 And welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. You may notice I'm wearing my shades today because it's so sunny out there and all my Canadian classmates once again, eat your hearts out. You could be here too. So this show is sponsored by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum who has been in existence for almost 18 years and what the Policy Forum does, it looks for good and for bad policy. We support good policy in the energy field and we oppose bad policy or at least comment on bad policy. I don't want to use the word oppose, I'm sorry. And try to get the best possible energy policies for the state of Hawaii. And the Policy Forum is funded by my company or my organization, the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, who provides the funding for this show. So today we're going to talk about the electrification of transportation. And we're delighted to have two of the key people from Hawaiian Electric here today to talk about it. First of all, Michael Cologne. Michael, welcome to the show. Hello. Thank you for having me. We're both on the screen. And I'm going to get this right. Pam, Anacol, Tamma Chot. Very good. I came close. Very good, very good. And she's a senior program manager in the electrification of transportation department, I'll call it. So let me start off with you, Michael. Can you just give us an overview of the overall electrification of transportation program so that people actually know what it is and where can they find it if they wanted to read it or get smart on it? So as you know, electric vehicles have grown here in Hawaii tremendously over the last about seven or eight years. And Hawaiian Electric has viewed that as an opportunity to continue in growth, new growth opportunity to support this new load that's coming on. So as of a couple of years ago, Hawaiian Electric created a new department called electrification of transportation. Company had been previously providing charging solutions but has formalized that. So what do you mean by charging solutions? I'll interrupt you from time to time just so that the general public understand what you're saying. So we've provided time and use rates for residential home charging, your vehicles as well as a pilot for public charging at our fast charging stations, which we have right now about 18 across the service territory, including Oahu, Maui County, and the Big Island. So you do all the island, all the, correct. So when you say fast charging, what does that actually mean? Fast charging is kind of a loose term for there's, generally speaking, there's about three levels of charging. There's level one, which is your home plug. And there's level two, which is about double the speed of that. And then level three is or fast charging is usually a utility or high capacity charging. Ours are 50 kilowatt hour charging, which is pretty fast. You can get for the old Nissan Leafs, the original Nissan Leafs, you could get about full charge with about 30 minutes charging. So it's pretty fast. So they take what, about 25 kilowatt hours to charge them up? Yeah, it's fast. Yeah, it depends on the battery passing. Yeah, okay, where they're at. Yeah, so in addition to those two programs, the company created a new department, and from that department, we developed a strategic roadmap. And the strategic roadmap kind of identified our long term vision for electrification and designated some priorities, 10 initiatives, what we call them, that we will seek to implement over time. I won't go over all of them, but public education and outreach is very important. Teaching people about the benefits of electric transportation in terms of saving on overall fuel costs, reduced maintenance, as well as developing opportunities for public charging or fleets for less type fleets or just other kind of heavy duty when the technology becomes available. As well as developing solutions for workplaces and for multiple unit lines like condos and apartments where charging infrastructure is a little bit more difficult to get in because of just density and existing aging buildings and panel capacity. So helping address some of those concerns or provide solutions as we move forward. So those are all goals that we wanna undertake as we move forward. So Pam, where can we find the electrification of transportation strategy? It's on our website. So you can go to hego.com slash goeve, and then our strategic roadmap. So do you have to run the strategy by the PUC? Do they have an input into that or is it still too formative yet for the PUC to have to be concerned about? So for certain, most programs they would have comments on. But throughout all the programs that we do or starting to initiate, we include stakeholders, both internal, within one electric and external. Like partners that we work with. So we have basically garnered their feedback before and after we do any analysis or program design. So that we take into account all their concerns and we wanna make sure that we address everyone's concerns before we roll out our program. So when you talk about concerns, are there any like a top two or three concerns that people have that you've identified so far? And if so, I mean, how can we address those? I guess with the concerns like one was just quite obvious. Think of a strange anxiety. And people want to make sure that if we look at say the charging public fast charging pilot, people want to make sure that it covers where it goes, where it should go that covers all the whole island. If we want, if people want to make a round trip around the island, they could just do it seamlessly. They don't have to call a tow truck or anything. Another thing is usually a barrier is to like disadvantage low income, low to medium income community. So people want to make sure and also we want to make sure that it's equal access to everybody. So they are low income and disadvantaged. So how do you achieve equal access like the social equity kind of stuff? Because theoretically they don't have a lot of disposable income. So it's still a charge to them. They still have to pay for the electricity. True. Right. I think it's a combination. You can jump in at any time. It's a combination of efforts for sure. Like you said, it's the sticker price of the car. Most of them don't really even buy new cars. But then it's difficult at this time because the market is relatively new. So the used car market is not mature enough to have a lot of supply for people. And people still have fear of the battery. Like the life of it, the cost of it. Whether they buy the used EV and they are they going to have to pay. But then the battery cost has been declining over time. So eventually we'll get to that point. But what we could do right now and we are doing a lot of it is education and outreach. We have, if people don't know, they don't care about it. They're not going to consider it, right? So we have to put the word out that these are the benefits that you could get. We could be more dependent. Don't have to rely on fossil fuel in the future. So Michael, I'm not sure if this is true or not. Does the company have some incentive programs or actually purchasing vehicles? We do not. We have partnered with Nissan. They have a promotion that if you bring in an electric bill, any Hawaiian electric bill, then you can get a discount. But it's not funded by Hawaiian Electric. We view our we can be more effective in developing rates that incentivize good behaviors. We kind of get dual benefits of using more solar when the resource, which is our lowest cost resource, use that, incentivize that behavior and drive our incentive creation that way, as well as just developing and supporting infrastructure. That's one of the things that you would ask previously was about top consideration from stakeholders. Another one is just the need or demand lack thereof of charging infrastructure. So we kind of get that one along. So study drumbeat that we need more infrastructure. It doesn't have to be Hawaiian Electric. And we don't think we should be the only one providing the infrastructure. But there is a need and it's growing. And if you have a vehicle and you rely only on public charging, it's actually pretty difficult. Yeah, because in between just availability and working it into your schedule. Plus, you know, sometimes these machines are down. It's still an ace in technology. So some not just, you know, Hawaiian Electric machines, but everybody sometimes they don't work or whatever. And so being able to find reliable, consistent charging is a big challenge. So what about the people that just go up to the charger and charge the car and then just leave their car there? So like they kind of hog it for everybody else. Is there any way we can solve that problem? Sure. So we've learned a lot from places where there's a lot more electric vehicles out on the road, namely California and the West Coast States where they've had these kind of issues happening for a little bit longer than we have. And in those states, some of the charging structures for and what by charging mean the rate structure is designed such that if you fill up your vehicle and you're still plugged in, then you may switch over after a period of time to a rate. It's kind of a penalty rate to get you to disconnect. So there are other ways of managing that to mitigate that charger hogging. OK. So I noticed when I go to the airport, especially during storm season, like there's hundreds of electric vehicles parked there. Why is that? Is that because there's some incentives for electric vehicles just to park at the airport? Yes. Having just paid thirty six dollars for two days at the airport or this weekend. It's like pretty outrageous parking costs. So what's the deal for electric vehicle owners? So it's a nice benefit and it may have been an unintended consequence for the state. But right now you can get free parking at metered stalls at the state and county. And that also means other state facilities. So at the airport, there are no meters. So it's having the effect of people just parking their electric vehicle for as long as they want. Yeah. There's been a few attempts of the state to rectify that particular loophole. And I think a fair amount of airport employees have taken advantage of that because they never thought of just kind of parking. Flight attendants and everything like that. So you see a larger amount than you would on the road of EVs. And like there was just a whole row of Teslas the other day, you know, like really? So yeah, you count on people to figure out how to game the system. Yeah, it could be a car show. Yeah, really, yeah, too much. So how do you pay for this electricity? I mean, have you have you now got the idea? Have a credit card you put in the meter or like the charger? Or how does that work? What's the deal? So there are three ways you could you could pay for the charging stations or most charging stations as granted. There are some charging stations that are free. I think voters still provide free charging. There are there are a few on. It's a beautiful. They have a beautiful place. Don't they? That was done by University of Hawaii engineering students. Oh, I didn't know they started that out. I mean, you know, they came up with the original concept across the passageway from why you should go up there sometime. The kids are out there at night building their racing cars and other projects. It's really fun to see that, you know, it gives us hope that the younger generation is going to be saving us in our old age. But anyway, sorry, I mean, I go off on a tangent here. And they're also the usual credit card. You can just swipe your credit card or there's an app. So like the charging stations has a different charging network. So, for example, we have green lots, a company calls green lots and up connect. So you can download their application on your phone and then, you know, enter in all the information they need. And then you pay through your app. I'll have you talk about the RFID card. Yes. So another method is through the same network provider. They will issue you a RFID card. So if you have you pay on your account and then you can just happen, initiate your charge session. And that's on our Hawaiian Electric. But a lot of them are that way. Not many other public charging use credit card. They usually require some kind of app interaction. So what about time of use rates? I refer to it. I don't know if that's actually come out yet. Has it or is that something that's, you know, it's getting ready to be launched. And in that case, if I have my card, can I like choose when I have my card charged with my credit card so I go for the lower rate? That's a good idea. And, you know, as far as rate design, those are kind of concepts that we would like to think about to make it more customer interactive. Right now, what we have are we do have a time of use rates. Our charging stations are actually on a time of use rate. They're designed to incentivize daytime charging when their solar production is at its highest and our cost of service is lowest. So it's the daytime is the lowest. Then we have a peak period, which is where everyone goes home. The evening peak. And that's our highest rate. And then overnight is somewhere in between. And that's so that's the time of use schedule. And that general format is applied across our residential rates as well. We have a residential time use rate, which you can use for your EV as well if you want to. So now it's time for a natural break. So we're going to have a one minute break while we have our little. Advertisement for other shows. The enemy. No, my colleague. So we'll break now and we'll be back in about one minute and I will have some more information. OK, thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years. And we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person and want to improve your life and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11 AM as we go beyond the lines on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Winston Welch, host of Out and About. It's a show that we have every other Monday on Think Tech Live here. We explore a variety of topics that are really interesting. We have organizations, events and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country and world. We've got some amazing guests on here like all the shows at Think Tech. So if you want to catch up on stuff, tune into my show every other Monday and other shows here on Think Tech Live. It's a great place to learn about stuff, to be informed. And if you have some ideas, come on my show. Let's talk about it. See you later. And Aloha. OK, we're back at Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm really happy to have two representatives from Hawaiian Electric, Mike Cologne and Pam. So I don't have to struggle over the last name. It's a great, beautiful, beautiful last name. Everyone's chuckles. Yeah, OK. So the first part of the show today, we talked about the electrification of transportation overall. And for the second half, I'd like to talk, we'd like to talk a little bit about the backbone strategy. And starting off with what is it, what is a backbone? What do you mean by that, that kind of terminology? OK. For the general public? Sure. They're not like. Yes. So looking forward, we wanted to identify future demand for charging infrastructure. So we wanted to forecast that demand through 2030. So this study undertook a forecast where we would look at that future charging demand and you serve that as a basis for how we propose to develop our own programs that flow out of it. So we identify the total need and then want to address some subset of that, which we called a backbone. And so it's a term that we we've clung to. It came out of our strategy document. And really, it just means, you know, a subset of the charging, total charging need that we will propose to address through Hawaiian Electric. So it doesn't also mean the grid itself. Like, I mean, getting down the basics, telephone poles with I don't know why they call it with wires and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you're going to have to really increase your generating capacity. And does the current infrastructure is able to support that? I mean, right now we only have like a few thousand vehicles. What happens when we have tens of thousands of vehicles and they all plug in at whatever time? And we can our current grid support it? And is this what this part of the study is all about? Right. Well, I think the beauty of it is that, you know, these things slowly growing. So we are learning through how we when while we're doing it, right? So we're working together with all the departments in the company to make sure that when we need the supply, it will be there. So we we're planning the grid to be able to support the electric vehicle that we forecasted to be in the future. And we're trying to leverage some of the technology down the road when the technology becomes available, we can leverage a vehicle because essentially it's a battery on wheels. There may be ways to integrate grid services, things that would actually help the grid, help the utility, manage the overall system using vehicle batteries and aggregate. So they call that vehicle to grid V2G. Yes. How about that? You know, my understanding, talking to my friends who have electric vehicles is that idea is a great idea from the point of view of system planners. Individual vehicle owners are always worried about the warranty on their battery. Like, you know, even though the grid would probably give them some kind of incentive to do that, they're still worried about how long their batteries are going to last and what the effect is. Do you have any comment on that right now? Or is it like too early? In terms of V2G. Yeah, V2G, like, you know, how deep have you dived into this? Yeah, so the technologies is still in like a really early stage. They like still doing research and like R&D on that. But then there has been a bunch of tests pilot in on the mainland. And it's more the problem. I think people have that concern already with or without the vehicle to grid idea, right? But then we, I guess we just technology will get there and then the benefit would always the cost at that point and with the declining cost of battery. And, you know, even OEM, all the dealerships are coming out of coming up with all these like innovative programs, lease battery, even like swap battery. So there are a bunch of these innovative ideas to tackle that problem. And there have been some studies to evaluate duty cycles and impacts of, you know, re-injecting the energy. And I said some of that preliminary studies have said the impacts have been minimal. There is some degradation in battery life, but it's minimal. So I think it is like as Pam mentioned, it's really early. So those that integration in that future state where the utility can just push a button and say, great, we can aggregate all this stuff. So let's use it. It's still a ways away. But we would like to obviously facilitate that, provide an opportunity and then make sure that our whatever we're deploying as far as infrastructure has that future capability or at least it's future proof enough that there's some communication opportunities so we can continue to lay the groundwork for that future state. Yeah, it's a really interesting concept. It's kind of very innovative. And like you said, it's still in the formative years and they've got a long way to go. I mean, people don't even know how long their batteries are going to last. You know, it's like, hey, I've got like six years on my battery and it's still going. Like I was driving a Prius this weekend on the Big Island. It's had 2004. And the thing is it's got 100,000 miles on it and it's still lugging away. I mean, no problem with the battery. Like amazing. Right. And that's 15 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really and this isn't a hot truck. Well, they live in Waimea, so it's like not necessarily that hot up there. But you know, the tropical environment does take a toll on that on battery life. So we do a lot of work at that at H&E Eye. We can talk about after the show. Great. Yeah. Battery life prediction and all that. So I'm what about photovoltaics? Like I have a neighbor who put a bunch of PV on his roof and he took great delight in watching his meter go backwards and he had a leaf and he was just like thrilled to death with this kind of thing. So you're getting the same response out of your customers or? Initially, the initial highest adopters of electric vehicles were people who already own PV systems on their home, which is great. But that generally indicates a certain level of means. And we want to provide access and opportunities to everybody. So not just people who can afford or have single family homes, but people who live in multiple unit dwellings and other types of living situations we could help foster. Because we believe there's actually a tremendous amount of pent-up demand. If there were more solutions for people who live in condos and apartments, I think we think that there would be much more electric vehicle adoption. So what about the GEMS program? I mean, you know, they put out this was a hundred million dollar fund and they've had a lot of problems deploying it so far. I mean, I would have thought that that's a great opportunity for Hawaiian Electric to, you know, support that and, you know, help finance particularly that is meant for lower income families. So what can you say about that? I used to be the administrator for Hawaiian Electric at the GEMS remittance program. So you're the right guy then. Yeah, GEMS is a great opportunity. They've in the last year and a half, they've really made great strides. They've developed an on-vill financing program for customers. So we think there's a great opportunity. We need to clarify a few policy kind of constraints right now in terms of, you know, that money was designated for energy efficiency programs. Electric vehicles increase loads. So there may be some question about aligning those two from a policy. But overall, it's ill-efficiency. Well, we're doing fossil fuel. Yes, that's decarbonization is what we're talking about. So we think as long as we can clarify that, there's tremendous opportunity to leverage the existing framework of GEMS for future opportunities. So what's your interface with the legislature been like? Are you getting good support from the political class or what? So the legislature has come around in the last couple of years. Previously, the prevailing perception was that electric vehicles were for the rich. And it to be honest, it played out that way with, you know, like we're talking about early adopters, a lot of Tesla drivers and stuff are fairly well off. But as we've provided more education and communication, more vehicle models have become available and continue to unroll, that that topic has kind of broadened. So people are much more open to the notion. They see the roles that various stakeholders in the community can play and see the opportunity. And then, of course, the tremendous growth potential and the alignment with other clean energy strategies that those two things kind of initiate. So this is the energy policy form show. So I'm not trying to be unfair. I know you guys might not be able to talk about what kind of policies you think are needed that should be implemented to help this transition. Is there anything obvious out there that we could be helpful by having some really, you know, new policies to support this? Absolutely. You know, we support all policies that seek to increase adoption, enable customer choice, in particular, things that would bring down the cost of vehicles, policy that would help bring more electric vehicles into the state and incentivize reuse of vehicles, incentivize second life battery. That would help the lower income. Yes, yes, incentivize infrastructure. So we currently have a bill that was passed this past year. It's a rebate for charging infrastructure. Expand the budget for that would be fantastic in the next cycle and then maybe an overall mandate. So other states have what's called a zero emissions vehicles mandate in California. We can't be part of that because of our air is actually too clean in this case. That's right. But it would be good if there were some sort of high level goal similar to the renewable portfolio standard that sets targets for that. So we would be in support of that. Have you heard about the transportation services contracting now that was passed last session? Essentially, it allows the county governments to have a public private partnership where the private company buys the vehicles and the county government just pays like a service charge, like miles, you know, cents per mile, passenger miles, if it was a bus, are you familiar with that? Yeah, and we think it's a good idea. Any way that you can help make upfront costs for transitioning or electrification or clean transportation more feasible, we think is, you know, explore those options. We're in favor of that. So maybe you're one of the subsidiary companies could be, you know, one of the investors in this stuff. That would really help a lot, possibly. Talk to someone else about that. Okay, sure. You get great ideas here, too. So anyway, thank you very much. Believe it or not, this is the end of the, you know, we're out of time and I really appreciate you guys coming down. And maybe we can have you back again whenever you want to get the, because this goes on YouTube and it goes basically, we hope, viral. So anyway, thank you very much, Pam. Thank you, Mitch. Great, and Michael. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. So, everybody, that's it. Our show for this Wednesday and we'll be back next Wednesday with another brilliant show. So thank you very much for watching Hawaii, The State of Clean Energy, and aloha.