $10 car wash. So I would expect people to jump all over that. Okay, but 350 may go fast. I mean, this is substantial value here you're getting for free. I would not wait. And you know, if anybody hears about they're going to get online and get one. Anybody that's got an electric vehicle right now and probably many people I know do the trickle charging just using the regular standard plug. Because you know, they figure well, my car is going to be in the garage for eight hours every night anyway. So why should I upgrade but here's a chance to upgrade to level two must much faster charging much more dependable and you know, at a very, very, very reduced cost. So if you have a car or you're considering getting one, and you don't already have a level two charger, you should really really look into this and you know, this is the beginning where we're glad to be working with NLX, but we're gonna we're always looking for for partnerships that will help us great statement of the future. It's a great statement of the embrace of new technologies, the next chapter kind of technology. And it's a great statement about Hawaii's commitment to to renewable energy and electric cars. You know, the thing about demand response, which I think is very important is we are incentivized we incentivize the customers to do what we ask them to do. This is not a freebie from the customer is not a gift. If you're going to help us with this, help us with that demand or respond to our our request for you to reduce demand or move demand, we're going to give you an incentive. You know, we give people right now have our hot water heaters with a little electric box to give them $3 a month. Not a huge amount but over the course of a year it adds up and we give them that whether we use the system or not. So the basic idea of demand response is customer cooperates, not just because it's the right thing to do, not just because it's going to help the environment, but they get something they get a little recognition, they get a free charger, they get a cheap car wash, they get water, you know, they park, for example, that at without paying a municipal lot, sure, get stuff, all those benefits. Yeah, but they're also part of a community, a community of clean energy, which is, you know, Hawaii's destiny, I hope. Absolutely. So camera almost out of time. I'm very sad about that. I am sad. I think all of us here can say the same thing. We're sad that we're almost out of time. And we want to offer you the opportunity to say fair well. Yeah, perfect. I mean, thanks for inviting me. I hope, you know, I get to be in the studio next time your background looks amazing and Hawaii's always amazing. But thank you for inviting us on to the segment. Yeah, but we're not entirely finished, though. Mitch has more. Yes. Okay, I want to get one plug in. Yeah, that's exactly why I am a policy forum. All you people out there, they're listening to the show, and you think it's good, and you have friends, you may not have your own electric vehicle, but you have friends who have electric vehicles, get this out viral. So everybody's informed about this. This is why we do these shows. So don't just sit on this information. You can help one of your friends and you can also help Hawaii increase the number of electric vehicles out there. So get the word out. Just the idea of something for free from your electric company, not to get everybody something. It just doesn't happen every day. Let's face it. I guess not to mention too, as the cars start to get longer ranges, it's going to be more important for you to have a level two charger versus trickle charging. Because if you're expecting to be at 100% charge after 12 hours, those those up just wall plugs will not get you there in a Tesla or something like that. So yeah, I think Shane, you have like the point that I wanted to bring up. I think most people don't realize for the Tesla models, you're talking about on the trickle charge plugging in for 43 to 70, 80 hours on the trickle charge unit. For the level two chargers that we offer, we cut it down to the range of six to 10 hours. And that's, you know, completely update to full. So that gives a lot more flexibility for the utilities also to be able to control and participate without, you know, no longer duration, plug in time. If you have the trickle charging it. Karen, what's your website? The NLX website? So the website that you can get the charger would be ED charging.nlx.com slash ex hyphen store. Okay, but I think as you mentioned, it'd be easier to link directly from the Hawaiian Electronics website. Admit you want to summarize and close this is your big opportunity. Yeah, sure. I'd love to close. First of all, thank you very much, Karen. It was great. And it's good seeing some of this technology that was developed in Hawaii by some of our brain year people. I guess your company was a participant in the elemental accelerator. So it's good that this was kind of developed in Hawaii, and we funded it. And it's really great that you've teamed with Hawaiian Electric, who is a big company that has a real interest in getting this out there. So it seems like a perfect marriage. And for getting the word out, getting the data and showing this works and so that you can expand this out. So just make sure your marketing materials, it's like a little made in Hawaii. You know, we started out with a cold open. Yeah, okay. I want to show you how we do a cold clothes. Watch this.