 Houston trip has not quite worn off yet, so I'm still using a little bit of Texan here. So welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. This show is sponsored by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum with funding from the Hawaii Energy Institute, Natural Energy Institute, which I work for, so I should know that. It's been it off like really easily from HNEI as we call it. And I'm really pleased to have John Cole. He's one of our staff at HNEI. He's the HNEI senior policy analyst. Previously, John was the consumer advocate and was on the commissioner on the public utilities commission, the PUC. And he looks at stuff like the duck curve. So you may be wondering what is a duck curve? And that's why the topic for our show today is what is it and what can we do about it? So John, what is the duck curve and what can we do about it? Hi, Mitchell. Thanks for having me here today. I'll be glad to talk a little bit about it. What it is is it's just kind of a graph that shows a load profile, which means the energy being used over the course of a day, a typical day. And that changes depending on, you know, what's going on with energy. And if you can go ahead and show that first slide, I just like this is actually today's use of energy. The blue line on the larger side on the left is actually a load curve, we call it, or how much energy the utility has to make to serve its customer. That's the dark blue line. And the light blue line above that is a net load curve, which means what all of Oahu is using. So the space between those two is what's being produced on rooftops by solar energy and being used by those homes or businesses and the utility doesn't need to serve that. So the utility line is lower during those hours of the day when solar is producing. And what we mean by duck curve is that solar production that's being used at homes or businesses and doesn't have to be provided by the grid kind of pushes down what used to be a normal load curve of the utility before a lot of people started putting PV on their home. So it changes the load curve to have kind of a downward belly. We call it the belly of the duck during the day when solar is producing energy on the solar path. What's the problem with that? It's not necessarily a problem, but it can become a problem. With a load curve like that, there are certain things that affect the system. The system was built a long time ago. It was meant to push energy from the generating units, which were largely oil fired or coal fired in certain places and push it across the transmission line to end users at their homes or businesses. But with people actually producing their own energy, mostly with PV these days, it kind of changes the dynamics of the grid. And it makes it more difficult for the utility to supply what is being used by people. And by pushing down that load curve, it changes some of the things that the grid has to do. And I'll explain that a little bit. If you want to show the next slide just for a more quick description on what we're talking about. Those different colored lines from the blue at the top to the red at the bottom are a typical daily load curve for different years. And the red is 2017 and the top one, or highest one in the middle is 2013. So that's how a typical daily load profile has changed over the years. Like I said, the utility normally, you know, it goes from midnight to midnight again. But in the night hours, the load is relatively low. And it used to be it creep up in the afternoon and then the peak on the right is in the evening time, typically after the sun goes down like from five to nine o'clock at night. So when everybody goes home, flashes up the stove and all the other utilities, the computer. It takes showers. Hawaii has an evening peak. Some places on the mainland will have afternoon peak, but Hawaii where the climate is a little different and most people working go home and they put on their AC and start cooking and giving laundry and all those types of things that use energy have that evening peak. So the last line there was 2017. We're now in 2019. So is that belly getting even bigger or if we kind of slowed it down? It has slowed down a little bit in the last couple of years and that's because of some changes to the programs that the utility has for rooftop PV. I'll explain a little bit of that as we go on. I did want to show one other thing. The next slide is kind of the same thing, but the previous one was a whole system. It was actually a graph from the big island, but it's the same story for Oahu, this general shape. And this looks at just distribution circuit, which means the part that goes from an electric substation to the homes in various areas. So it's just one feeder or one distribution circuit. And the same thing happens on a circuit level, but what happens, as you can see on the bottom, because there's so much solar production during the daytime, people generally aren't home at that time, so their homes aren't using it and it goes back onto the grid. And when there's more than that whole circuit where all those homes in that neighborhood are using, it can push back through the substation and out into the bigger grid. And that's something the utility isn't used to. They have looked at ways to try to handle that and see if their system's okay, but it can cause some problems with voltage and flickering and some other issues at the home level, not the whole system itself. But one other issue it does cause is that there's so much PV on the system. If one of their thermal generators trips offline, a lot of that PV, because the frequency will dip, will also trip offline, making the situation worse. And that's why the utility and the Public Utilities Commission started looking at changing the programs for rooftop PV. The original program was net energy metering where folks could pretty much size their system to meet all of their energy needs over a course of a year and get a retail rate credit for that. But there were a few instances where it led to some of these issues. And it is only very few times over a year, so there's room on the grid for more PV, but the utility needed some way to be able to see and control and better manage what's going on. So that was some of the reason for the changes in those programs, and I can explain a little bit about that as well. Like I said, the original program was just called net energy metering. The commission ended that program, which basically was for a retail rate credit in late 2015, and put in place a couple of other programs. One is called a customer self-supply, where a customer can put solar on their roof, but they can't export any to the grid. So they would have to use everything that's being produced or dump it, basically. So that basically forced people to put less solar on their homes, because I mean they're not there a lot during the week, during the day, so they wouldn't overbuild because they can't export to the grid and they kind of be wasting the energy and the investment to do that. Another program that was brought up with that was to... It's almost the same as net metering, but the credit that you'd receive for exporting energy to the grid was lower than what your retail rate was, so people wouldn't overbuild their systems and because they're not making that type of money back, they're more careful about how they size things. And the commission put a cap on the amount of that that could go in, and that's been reached, and they've changed that program to something else called grid supply plus, which is the same. They actually lowered the rate of the credit a little bit, but they also are requiring inverters. They have some more advanced inverters now that are capable of controls, so they are requiring, in addition to that lower rate, that those systems have these advanced inverters that would give the utility the capability to see what's going on and control some of that PV at the home in certain circumstances, which at this time don't happen very often. Like shutting it off so they can't discharge, they can't export. It wouldn't cause problems under certain grid conditions. So now we have battery storage as well. Is that something you're going to talk about? Yeah, and there's a third program I want to talk about that's in place now called Smart Export, where you can have solar on your home, but you can't export to the grid during basically the highest solar hours. I think it's from 9 or 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon. So most people who take that program put in storage so that they can store that energy and then use it later in the evening or overnight. So that's another way that they've been addressing that duck curve or keeping it getting a lot worse. And I guess we'll go to one more slide. These are the various programs. I'm not going to go over those, but I just described them. And if you could just go to the next one. This is showing the number of solar systems that went in per year. And as you can see, the last bar is just the year to date, so we'll ignore that one for now. But over the years from 2017 to 18, the increase in the number of systems or megawatt total that has gone in reduced quite a bit from what it had been earlier. I mean you can see it rose exponentially for a while and now it's kind of flattening out a little bit there. So yeah, these programs are kind of slowing down that duck curve and because the incentives were so great for people to put solar in, everybody was jumping on it if they could afford that investment. Because economically it's kind of a no-brainer. It was kind of a payoff for that net metering program where you get a retail rate very short, two to three years. Whereas now if you can't export, you're going to get a smaller system or if you want to, you get batteries and payoffs longer like this 10-year range. Aren't the batteries now the self-storage? Isn't that like the next big thing? Is that where we're evolving to? And would that like help the number of installations go up? Definitely, it has. Mostly that's what's going in now over the last couple of years is systems with batteries that they aren't exporting during those high solar times and storing energy for use later in the evening overnight. So what else can the grid be doing about this? The electric utility that they're not already doing? Well, they took a lot of steps as well to be able to handle the amount of rooftop solar on the grid. One was the way they run their thermal units, their oil fired generation. Because they're old units and they have to keep generation online in case there's a trip or something. So that can kind of fill in that gap if something goes wrong. So what they've been doing is trying to get those units to run at a lower rate. Say if a thermal unit can generate 100 megawatts before it could only, the lowest rate it could run at would maybe be 25. So there's still room there. And they've worked really hard to find out ways even these steam units and old boiler-based generators that they can get it down the minimal run megawatt to even lower. What that does is it leaves more room on the system for renewables. So they can more wind or rooftop solar or utility-scale solar and go into that. And it also helps give them the reserve. If they need to move those units up higher, they have more reserve to do that. So that allows them to either turn some units off during those high solar times or just generally be able to have more space on the grid and hope is to eventually retire some of those units as renewable energy and storage particularly will help with that type of thing if they go forward. So we're coming up to a break for shortly, but let me just introduce the topic of electric vehicles. If you charge them during the day, you can kind of eat up some of that duck herb. Like I have a neighbor over in Ina Hina who bought an electric vehicle and he took great delight in going out watching his meter run backwards while he was charging his car at the same time. So virtually, in that kind of a situation, if you have a good roof, you've got good sun and you have an electric vehicle and you're home during the day like a retired person who doesn't have to go out and work, then you can be recharging your vehicle and it's kind of like the most awesome way to do it. Exactly. We're really happy to talk about that some more. Okay, we'll talk about that after the break. So we'll be going on a break, but we'll be right back in about one minute's time. This is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. 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 poor 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. Hi guys, I'm your host Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from 3pm, and this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health regarding your health, and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier, and have fun at the same time. So do join me. I look forward to seeing you and Aloha. Well, we're back from our break. It's Hawaii, the state of clean energy, and I'm here with John Cole from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, who's a senior policy analyst, and we're talking about the duck curve and how we can kill that duck. John, we were talking during the break about electric vehicles. We started off talking about electric vehicles before we went in. So you have a few more things to say about that, plus other steps that the electric utility is taking to try and manage this so that we can all get more and more PV and solar on our grid. So take it away. As far as transportation goes, it presents a really good opportunity to raise that duck's belly, and make the load curve more without the big dips in it. Part of that is trying to increase the energy that's used during that high solar time in the middle of the day. So if people can get more electric cars and start using them more and plugging them in during that time, it can certainly help to increase the load and reduce the dips in the load curve that can cause problems for the utility to keep their system stable. So are we looking at any kind of incentives that will come out to at least help people? I mean, it's tough if you have like a 9 to 5 job and you're in a covered parking lot, what can I do about my electric vehicle? There's a lot of talk about that. The utility put out an electrification and transportation plan maybe a year or so ago, and I'm not sure how much it's moved, but I know there's activity in putting in charging infrastructure. Workplace charging is a big issue that comes up a lot. It does cost for the infrastructure to put in because it's pretty high voltage and high energy that needs to go and charge the batteries. But if we can charge more EVs in the workplace, all the better. I mean, at University of Hawaii, they're just covering their big parking garage on the lower campus with photovoltaic panels. If people could charge cars with that, that would help the system out as a whole a lot in bringing up that belly of the doctor. And there's a lot of things going on. I know Hawaiian Electric and Hawaii Energy, who is our efficiency provider. I know you guys have those guys on the show. They're doing a program to help incentivize and probably have some kind of rebates and help for multi-unit dwellings to install chargers because that's a big problem in Hawaii too. A lot of people are in condos or renting, so they probably wouldn't even consider getting an electric car if they can't charge it overnight at home or whatever. But those types of things are underway. And I think just the uptake of EVs, I'm a happy owner of two of them right now, and I have PV on my roof. And they are a little more expensive now, and hopefully the cost will come down. But I can tell you the savings, not even with rebates or certain places you can park without paying and things like that, the general maintenance is very low. I had an electric car that I was leasing for three years, and I brought it in twice for regular maintenance, and basically all I did was rotate tires and fill windshield wipe or fluid. There's no issues with oil and gears and carburetors and all that type of thing. Oil filters can cost me a fortune. There's not a lot to fix with electric motors. Sometimes the battery cells degrade faster, which is why I leased the first couple of cars I had. But those issues, I think, are being addressed. And I think the prices will continue to come down on electric vehicles too, especially as more people buy them and economies of scale can kick in more. Recently, last week, I was on the big island, and when I came back to pick up my car and was looking for my car, I couldn't believe how many electric vehicles are parked in the airport parking structure. It's like rows and rows of them almost. People are taking the car, driving to the airport. In a way, it's not really what the legislation was supposed to be promoting, but nevertheless, people are gaming the system in some ways, but I guess we still are working for the greater good. But those are incentives that were put in place. I'm sure they will be taken away at some point as more and more is adopted. And we see more and more in Hawaii every day. Driving down the road, you see more and more every day. At some point, that will stop. Many people think that's unfair, but those of us with electric vehicles are going to take advantage of them while they're there. But it's thought that electric vehicles can be part of a solution to some of the renewable intermittency and storage issues, because they're loaded with batteries. I mean, in that sense, right now, if you have it on a charger that's smart, they can sense when is a good time to charge or not. And eventually, they're talking about vehicle to grid where they can take energy from your cars. And I know they do in some places in Europe. They have programs. They're testing things in California. But a lot of people I know own EVs aren't too interested in that at this point just because you're using some of my battery cycles and they might go away sooner than I'd like them to. But there are ways to do it with just the charging alone and timing that correctly so that it doesn't hurt the system and can even help it in some instances. Can you talk a little bit about time of use rates and how that might factor into all this? Yeah, sure. And also demand. We're going to talk a little bit about demand and overall storage. Yeah, I mean, one of the new programs that's out there is kind of that smart export where you're not supposed to export during certain times of the day. But the utility is also looking at, I was actually just at a meeting on Monday an all-day workshop on rate design where they're looking at various ways to structure rates, different rates during the daytime to incent certain behaviors. And one of them would be either having storage on your house with your PV or even without it. And, you know, when you charge your electric vehicle and things like that, the idea is to have a lower rate when all that PV is on the grid and it might make things unstable so that people will use it more and then have a higher rate at that evening peak to incent people to not charge their EV at that time or if they have batteries coupled with a PV system to use the energy from the batteries then instead of taking it off the grid where they would be charged a higher rate. So they're trying to use the market to incent the behavior that will help the grid and help us move forward. So what if I live in a shaded area that put up all these, like, you know, 400-foot skyscrapers and all that and my little house used to have a lot of sun, but now it has none. I mean, conceivably I could just install a battery and arbitrage, you know, the time of use rate. So I've got my battery there when the cost of electricity is low. I can charge it up. I can help the electric utility by using up some of this power and then when peak power, you know, use that, you know, at night and throughout the day. Exactly. With the right rate structure it will incent that type of behavior and, you know, help the utility solve some of the problems I think. One of the things, you know, I've been hoping for, you know, smarter rate design than the utility has had for a long time since I was regulating them and I think things are finally in place. I mean, part of it was they didn't have the software and stuff and the right meters to do all the tracking that they would need to charge different rates during different times of the day. But I think most of that is in place now and they're seriously exploring it with the commission and, you know, all the energy stakeholders in town. Okay. We were going to talk about storage I think before we cut. No, and in part of that, the utility there, they've been going out to procure more renewable energy and the most recent batch is all, you know, photovoltaic on a utility scale, you know, several tens of megawatts coupled with battery storage. Like you've heard on Kauai, they've had a couple of contracts that basically are what they call dispatchable PV. The PV charges the batteries and then the batteries can be charged as the grid needs it, which oftentimes will be in the evening when the sun isn't out at that peak time. So HECO is also, you know, HECO companies, you know, Helco and MECO as well, they've just gotten approvals for a whole bunch of those. I think it's about 500 megawatts total. Yeah. And it's pretty cheap. I mean, down 11 cents or so for a couple of hours. Well, 108 cents is the lowest. I mean, that's unbelievable. That includes everything. The battery, the electrical installation, all the engineering. Wow. I mean, that's like really low. The battery problems, the developer. Yeah, he's on the hook for it. So that and their next step is to do another RFP similar to that. I hear that's coming out pretty soon. Yeah. I think they want to get it out as soon as they can. The PC is reviewing it to make sure it's kind of asking for things they think are appropriate. With all this PV and storage going in, they've kind of pegged the storage requirement with the PV for each megawatt of PV. They wanted a megawatt of storage that could discharge a megawatt for four hours. So we call it four megawatt hours for each megawatt of PV. So all of those recently approved systems are batteries at that level. That's a pretty big battery. Yeah. And one of the things we've been looking at at HNEI and just looking at what this means is having all of these projects have four hours of storage basically for the energy. It kind of means at this point we're not using those batteries as well as we could. I mean if you could also use them for other things like providing some of those reserves in case something trips offline. You could be using them more efficiently and saving money that the utilities otherwise spending to provide those services on its own. Right. So some of our analyses we've been doing most recently is looking at that. And it does at some point, I mean when we get enough solar on the grid we're supposed to get to 100% and solar is one of the most likely to happen. I mean there could be a little more wind. Maybe offshore wind someday. I hear they've used up all of your sites. Yeah. So it looks like it's going to be mostly PV and other emerging technologies if other things come along. Sure. But we've just been looking at adding PV to see what would happen with the system. And for a big chunk of it you don't need all that. I mean not even to shift the energy because there is still room most times on the grid. There's that few times a year where it causes those problems. But eventually as you put more and more PV on and you start retiring your oil or gas fired units you are going to need that much. Okay. We kind of have too much now but we're going to need it in the future. Sure. It's cheap now so you might as well grab it while you can. Okay. Well that's a wrap. You know we run out of time believe it or not I mean these half hours go by so fast. So John thank you so much. Sure. I asked John only yesterday morning if he would come on the show. Afternoon. Afternoon. Sorry even less time. So he was very very accommodating and coming on in such short notice. So thanks so much John. I know now so much more about this duck curve than I did one before we started the show. So thank you very much. And so that wraps it up for Hawaii the state of clean energy as Mithuan at Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and we're signing off and we'll see you next Wednesday. Aloha y'all. Aloha. Thank you.