 Hey, Aloha and welcome to Stand Energy Man here in Think Tech, Kauai and I'm glad to be here today. Glad to be here today on a beautiful day in Honolulu. We're going to be talking to special guests that I haven't had on for about a year, but he's from the island of Kauai. We just call him Big Ben because he thinks he's about six foot ten or something like that anyway. He dominates the room when he comes in but he's a great heart for clean energy and is doing great things on the island of Kauai. And it's about time that we caught up with the west end of the state. We've been talking to folks on Maui in the Big Island but not Kauai lately. So Mr. Ben Sullivan, who is the Energy and Sustainability Coordinator for the County of Kauai, he's our guest today and hey, welcome to the show, Ben. Thank you, Stan. The Energy Man. It's great to be back. Yeah. So tell the audience that hasn't met you before a little bit about yourself and what you do over there in Kauai. Sure, I have the great privilege of being the County's Energy and Sustainability Coordinator. I work in the Office of Economic Development for Mayor Derek Kawakami, who just was seated into the mayoral office last December. So very exciting. I have been in this position for seven years, so been doing this for quite a while. I will say candidly I never imagined working in government growing up and going to the school and all through my professional career just kind of happened and the evolution was really spent years doing architecture, small scale stuff, some mixed use and then some residential architecture here in Hawaii and became an advocate for renewable energy within the community. And along the course of kind of learning more about our energy challenges and engaging on climate issues and using what not back in like say 2005, 2006, we did a lot of interfacing with the community as a grassroots table saying how can we do more renewable energy? And at the time it was really difficult, they didn't know, so for their board and after a couple of tries was elected to their board of directors here, so that was quite an experience, a little bit about the complex world of utilities and learning from really a great staff and CEO over there about how they wanted to move forward. Great. Yeah, for the listeners and viewers out there that don't know, I live in Kauai is the only island that we have here in the state that has got a co-op for the electric utility. The rest of the utilities and the rest of the state are all owned by Hawaiian Electric Corporation. So you have Miko on Maui and Helco on the Big Island and Hiko on Oahu, but Kauai has their own co-op. And Ben, can you tell us a little bit about the co-op over there and how big it is now and how good they're doing? I'm getting some details after the break, but let's kind of get us some background. I think a lot of your viewers are aware or listeners are aware of how well KAUC is doing, but Kauai Island Utility Co-operative was kind of brought into existence in about 2002-2003. They were previously a for-profit corporation, Citizens Utilities, I think they were out of Connecticut is where they were based and citizens decided a few years prior to that it was time for them to sell. The community stepped up and there was a kind of a longer back story there that I'll skip, but basically we ended up with a cooperative which is a rural utility cooperative through the national model. There's an organization called the National Rural Electrical Co-operative Association. And so they became a member of that and as a community we're given access to a lot of the financing for the cooperative. And ever since it started, really we've been trying to figure out what it means to run our own utility. Obviously still have a really, really expert staff of engineers and professionals guiding us, but basically what it comes down to is there is a nine-member board of directors who provide guidance to the staff and then the staff goes out and executes. So it's a wonderful model. I think we're sitting at about 50% renewable energy and have any of late is solar plus thoracic farms. I can't say enough about how well the engineers and the finance people are doing in terms of making that model work and really bringing down the cost of our electricity stand and stabilizing it in the context of, you know, a lot of other places that are seeing increases. So it's pretty amazing. Well, as customers over here on a while who are jealous, so I think we'll talk a little bit more in detail about that utility after the break. But let's get caught up a little bit on what you've been doing around town in Lihui and things like bicycle lanes and pedestrian ways and things like that because last time you were on the show, we spent quite a bit of time and those projects were just getting started under, I think, a tiger grant or something like that. Can you catch this up? So we had just been through the process of applying for and successfully being awarded that tiger grant. There's a huge caveat here, which is to say I'm kind of in the peanut gallery as far as this transportation and mode shift stuff goes. If you remember, Stan, we had a wonderful guest on with me last time in the person of Marie Williams, who's one of our long-range planners, and a bunch of other folks in the planning department have done an incredible job over the last few years along with our public works department, really rethinking the way that we design and build so that they've got community advocacy groups and policy changes and really a robust ecosystem of people working to make a paradigm shift is what I think it comes down to. The tiger core revitalization is a culmination of a lot of that and really the first major project that I think crossed the whole town area as opposed to just been since then and community process in terms of awarded and the construction actually has already started in small part, but some of the bigger pieces are going to be. So what are some of the specific projects you're working on in Lihue there then? Are you like getting rid of one way or putting in one way streets and changing traffic around or are you just widening sidewalks or what are some of the projects that you're working on? And again, the planning department gets all the credit here. Is that enough? But the folks that have designed this project put a lot of thought into basically just saying, hey, how do we make Lihue town itself more appealing to everybody who uses the street as opposed to just an automobile? And so yes, there's been some conversion of two ways to one way streets in some cases where it made sense and we're at alleviated traffic and other pressure points, which is the major thoroughfare downtown and the old part of town is going to I think the term road diet comes into play. So it's a four to three road diet for use direction. And the plan is to go down to one lane in each direction with a turn lane in the center. So that obviously opens up some real estate for sidewalk and for bicyclists and stuff happening there. And then there's also really a pretty thoughtful network of paths and other connections throughout work. So they're actually just constructing a path between the Lihue Civic Center and our convention hall downtown that's almost complete now that will allow people to move across town without really having to use the streetscape because it's working across some other spaces and really open behind a school. So it really opens up some transportation opportunities to those who are not behind the wheel of a large automobile. And have the planners gotten a lot of support from the business community because I know over here in Honolulu when we start screwing around with streets in the parking, the business owners go up in arms and say, you're taking away my parking, you're, you know, you're making my customers go away and stuff that that's a different community over Lihue. Are you having more support from the businesses there? So, you know, interestingly, and I'm going to say it against them, you know what I'm going to say, our planning department has worked magic on this. They have and our leadership has also, you know, they really do tremendous job with community outreach. And there's some community advocacy groups, including a woman named Bev Brody who heads up a group called Get Fit Kauai. I don't know if you've ever met Bev, but she is a firecracker. And so we do things over the past several years, we've had these things called the Rice Street Block Party and have a big festival in the street. And everybody, including all the businesses, get out there and we have additional street vendors and it's really a big celebration in the town. And so it's an opportunity to talk about like this kind of shift that's happening and what we're going to be doing. There's quite some resistance. There's always some people that are holdouts and think that the old way was better. But by and large, it's very well received. And I think businesses are very excited. You know, there's a little brew pub in Lihui now that's been there for a few years and they are very much kind of our little model citizen in terms of having a little sidewalk space out of the brewery and they've done some great work in one of the parks right downtown and they've really taken ownership of that and the improvements that are happening there right now. Myriad of things that are happening. Last time we did the block party, one of our community groups put together an artist exhibit. So they had street art and they painted this beautiful mural across one of the temporary construction fences in front of one of the buildings being renovated. So this was at the block party. Everybody's watching and they're kind of watching these images come to life. It was pretty magical. So tremendous amount of support, tremendous amount of work, can't give enough credit to the people who have held this vision for so long and as a resident of downtown Lihui, I live, you know, I live 500 yards from here where I'm sitting in my office and it's right in the thick of the very excited to see my neighborhood transform and really thankful that all the people that have contributed to it over time and just being able to be here to see it manifest. Well next time we have you on the show we'll make sure the planners are invited too so they get to get some of the credit but thanks for giving them some credit. I know they're the kind of folks that are behind the scenes and don't ever get much recognition but you're right, you know, city planners do an awful lot of thinking and it takes an awful lot of work to get things through all the wickets that they have to go through to make them happen so yeah, we got to recognize them and give them some credit. How about the bikes? Are you doing anything with bikes over there besides putting in more bikeways? Are there good rentals now and things like that? So there's definitely some great rental shops, mostly the ones that I've been wherever on the east side along the path. There's certainly kind of the normal bike rental places around town that are around the island as far as kind of, you know, adventuring for tourists that want to go mountain biking but specific to transportation like a bike share, there's nothing yet. We're very interested in and I guess what I would call shared use mobility broadly, you know, so it's a little tricky here because we don't have the population density you folks have over there with, you know, that beaky system that I love every time I come to Honolulu but we are definitely looking under every rock and talking to community partners about how we can stand up some innovations in terms of shared use mobility whether it be scooters or bikes or you name it, you know, car share, anything we can do and part of the discussion is how do we how do we give tourists the choice so when they get off the plane at the airport instead of just running a car for a whole week, how do we give them the opportunity to consider going to their hotel on a shuttle and then just, you know, maybe they run a car one day because they want to go Honolulu around the whole island but maybe the rest of the day they can just go in here, take a shuttle there and enjoy themselves without being saddled with having to park things that come with it. Yeah, I don't know what would take to get a beaky system over there. I do know that the foreign trade zone here we have a whole bunch of bikes sitting there waiting to clear the foreign trade zone because it was one of those bike share programs that's not like beaky they just they don't have any stands or anything they're just the bikes and I guess they're GPS tracked and things and you get your cell phone and you just jump on the bike and take it and then you drop it off and get charged a fee for however far you go or whatever. Anyway, they're still negotiating with the city over here but maybe they should be talking to you I don't know if they have to have a certain number of bikes or whatever to make it worthwhile but that sounds like a good opportunity if I I'll send that over to David Skikink at the foreign trade zone if those guys want to start talking to the county of Kauai about the bikes. I think we have some of the similar issues as a matter of fact I think there's some bills in the ledge this this session that really start to define you know what these things are and where they go you know one of the things that I've heard from a lot of our planners in their forefront is designating spaces for them to park and and understanding what the rules of the road are do they go on the bike path on the sidewalks and you know depending on what the device is and those are really important questions so I think these are challenges that communities are working out all over the country and I'm confident that we'll get it right and take a little time. Okay we're going to take a quick break here and we'll be back with Ben Sullivan in a few seconds and a little bit more time talking about Kauai the utility over there and what they've been doing because they really are on the cutting edge of renewable energy being integrated into their their system and they're way ahead of the rest of the state so we'll catch up with Ben on that after the break. Hey loha my name is Andrew Lanning I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Kauai live from the studios I'll bring you guests I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe your co-workers safe your family safe to keep our community safe we want to teach you about those things in our industry that you know may be a little outside of your experience so please join me because security matters Aloha. Aloha and Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii with Think Tech Hawaii we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday we invite you to listen watch for our mission of empowerment we aim to enrich and lighten educate entertain and we hope to empower again Maraming, Salamat Po, Mabuhay and Aloha. Hey welcome back to Stanley Energy Manson an awesome man here on my lunch hour as usual talking to another government employee over on the island of Kauai Ben Sullivan who does their sustainability and energy coordinating for the county and we haven't talked to him for about a year and we got him back on and I'd like to spend the rest of the time talking a little bit about their publicly electric utility it's really a great model and I know Ben you know talked about what they've done and where he started them getting into the sustainability with the electric utility over there but they're I think close to 50% intermittent renewables if I'm not mistaken is that about right Ben? Well the only thing you have wrong standards I don't think they're called intermittent renewables anymore because they got all that storage that goes with them so actually we are we are over 50% and the it seems like the magic these days with the with the utility staff is to put in solar plus storage projects and I think they've done let me see they've done two projects with a whole lot of storage and they have a third one in the pipeline and then prior to that there's a number of other solar farms that had storage components but weren't quite load shifting they were just they were more frequency regulation as far as I understand it but yeah overall amazing work these projects are going in substantially less than the avoided cost of petroleum generation so we are all very lucky as cloth owners to be on the receiving end of some of those savings and also you know hitting hitting some of our goals as far as reducing our emissions and all the other important stuff that goes along with it Yeah I'm not sure if Hawaiian Electric takes your island into account when they talk about renewable energy on the utility grids in Hawaii but I think they're capitalizing off all the work that you guys are doing but yeah I mean the I tell people that stored energy is based you know firm power and you're right so the intermittent the solar and the wind and things like that if you don't have energy storage you just basically have a really tough to manage grid stabilization problem but you get enough storage on the grid and now you've got some firm power that you can your utility can use to flex up and down and the batteries are pretty pretty quick reacting so you know you can react to surges and stuff off the top of your head do you remember about how big of a generation load they have average for the day is it you know 50 megawatts or so I think you know historically it's always hovered around 75 megawatts okay as a peak as a system peak certainly there's there's ups and downs and seasonal variations in that but that's an evening peak typically so I think it comes up and no I don't want to I don't want to speculate I know I know it's you know it comes up for maybe 40 50 megawatts in the middle of the day and then it then it peaks up in the evening and then it comes back down pretty quickly so actually a lot of these recent solar farms my understanding from KIC's engineers is they have been using them both to generate during the day and as they as they kind of fill in the daytime space as far as their available load they've also been using the batteries to shift to the night to the evening peak so they they start for you know a short period after the sun is shining and they dump that energy into the evening peak you know from day five to nine p.m. Yeah the engineers that we have working on our Hickam microgrids you know it's it's really fascinating to talk to them and see the challenge that they have to balance it and Hawaiian electric engineers too it's not as easy as people think especially you know when you have unstable weather clouds coming over rain for three or four days in a row the solar is not picking up as much energy as it would normally and the batteries and other storage have a lot of work to do and they don't just store energy they help smooth out the power they help take shock loads that come in when some a short or something or big big motors all kick in at once from big air conditioning units and pull a lot of amps out of the system that storage is really important so at 75 megawatts that's a pretty respectable I'm sure the duck curve is real similar to a while who's in terms of the evening peak there's what's the plan is there well number one is there any hydroelectric you know you guys do have some waterfalls and some you know I made a canyon do you you have any hydro electric at all so there is some hydroelectric and a lot of it is is like a run of river run of ditch projects that have been around for you know coming on a hundred years in some cases and even a little bit more there's also some work that's being done with with multiple parties I think especially on the west side to either add capacity to existing projects or to actually put in new projects so the project KC has been working really really hard on and I give them a lot of credit because they've just hanging in for years and years and working with community and trying to work through the issues that are always challenging with regards to water access is that you know there's a pump storage proposal for the west side that they've been working really hard on so that again involves photovoltaics for generation but instead of using batteries for storage in that case you would use the water so you pump the water uphill in the middle of the day when you are making energy with the sun and then when you need it some other time you let the water fall back down and you run it through a turbine that's a good segue into what I was going to bring up next which is other than batteries which kind of fall into a I would call the lower power shorter duration storage storage systems you have up in the right corner where it's higher voltage and longer duration you have pumped hydro you have hydrogen you have maybe even natural gas compressed air believe it or not is one of the options so you're obviously looking at the pumped hydro which is basically maybe building a small reservoir pumping the water uphill and then running it back through turbines at night is KUC looking at anything like hydrogen or flywheels or anything else to be used for energy storage so it's funny Stan I don't this is going to sound crazy but I don't talk to them as much as I used to because they're doing so well we just you know our primarily role here is to get out of their way I'm also you know I want to mention I'm really lucky one of the things that happens when you have a cooperative is that there's a natural cycling of board members through the community so we you know we've been a cooperative since 2002 of a member of the board of directors serves for three years and then they may run for reelection but a lot of times they'll just serve for a term or two and then they'll just kind of go off and return to their normal routine but those people become you know basically ambassadors and what's really interesting is that we now have we have our mayor who used to serve on the KUC board in Mayor Kawakami we have Senate President Ron Kochi who used to serve on the KUC board we have myself we have a number of other people position throughout the community you have a really solid understanding at least at a high level of how the utility works and what their constraints are and I think it lends a lot of ability to them to be able to communicate and to be able to move on projects you know because they basically have allies who to some extent speak their language I want to be really careful I'm not an expert in utility operations I just have the privilege of learning from them for three years but I think I think that's that's something that may be overlooked in terms of one of the benefits of a cooperative is that you get this pool you build this this kind of automatic base of resources in terms of your network just as a function of bringing people through your board and having them learn and experience and understand in a very direct way what the challenges are and the constraints and all that kind of stuff he sounds like maybe I got to get somebody from my office to come over there and and meet with your folks and talk to him a little bit about hydrogen storage because that would also help get electric vehicles going on the island too and and help out in that direction amen amen fan always always happy to learn we are very excited about electric vehicle opportunities actually love to talk about that for a few minutes okay well we'll talk to my staff about that maybe we never seem to get to kawaii we always seem to get to Maui or the big island but but not kawaii and I use to spend a lot of time on kawaii so I'd like to get over there anyway it's nice to have the corporate background um and that brings up another question I had with with the folks that have that have lived there their whole lives or lived there a good portion of their lives and having the utility background now does the utility seem a little bit more resilient to the occasional hurricane or storms and and floods and things like that that happened I mean are those things being built into the system now that you have people that are actually live live there helping run the system um you're getting into an area that's a little bit up above my pay grade okay I want to be careful um I I I know a little bit from being on the board and you know one of the things I know is that certainly the rebuild after an icky um created a lot of resilience just in terms of how when the when the grid system was rebuilt it was you know rebuilt more solidly than it had been previously and I do know also that they spend a lot of time thinking about you know impact and resilience and and that goes all the way through you know they just went through that whole thing in in April of last year with the floods and are constantly trying to improve their system um I do know that they're you know they look very seriously at wind loading for the PV farms um because obviously we now have a lot of our energy generation in photovoltaics and so what happens in the next hurricane but I think there's you know some extent there's a we don't know what's going to happen in the next hurricane because we haven't been to a hurricane and had five you know 20 megawatt PV farms as as vulnerability before so um we'll see you know I don't think they're going to I don't think the panels are going to go flying but you know one of the hurricane is basically a an extended period of of large objects flying through the air right and the large objects that run in that kind of smash into your infrastructure are the things that do damage yeah so so who knows okay well believe it or not Ben we blasted through 30 minutes already and I appreciate you getting this up to speed and what's happening out there in the western state of Hawaii and in the wild wild west of Kauai say hi to all my friends in the in the guard over there up on Mount on Kokei and um and help I hope you get to be on the show and bring some of your planners in the next couple months we'll get you on the show again that sounds like a lot of fun thank you Stan okay then Aloha we'll see you next time and uh everybody out there see you next Friday on Stan the Ridgeman Aloha