 So, and welcome to PowerUp Hawaii where Hawaii comes together to walk towards a clean, renewable and just energy future. I'm your host, Raya Salter. I'm an energy attorney, clean energy advocate, and community outreach specialist. I'm also the principal attorney of Imagine Power LLC. Today, I'm really excited we're going to talk about electric vehicle infrastructure in particular, fast charging electric vehicle infrastructure. I think anybody who's been an early adopter of electric vehicles on the islands has identified with some of the challenges in terms of want to own it, love to own it, but it can be challenging and you have to put extra time and planning into actually charging your vehicle. And some of the other benefits that we're looking forward to and towards informed in terms of having an actual battery that can be used to make potential income seems just so, so very far away. Today I'm here with Toby Kincaid. He is the CEO of Solardyne and he is the author of an interesting, awesome, informative book called Fast Charge that's available on Amazon and really talks about the fast charger work that he is doing here and how this technology can help Hawaii and how electric vehicles and electric vehicle infrastructure can help transform our electricity system to make it have a smaller footprint, to be carbon free and less toxic and more economically viable. So thank you so much and welcome to you, Toby. Good to be with you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so glad to have you here. I've enjoyed reading your book so much because I feel like it really touches on the different points that are really matter in terms of how we can move towards electrification of the transportation system, why it's important, why it matters. You cover some of the amazing history of the electric vehicle and I think for anybody who might be interested in getting involved in your work, you know, this is a way to find out about it and perhaps invest or participate. But maybe before we dig in to all that, I know that you're based in Oregon, Portland, Oregon. Yes. And you are an inventor. Yes. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I go way back in the 80s. Solar energy, when you grow up in Oregon, we don't have a lot of sun. So we really appreciate it when we do have it. And what's amazing is that it's already distributed to everyone around the world and it's incredibly potent. So why don't we use it? Now back in the old days, solar panels were very, very expensive and everyone was trying to leverage those prices down. But now in 2017, we have very inexpensive solar. In fact, solar panels used to be the most expensive part of a solar power plant. Now it's the least expensive. We put far more money in the deployment structure. So the world has changed and this disruptive technology, which from the market, they might be a little hesitant because a disruption kind of displaces the normal players. But for the consumer, it's a gold mine. Well, let's go ahead and talk about fast charge and some of this fast charge infrastructure. I think we may have a photo or two. Okay, all right, we can forget the photos. But really what we've got here, and you can even see here, is an actual canopy that goes over the car in this sort of this freestanding or standalone charging station. I've seen canopies like this. I saw some several years ago in San Diego at a San Diego gas and electric like demonstration laboratory or something and I thought, why don't we have more of these? So maybe if you could tell us about this technology, about what you're doing and why it's important. Very good. Well, you know, everyone drives a car. We have a billion of them on the planet and we burn liquid fuels. And the whole business structure goes back 100 years. And it's interesting that in the oil industry in the very beginning, it was kerosene. It had nothing to do with internal combustion. But in 1892, Rockefeller's world fell apart because Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse electrified Chicago's world fair and everyone saw these beautiful lights. God left it going to fly on the wall when the board of directors, when everyone said, look, the kerosene business is going to grow out because of the obvious advantage of electricity. So Rockefeller was really shaken up and in this moment he did this incredible pivot and he realized kerosene is over. We're going to go into the next big thing, which is transportation fuel. And from that moment on, he was bent on applying his evil genius to selling you a fish to sell you liquid fuels. But it's really kind of unwieldy in the 21st century because imagine transporting liquid fuels all the way around the world to sell to someone. So it's really a commodity-based model for them. Unfortunately, we have a lot of toxic impacts, but it's the economics that are really going to drive it. Now with solar energy, since it's available everywhere, the new big frontier I believe is the parking lot. We have 13,000 square miles of parking lot in the United States. Well, I think that's really important is to think about how, yes, we know that electric vehicles can use less fossil fuel and that's a good thing and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and that's a good thing. And hopefully we could be less susceptible to price volatility and that's a good thing. But certainly here in Hawaii, as much as it's a good thing to sort of get our carbon footprint down, sort of emissions into the air, we're sort of not really putting our fair share. When I think about technologies like this and about electric vehicles, how can electric vehicles actually sort of improve the lives of everyday people who live in Hawaii? Right. Well, an electric car is only as clean as the charging source. So if you're burning coal or fossil fuels, you've kind of displaced the pollution, but we haven't eliminated it. So what's neat about these solar canopies is when you place them in the parking lots, the whole economics changes because you can charge where you park. So it's at your destination. You don't need to deviate to a gasoline station. And this has a big economic impact in Hawaii. I believe you import something like half a billion gallons of fuel. So nearly $2 billion, $2,000 million every 12 months goes out of Hawaii. And there's really no reason for it. Now today's electric cars are, they're fantastic. They have instant torque, great performance, they're safer. The only little issue is range. So if we can establish an infrastructure that's distributed, that'll allow people to tap into it and monetize these wonderful parking lots, which for now are really being wasted. It's kind of the most undervalued asset in the country. So let's do a double use. Let's provide these canopies and shade the car. And so it's more comfortable for the car instead of just baking an asphalt parking lot. Now we can actually access this incredible resource. The sun is tremendously valuable. It sounds like what you're saying is that this is an opportunity on a couple levels. Not only can it help reduce the state's reliance on fossil fuel and provide energy independence and hopefully one would think much lower costs for a car owner who's compared to gas or I would hope. But there's also an economic opportunity for a small business person, a corporation who might want to take advantage of the technology to sort of use what could be an underuse asset or an asset that is used but could perhaps be used in a more valuable way. Absolutely. With a parking lot when we install these clean energy charging stations, then the mall could say, hey, why don't you come to our place of business or our restaurant and you can charge up while you're having a meal or doing your shopping. And this is extremely convenient. At the moment, we're kind of looking around for charging stations, but you have so many parking lots. You know, Google Maps, a wonderful thing. I can peer down like it's some kind of something. And as I see all the parking lots, there's just a large area that's just underutilized. So by placing these pre-engineered, ready to drop and play this infrastructure, we can bypass all of the idea of where oil came from. And originally, at sunlight, plants grew and it takes about 100 acres for 100 years to make a barrel of oil. So instead of the earth and putting time and pressure on this biomass to pyrolyze it into a valuable resource, we can just bypass all of that and simply go from photons to fast charge. So why don't you go ahead and talk a little bit about how the fast charger works and how long does it take? How long is a fast charge? Right. Well, charging an electric car is all about voltage. Voltage is kind of electrical pressure. So when you just have a single line, single phase, that's 120 volts. That may take you 8 to 10 hours to charge. So the next level up is 220 volts and that's called level 2. And that'll get you down to 4 hours to charge up. But fast charge uses the higher voltage, 440, 480, and we can do the entire charge in about 15 minutes. Wow. Very fast. That is huge. I feel like that would be... How does that compare? Are there chargers here? And trust me, we do not. I know for sure. I don't have an electric vehicle, but I know people will do. So I know we do not have enough charging infrastructure on this island or other island. That's why I'm here. But are there other chargers that do charging in the similar speed that are here already? There are a few. Most of them are level 2. And the problem is when you're taking it from the grid, you have to have the infrastructure to handle that high voltage and high demand. And Hawaii had one of the original grids ever built. So your infrastructure is, well, often very old. And so the fear is that they would have to have an upgrade to be able to provide that fast charge. So what I'm hearing is that what's one of the big differences is that this is a standalone unit that takes power from the sun or a battery and can do this high voltage without necessarily being connected to the grid or having to interconnect in a way for it to supply the power. That's right. It's an independent standalone system. Now you could connect to the grid and because we have a battery, we could dispatch that energy if the system operator running the grid says, hey, we need more energy. That's fine. But the fact is we really don't need the grid. And that's freedom. That's independence. I almost wanted to call these freedom stations. But Hans Vandermeer, the brilliant engineer who designed these beautiful canopies, he calls these an ETM, an energy transfer merchant. Yes. They play on the ATM. So yeah, I saw that, that ETM. And I think it's really interesting because as we know in Hawaii we talk a lot here, especially on ThinkTech about grid modernization, smart grid, transactional energy, all these big topics about how we can sort of do better with our energy. And reading about the ETM, it sounds kind of cool because it sounds like this technology is able to sort of do some conducting and sort of what are the most available resources and maybe theoretically the most cost effective resources at any given time for the car and maybe potentially to sell back. Could you actually, like we were five years old, break down a little bit about the ETM? Well sure. I mean, when you go to a gas station, you're paying for the energy that you're putting into your car and that you can use them. This ETM is really kind of a power management system or an energy management system. So it's constantly looking at what available resource do we have with solar? What's the state of charge in the battery? What does the car require? And if connected to the grid, does the grid need some energy? But we really are not drawing from the grid so much that we can provide to the grid if you should need it. So in this way, we're kind of touching on these different formally kind of independent topics but all into one hardware. So we're combining power production, which is clean, transportation fast charge and because I have a power supply, I can run a wireless network and provide free internet. You probably have to watch a 10 second ad or something, but we can create an emergency and ongoing ability to provide energy not only for those uses, but in fact if you had a natural disaster and your grid went down, now you have a backup power supply and we're adding all the different ports. You can charge wheelchairs, e-bikes, USB ports. So if you're ever in trouble or ever in a situation where you need energy and the grid is unavailable, this is kind of almost an emergency power supply as well as focused on providing fast charge for cars so that you go where you're going to go anyway, you don't deviate and you can just simply plug in and do what you're doing. 10 minutes is really fast. So we are about to take a break. We will be right back with more with Toby Kincaid and the fast charge technology on power of Hawaii. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. 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. And you'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 2 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science. With me, your host Ethan Allen. Aloha. I'm Kawe Lucas, host of Hawaii is my mainland. Here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 3 p.m. We address issues and importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated land mass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3 p.m. Mahalo. Hello, and welcome back to power of Hawaii where Hawaii comes together to walk towards a clean, renewable and just energy future. I'm here with Toby Kincaid, inventor and author of fast charge. And we've been talking about really what is a fast charging DC solar canopy with batteries that has the ability to charge your electric vehicle in 15 minutes and also has a energy management system that can potentially be a source of energy back to the grid. And it can also draw from the grid. So this is an interesting technology. Thank you so much Toby for talking with us. And I really, I think there's, as we were saying before, there's such a need for fast charging in Hawaii. And I know I said already, but early adopters of electric vehicles, I think really have to go above and beyond to have the confidence that they're going to have the charge to get where it is that they're going. And to be frank, it's a bit of a, for people who are active and get around, like to take trips to the North Shore, may get stuck in this legendary traffic, I want to say it's going a bit above and beyond to have to figure out how to charge. So I really think we've talked about different types of charging technologies. I personally, we always, as an advocate, you want to be technology agnostic, so I'm not trying to push any particular technology on folks. But what I really like about what you're doing is really providing potentially an excellent business opportunity for folks. And one thing that I think has been really present in the dialogues here and in New York and other parts of the country in terms of grid modernization is how can we get consumers involved? How can we get private capital involved? How can we get new markets for, you know, energy goods and services? And so I feel like here is just a very tangible one that potentially, you know, any individual could look into. So I'd like to, if you could begin to speak to the business opportunity in different facets of it. Very good. You know, profit is the key. If I can be profitable to everyone, profitable for the EV driver by lowering their costs in decreasing rather their range anxiety because we place them everywhere. I also think that the profit stream should go to the parking lot owner. We should cut them in, give them a royalty. When we build these stations, the infrastructure will last 30 years. So if we pay you 50 cents an hour for every hour being charged for 30 years, it adds some incentive. Now, the big question in debate is how do you pay for this transition from fossil fuel to clean energy? And the cost of something depends on how you pay for it. You know, when you lease a car, you don't walk in with a suitcase full of money. And who pays for it? And who pays for it, right? Exactly. So when you buy something new, you don't just walk in with a bunch of cash. You pay $2.99 a month. And that equipment lease financing model is very interesting because you use an underwriter to come up with the capital. That way we don't have a big upfront cost. But we pay a monthly lease fee for 60 months. So after five years, it's paid down. And because it's solar and solid state, there really isn't too much maintenance involved. So that money component goes away in terms of the cost. The other nice thing about parking lots is a big question is, where are you going to put all this infrastructure? You know, you don't have a lot of land on this island. In fact, we don't want to touch any land. We just want the parking lot. Why? Because it's there. And it happens to be where all the drivers are going. So it's a distributed approach where usually when we think of the utility, it's an old hundred year model where it's just commodity based. You just have a centralized power plant and you distribute that energy over transmission and distribution lines and then down to the user. So again, there's many streams of business model and profit motivation and business products that come out of this. So one is what I think you're beginning to get to is what happens when you have an actual network of these charging stations of, I don't know what critical mass may be in this case, and owned by similar people, different people, different folks are in the game. You've got your investors. You've got your parking lot owners. There may be some other people who are in the game too, maintenance people. So one of these things is what happens when you can aggregate that the technology or use it as a, not a clump, as a group. Why don't you tell us about that, what that value proposition means? Well, sure. Yes. And you're getting to a good point. The capitalization, the capex of a cost of equipment is very prohibitive because you're paying for everything up front. So by going to this underwriter, the underwriter comes up with the capital cost and they get paid back 50% on top of their money in five years. That's a 10% levelized return on investment, and they own the title to the equipment until you pay them off, just like the car that you would lease. So it's a collateralized package on top of making a good return. So we can actually leverage the capital that you have here in other places. They put it to work and putting the station, and because of the cash flow from the ETM, they can siphon off not only the payment, but as well a profit for the other players. And so doing, it takes that burden off of trying to pay back that capital investment. So there's that piece of it in terms of any individual investor, but I'm thinking about what happens when, well, okay, so maybe it's when you have a critical mass of these technologies, then there is an ability to aggregate, and maybe it's the vehicles themselves that can aggregate. Oh, that's an interesting point. That's what I was trying to get at. Well, here's the thing, you know, back in the old days of solar energy, if we were building a solar power plant, we're only thinking of who do we sell that electricity to? And that is, of course, a utility, and they give you a power purchase agreement, a PPA. But the utilities are really pushing that price down, and if you look at the margin that a solar provider can get from a power purchase agreement, it's very small. For example, if we take 30 kilowatt hours, and if I were to sell that to a grid, what would I make? Maybe half a penny per kilowatt hour, so about 15 cents. How does this change? Okay. So the epiphany for me was, instead of selling solar electricity, let's sell what it does. So by monetizing the car, we're going to have a fleet of cars, let me call island cars or something to that effect, where people can actually rent the car by the minute. Everything included, unlimited charging, unlimited range, and you have these beautiful cars. Now when you monetize the car, and not the station, by bringing them together as one package, the earnings are $20 for that same 30 kilowatt hours. So would you rather get paid 50 cents or 15 cents or $20? So there's a natural incentive to kind of combine the infrastructure and the cars together. So it's kind of a new leasing company that we're going to create for the cars, but we're going to rent them by the hour. That I think, I think I know there's been some of that in terms of like what in New York we've got zip cars, and there's some of that happening here, and I think that it would, certainly something I would like to use if it were more popular and more widely available. And 100% clean. And 100% clean, which definitely matters a lot. What about some of the other business opportunities in terms of the internet and advertising that happens at that sort of face-to-face customer level at the canopy, I guess. Great point. Because no, that is the business model. It's not just one income. It's 17 incomes. So we're going to have a smartphone app that I can monetize. So you'll get not only free internet from the station itself, you might have to watch a little ad, but you'll get the free access, and everyone would like that. But you have all of these different income streams by monetizing the communications network. So it's power, transportation, and communications all in one universal platform. So that's where it really, I think, will shine. And because you have so many parking lots everywhere, a distributed model works as a network. You need lots of them. So by making them available, and you have the space, you have the sunlight, you have the resources, and you have the need. So we bring that all together and make sure everyone who interfaces the parking lot owner, the EV car owner, and the station underwriter all make their part. And because the sun, you know, is reliable, I mean, even though it's variable, it is coming up every day. The underwriters know that, you know, they're really not taking a risk on some remote oil well that might be in a very, you know. Yeah, where you have to deal with the price volatility. How can a car owner seek to get, you know, value ads from this? Right. Well, the ownership model is how we all operate. I mean, everyone, take an Uber driver. He has to, he or she, has to pay for the car, pay for the fuel, pay for the new tires and the oil changes and everything. And the whole burden is on the Uber driver. Well, their model is interesting because they're a $70 billion market cap. That's twice the value of Ford, for example. And they don't own a single car and they don't have a single employee. They're all contract workers. That's brilliant, but it's also their vulnerability because a guy like me or others can come in and offer the cars to the drivers at much less rate than they pay just independently. So it becomes less an ownership model and turns into an access model. Explain that. Now, does that work, does that analogy continue in the Uber model? Or is there, explain how that would be disruptive to a sharing economy model. Well, now the burden is on you to pay for everything. Everyone has to pay everything. Meaning, be the Uber driver. The driver, right. I mean, it's a little bit of a, yeah. Even just if you own your own car, you are paying for everything. So we're going to come in and provide the platform. Theoretically, sorry, sorry, sorry, continue. No, no, no, go ahead and tell me what it is, don't let me get it wrong. By providing the car and the fuel charging stations in the network, you're only paying one price for everything. And now an Uber driver or Lyft driver or a personal driver knows what their cost is. There's no vulnerability, they didn't have to capitalize it. You didn't have to go in debt to get a larger car or support all of the infrastructure that you need for the car in terms of the oil changes and all the other parts and maintenance that you need to do. And it's amazing that the combustion engine car has over 2,000 moving parts. An electric car has 20. So instead of 20 cents per mile as a maintenance cost, it's really only two cents. Now, is this something, this is something that interests me about these conversations too. Can we see, will we see a price for charging, you know, for fast charging that is very inexpensive, potentially even nominal, or are we looking at folks who's trying to get a business model that just nips right below at the cost of oil? Well, if we package it properly, we're a clear winner. And we're a clear winner because the driver decides, am I going to go fill up with gasoline and still buy into this whole model of this commodity based? Or do they go with our network with the cars and just have one flat rate? You're done. So there's no vulnerability there. And that's the incentive and that's the interest. If it's profitable for the driver, we win. All right, well, I want to say we're just about to the end of our time together. So fast. Thank you so much, Toby. I've just enjoyed you so much. And I think what you're doing is so interesting. If you're interested in hearing more, I think you can download, fast charge the book and hear a lot more about what we're talking about here from Amazon, amazon.com. That's right. So that is goodbye and thank you for another edition of Power Up Hawaii, Mahalo and Aloha.