 Okay, we're back for a live. It's a two o'clock block today for Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And we are honored to have on the show remote from Hilo, Hawaii, Richard Ha, who's been in and around energy for a long time, maybe almost 200 years, I think. Hi, Richard. How are you? And happy birthday. Hey, thanks a lot. So we want to talk about geothermal today. It's a very important subject. And it's not only important in the sense of the current, you know, portfolio renewable energy. It's important in the historical sense, because we've been talking about geothermal. We've been dealing with it. It's been through a whole history of its own. And we ought to follow it anyway, just to see how it's doing. So the question to pose here is, will PGV operate by the end of the year? Indeed, the end of the year is fast upon us. Yeah, no kid. So as far as I can see, everything looks like it could be, but you know, it's just like you say, it's upon us. So and they've got two things they need to do. One is they got to get approval from the POC to hook up the lines, which I don't think looks is that difficult. And then the second thing they need to do is approve the RFP. And the RFP is to renegotiate the initial 25 megawatts, which is tied to oil. So they're negotiating right now to find a number that's not tied to oil. Yeah, as I recall, there was some problem with the fact that their original purchase power agreement was at a very rich price, a very rich calculation. That's what I guess that's what you mean when you say tied to oil. And so there was there was resistance about continuing that without reviewing it and maybe changing it. So it looks like they have been flexible enough, maybe they had to be flexible enough to reconsider and renegotiate the price that what Hawaiian Electric would pay for their geothermal energy. Yeah. Yeah. And right now, they're paying 16 cents a kilowatt hour for oil generated power. So it will probably come in around half of that. I guess that would be pretty attractive, wouldn't it? Oh, yeah, absolutely for stable firm power. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Well, why don't you take a moment and describe for our viewers stable firm dispatchable? What is special in that in that regard about Pune geothermal? Yeah, so so they've got this constant electricity that's coming up from they make it from the heat of the earth. So it's just coming up all day long all night for 500,000 years. So the what Helco wants is if something unexpected happens, they want to be able to turn it on immediately. So so that that's the big part of it. And they can do it. The question then becomes what did they do with the power when they're not using it? And they haven't done anything with it to this point. And what we're saying is why don't you make hydrogen stored? Because in fact, it's free. You're throwing it away anyway. Let's talk about that. Because I you know, it's interesting that, you know, we've been talking about geothermal for well, through my life and energy, which is like 20 years. But even before when when PGV was first started, which I guess was in the 80s or the early 90s. And you know, up till this point, we never really put it together with the idea of taking the curtailed energy. This has always been a certain amount of curtailment and making hydrogen out of it. This is a new and really, really romantic thought that we could actually have a side benefit and lose nothing, you know, always have something, some benefit coming out of the geothermal. How would that work, though, mechanically? How would that work in terms of what you want to call it, an energy flow? What would they do to make it happen? Okay, so so they have this electricity that they're not using. They run it through an electrolyzer. The electrolyzer runs it through water and gets hydrogen out. And they keep the hydrogen, they store the hydrogen, then you can transport it in trucks. And however, is the way you want to transport it. It's pretty straightforward. Yeah, so you say trucks or was it tanks? I mean, or was it tanks on the trucks? Now, tanks on the trucks is what it meant. If you imagine appropriate tanks, especially built and stuff like that. Yeah, I've seen those tanks at Hawaii HCAT, Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. And we try to remember how big they are. They're probably around, what, eight feet, maybe eight feet long, and maybe two feet in diameter or put in half in diameter. And they're steel, they're not going anywhere. And they contain hydrogen, what is liquefied. So there's a lot of hydrogen in the tank. Am I right about that? Yeah, but, but I gotta get technical folks to ask about, you know, for that kind of detail. What I read is there are various different sizes of tanks. And like you say, though, if you squeeze them down, and it becomes more dense, it's more efficient. Yeah, sure. So you have to have something that'll squeeze them down. So the other thing you mentioned a minute ago was something called an electrolyser. Can you tell our viewers what that does and how you get one? Can I go down to Sears? Sears is over. Can I go down to Costco and get one? Well, you know, there are people that make them. And very interesting. And you've, Spanish had people on this show describe their electrolyzers, you know, and one of the more interesting ones was from Millennium Ring hydrogen. And the reason I find that interesting is because it's made in modules. So if you got a small demand, you get the first module. And if the demand increase, you just attach another one and another one. And then later on, when you get more customers, let's say you have a hydrogen fueling station, then you go and site yourself and buy the land and whatever it's set up a more robust station. So it's modular so you can, you don't have to invest the big money up from like you would think. Yeah, no, that's great. That's really a great refinement of the whole system. Because I remember Hank Rogers had one. I don't know what he paid for his, but he was lighting his ranch or farm up there on the west side of Big Island. And you're using hydrogen and those things are like hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy. So we have to, you know, either do the modular thing as you mentioned, which probably makes it cheaper. Or we have to find a way to do that conversion in an electrolyser that isn't too expensive. Because we have to we have to have these working on a commercial and residential basis both because the Kirtanlin thing you described, Richard, could also apply to a single family residence, which had solar on a roof. It's a way of storage, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's a matter of just plaster, if it makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so okay, so here I am, I'm down in Pune. And I'm getting curtailed. Hawaiian Electric does not want all my all my power. And it's I guess it shuts it off or tells me to shut off, you know, the supply of power from the geothermal facility. I said, okay, I'm going to I'm going to create some hydrogen now and I, I create hydrogen and I put it in tanks. Now, and you said the tanks go on trucks. And that only talks about the Big Island, I suppose. But you could also take those tanks and ship them. And I guess the question is, how hard is it to ship them? And at the other end, when they arrive somewhere, how hard is it to use them? Is there any infrastructure right now to use them? Do I have to build it? And what does it look like? You know, on this island, except for Hank Rogers, operation there, the next thing coming up is the county is getting ready to activate their refueling station down there at Delha for buses. So the buses are coming pretty soon. And they're getting ready to get that station and operation. The only thing about that operation is that they're using health codes, full cost electricity to make the hydrogen. So they might get it for 30 something cents. And then you got to add the cost of converting it, etc. Doing it this way, where they do it on the attitude of thermal plant with the curtail of electricity, the cost is dramatically different. Because it's essentially free. So all you got to do is add the let's say that they settle that eight cents, a kilowatt hour, 10 cents or something like that. Yeah. That the other stuff is basically free to consider it cheaper. And the important thing to remember is that if you are filling up your car with hydrogen, and that hydrogen costs 10 cents or kilowatt hour, you're equal to gasoline. So now, if you're getting it for six cents, let's say, then the question is, can you get it transported for four cents? Or would you have to wait until natural gas prices go up? Because that's your competition, yeah, hydrogen costs of these else. But they cannot compete, you know, this is this is incredible. They cannot compete because they have to buy the natural gas, which is the finite resource, they have to take the hydrogen out. Then they have to do something with the carbon, either they let it go in the air and call it free hydrogen, or then they have to or they have to deal with it. All along the way, the cost is being built up. So if they try to sell and send that to Hawaii and compete, there's no way. Yeah, this is very interesting, because there's something in I think it was civil beat this morning, you know, about Hawaii gas. And as a move with the legislature, you know, to I guess to that would have the possible effect of making it harder for Hawaii gas to create hydrogen that way. Hawaii gas wants to remain relevant. So they want to create hydrogen, not clear the legislature is going to let them have that chance. And that will that will hurt them. So I'm, you know, I'm thinking that your financial analysis, your economic analysis, really, that's the analysis of the day. If you have geothermal type hydrogen, where you get it, you know, much cheaper, that that would be the best possible source, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So the way you describe it is a geothermal source is green hydrogen versus the other stuff is green hydrogen. Yeah, right. With the green hydrogen, there is no fossil fuel involved at any point in the process. Exactly. Yeah. No carbon at all. Yes. So it all sounds pretty attractive. But I guess to go back to the notion of infrastructure, in order to use it, well, for that matter to use it as a storage facility, a storage capacity for creating, you know, electricity to, to light homes and the like, you have to have some kind of process plant, or at least a plant where you could offload the hydrogen and burn it and create new electricity. Whatever purpose it was, you'd have to have a place that would receive it. And that place would have to be, you know, on the island, I think, where you're going to use it. So we have to we have to get to the point. I think if this is really going to be successful, we have to get to the point of building that infrastructure. So my question is, what does it look like? Where is it exactly? And who builds it? Yeah, so what they would look like is a hydrogen refueling station. Because there's a chicken and the egg kind of a thing. If you have a refueling station, people, you could buy a car. If you don't have a refueling station, nobody will have to buy a hydrogen car. Yeah. So how many refueling stations would you need? And we've been having this conversation, probably around five, and you could either go all around the island pretty safely. And these, if you would say that of all the cars on the island, and you would get 10% of the hydrogen within X amount of years, then you can backtrack as to how how large your electrolysis got to be. And then and then you got to come up with a cost because somebody has got to invest in it. I don't know for sure, but tentatively, we're talking two million for five stations, which is quite cheap, you know, actually. So so but then what would you, what would that look like? Would you rather have some mainland or foreign investors come in and buy and develop the whole thing? I would much prefer to have it be local investors and keep the money in our economy. Yeah, why not? We know the story here. And there are there are organizations that can afford that. And it benefits. It's only really for the local market, although I want to talk to you about the wider market. And you know, for that matter, this is part of our renewable energy initiative. And let's do it. Let's do it here. Let's do it now. Let's let's keep control of it. You know, it's so easy to say, Well, somebody else come in and do it we don't we don't want to spend the money. But that's not a good idea, especially with energy, we should be doing it ourselves and enjoying the not only the benefits, but the profits, you know, eventually. Yeah, yeah, okay, you know, economy. Yeah, absolutely. So Richard, let's take a one minute break. Okay, we'll come back and I want to talk some more about how you make this happen from, you know, now till when it happens. And the implications for the state of making it happen. Because when you think about it, this is a very attractive possibility. One that one that could actually realize some of the dreams, the energy dreams we've had for a long time. Richard, joining us by phone from Hilo will be right back after this break. Hello, everyone. I'm Christine Lenders. And this is Think Tech Hawaii. My show is Movement Matters. And this is a show brought to you to talk about how to get rid of things like your low back pain, scoliosis, TMJ dysfunction, ankle sprains, pretty much anything that you can do with your body or hurt your body. I am here to bring to you the cutting edge strategies that you can do right now easily on your own to help get out of pain and get back to doing what you love. Life is better when you listen to your physical therapist. Tune in Tuesdays at 11am every other week for Movement Matters. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Duration. You are watching Think Tech Hawaii. I will be hosting a show here every other Wednesday at 1pm and we will be talking to a lot of experts and guests around sustainability, social justice, the future here in Hawaii, progressive politics and a whole lot more. So please tune in and thank you for watching Think Tech Hawaii. Okay, Richard Ha, who joins us by phone from Hilo, which is some say that's where God lives. You know what I mean? And so you know, talk about the big island for a minute. Talk about how it would work with cars because you know, there's a lot of people who like electric cars, but electric cars are not in the same as hydrogen cars. There's a difference. There's a difference in range and range, range anxiety, and especially in a place like the big island where people are very concerned that their electric cars, you know, won't get them from South Point to Hilo and back again. And they'll run out of electric along the way. But that's not necessarily so with hydrogen, right? Yeah, if you got this patient cited well, there's no problem there. And not only that, it's very convenient because it doesn't take very long to fill up. You don't have to, you know, long charges and stuff like that. Yeah, well, it sounds to me actually like that $2 million you mentioned is a really good investment. Because people are going to want to do this at the end of the day. Not only is it good for climate change, but it's good economics to get a hydrogen car, especially on the big island, and then have a few fueling stations, and get around the big island that are actually a cost per mile. Am I right about this? A cost per mile, which is less, less than gas. Am I right? Yeah, depending on how you how that's the way it looks. Yeah. And over the long run, of course, it'll be less than gas, more question about it. Yeah. Yeah, so so let's say you have five, you want to interest and put in five stations. You know, did you see that the PBS special, the two arms special with Dwayne Cariso folks? No, I know the story, but I didn't see it yet. So yeah, it was really good, because when you see those people talk, they were really, really concerned about the people of Hawaii. And they were talking about making money for themselves. They were just concerned about the people of Hawaii. These are the kind of folks, not necessarily them, but anybody who has that kind of a feeling, we would love to see invest in a company like putting that refueling stations together. You know, we don't know, we cannot guarantee that you're going to get your money back in a long time. Because a lot of this stuff will have to be you doing it for future generations. And you believe that it'll, it'll, it'll be a good, good thing for future generations and stuff like that. Yeah. So, so anyway, so that's the general idea. So if we can pull people together, we've got folks from the mainland that's willing to come down and talk and give a presentation and they are how the whole thing looks. Yeah, yeah, with design designs and maybe technology. But it strikes me that if, you know, this hasn't really happened, except in, you know, certain circumstances, if we, the people of Hawaii invest in energy facilities, especially in this one, this kind of facility, hydrogen facility, then we care about it. And then we know about it, we learn about it. And if we do that, then we're more committed to it. We're more aware of the possibilities going down the road. We're more aware of, you know, reaching our goals, our state goals. Right now, I don't, if you asked a man in the street, you know, what do you thought about it? He wouldn't be all that excited. There was excitement a few years ago, but not necessarily now. So if people, the ordinary person, or the ordinary business person, the ordinary investor, if you will, gets involved in Hawaii projects, manageable investments, manageable projects like this, then more people are going to be involved, the state is going to be more committed. It's all good. It's all good. So my, my, my sense of it is that Big Island, because of Puneji of thermal venture, because of the hydrogen there, because of the possibility of putting it in the tanks, curtailed energy in the tanks, and then moving it around the island, Big Island, and having, you know, say half a dozen or say five hydrogen stations. All of a sudden, you've changed everything in terms of passenger transportation. What that means is, you know, I can buy a car. We should talk about cars. I can buy a hydrogen car. I can get relatively cheap transportation. I can go everywhere. I don't worry about range anxiety. And it's a great experiment. That absolutely. Yeah. And then taking together with the buses that are now coming out. I mean, the whole island of the Big Island could be a hydrogen, hydrogen island, no? Yeah, no kid, you know, and that's what's so exciting about it because it plays right into climate change. Yeah, we'll be the example for the world. Yeah, because all of a sudden, you've got a, you know, just one island, self enclosed as an example. Yeah. Boy, that is really some kind of, you know, as a matter of fact, we got all excited. I call them Hank Rogers and say, Hank, can you bring Gretta Thurman? I was just going to say that. That's what Hank going to do. We're going to bring her here. I'm sure we can pitch her and she would come here because, you know, we are so simpatico with her. Thinking alike here. Thinking alike for sure. I've been thinking about for the last several weeks. So, okay, so we can do this. We can, you know, start building this infrastructure, get investors, local investors and, you know, and have it working. But in the meantime, okay, if I go down to Servco, say, which controls the Marais, one of its sub dealers, whoever that might be. And I asked for a Marais. Marais is going to cost me 50,000 plus. And they may not be a lot of Marais available, because Marais are popular elsewhere in California, I guess. And it's not like they have an, you know, unlimited supply of Marais. And what I think is missing in this whole formula is the idea that you go down and buy one. You can buy a hydrogen car of some kind. So can you talk to me about the availability of either Marais or any other hydrogen car right now? And whether I should go and look for one and find one and buy one right now? But you know, interesting, you mentioned it, because Paul Pantio had mentioned in one of his tours, you know, that they're selling second hand hydrogen cars on the main end, because you know, the period of time where you're guaranteed X amount for your fuel for something like 18,000. So he thought it was a good deal. But it's not. I'm just saying that for for for somebody who's a real fan, yeah, it was like I would do it. But for the average person, I don't know what, at some point, it's going to build up stronger and stronger because you know, for the 2020 Olympics, Japan is going to rule out buses and, you know, they're going full on to be a hydrogen society. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know. That's great. They've had two conferences, world conferences. And I followed you know, the presentation and stuff like that is really incredible. I want to go the next time. Well, let me know. Maybe we can go for your next birthday. Well, you know, that's the problem, though, because we have to have to make them notice us. I mean, I really don't like the idea that we can't get a bigger allocation of hydrogen cars from the dealerships on the mainland. And so, you know, you can't sell if you don't have them. And so this one here is really good, because if you are competitive, price wise, gasoline, and people will want to buy it. Sure. And then, and then all of a sudden, you're an example for the rest of the world, maybe people want to bring your cars here to demonstrate it and stuff like that. Well, yes. And I think, you know, I think we ought to try to brand the big island is the hydrogen island. And talk about the buses a lot. Talk about the availability of Pune geothermal venture and curtail hydrogen there and the stations. And, you know, like make it known that this is a great place for the hydrogen car manufacturers to allocate some cars. Richard, you know, you're you're a you're a real go getter person. And I know it's not beyond, you know, the possibility that you would go and talk to them and say, Hey, how about, you know, taking a look at the big island, because you should be selling more cars, more hydrogen cars on the big island. Let's make it let's make a deal, you know, with Toyota or anyone else who's making hydrogen cars. And then all of a sudden, you know, then they they get into the same boat of treating the big island is the hydrogen island and selling cars and showing the world, you know, that this is a very workable arrangement. Yeah, so so another thing that this is a benefit is that you could do geothermal up on the slopes of Marrakech on Hawaiian hose lands. And why that's significant is because you can help the Hawaiians get on the land using the geothermal because they own the the the resource. So they don't they don't pay royalties. So that's a million dollars a year for you know, the equivalent of PGP. And then and then they make money from making that hydrogen and then they also can make money from exporting and and you know, like Iceland, they bring up a block site from Australia. And then they use the heat and the cheap energy, cheap electricity, make aluminum and sell that on the world market. And then they use that to supplement their health costs, as well as the education costs. And they just happened to be the third healthiest, happiest nation in the world. I think there's some kind of connection there somewhere. Well, there's all kinds of things you can do with hydrogen and geothermal. I was in Iceland a year ago, and I noticed that, you know, all the big residential buildings, they all had hot water straight from the ground. No kidding. And you didn't have to pay anything for hot water. It was amazing. Yeah. And when you go into Reykjavik, you don't see all the power lines. Everything is on the ground. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah. So I mean, so what you're really saying is that we can look to geothermal for other things as well. And we can find it in other places beyond Puna. Yeah, take this example. You know, so the county council today is talking about banning certain kinds of chemicals that we control on the side of the road. Okay, and I'm a farmer, I'd like to see them retain it, or at least show the numbers, or show the science, but it's beyond that. So if they're going to do that, which which is fine. And I would like to see a commitment for them to use hydrogen tractors to moan the side of the road. Absolutely. And then yeah, all that stuff, as much as of the county and state vehicles as they can, make it hydrogen. Yep. Yep. And we're on that track. All you have to do is is push it and brand it around the Big Island. The Big Island be world famous for this. And so PGV will be a very important factor in the way in the branding and the way the Big Island works. One last question before we run, though, and that is, you know, we did have this eruption a year ago. And it really, you know, threw things off in many ways, you know, for the people up there and also for PGV, obviously. And so we have to have a way to deal with that going forward to make this a long term reliable possibility. And how do we do that? How do we how do we do that? Yeah, so the first thing you need to do is diversify geographically. Yeah, so because you they're right on the East River. And they'll probably be there for a very long time. But to be more safe, it'd be better to set up another plan at a different location that is not close to civilization and stuff like that. So we can do several of those. I see what it's really, really interesting is that I went to this. Oh, what was it? Oh, let me Hawaii, groundwater and geothermal resource center. I never knew they existed. But you know, so I went up there yesterday, the day before yesterday. And then I talked to the lady who's in charge of it. And they've got tremendous resources. They just don't have support money. And if any place that our government could put money into is right there, because they can drill wells, they can do test wells. Yeah, to do assess the resource. Because you know, you're New Zealand. They have a whole bunch of those wells drilled all over the place ready to get online. And the reason for it is because the resources are shallow. So we don't have one standing by. Yeah. Well, you know, you mentioned, you mentioned, you know, the possibility of having native Hawaiians enjoy this enterprise. And it reminds me of Mililani Trask, who wanted to get involved in geothermal a few years ago. And maybe there's a real possibility to have them be part of this, be participants in it, and benefit by it. So that's a that's a thought we have to continue. So Richard, we're out of time. But may I say, as I've said before, I always enjoyed talking to you. It's always a great experience. And I hope we can do this again. I want to follow you thermal and everything else you're looking at, you know, in in future shows. Absolutely. Good for this. Yeah. Thank you so much. Richard Ha, energy man who joins us from Hilo, Hawaii. Aloha, Richard. Okay, see you. Take care.