 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. My guest today is the esteemed Myron Thompson, a pillar of the community and ongoing entrepreneur through the decades. Comes up with exciting stuff. And this particular technology today, do you remember the song we used to sing? As kids rained all night, the day I left, whether it was dry, sun so hot I froze to death. Susanna, don't you cry. Sun so hot I froze to death. Well, that song may have been prescient of what Myron is going to talk about today. He's maybe among as many talents and expert physicists so he can go way down deep into the fact that the more heat you create, the more cold you can create. And this has deep implications when you combine heat producing technology with refrigeration or air conditioning. So welcome to the show Myron. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you as well. And you're here in the capacity as the CEO of Solar Cool Hawaii. Correct. And what happens when you, how does it go? The sun's so hot I froze to death. Now, how can you use heat? Well, you know what, let's wait until the slides. Why don't we bring the first slide up just to introduce you because this is a really intriguing prospect. And as you know, the state of Hawaii has the goal of 100% clean energy for electricity by the year 2045, which is not that distance. Oh, speaking of state of Hawaii, disclaimer, I as an employee of the state of Hawaii do not endorse the product we will be talking about today, nor does the state of Hawaii nor does Think Tech Hawaii. This is a disclaimer. There are very worthy competitors for this technology out there. So with that taken care of, let's go to the next slide and get you rolling here. Okay, who is, why don't you give us a little explanation here? Yeah, real quick history. I've been in the solar industry for about 20 years now. And I started in solar hot water way back when I got into photovoltaic for many, many years, did quite well with that up until 2012. And then the governor at that time changed the tax credits. And the Hawaiian Electric Company started to come in and change the requirements on the grid as well. At that point, I realized I better look for something else because I love the industry. And I went around and I found this technology, what you see right here, it's called solar thermal air conditioning. And what people are looking at is a solar thermal panel. It's not a PV panel. It's a panel that actually takes a refrigerant from the air conditioning unit, runs it on one side of the panel, runs it all the way through, and it comes out hotter on the other end. Now that's counterintuitive for most people. They think why would a refrigeration or air conditioning unit want to get hotter? And the reason being that you have two parts of the AC system and one is to make things really hot and then the other is to make things really cold. And in a conventional AC system, that component that makes it real hot is called the compressor, is that right? Absolutely. It's called the compressor. And the compressor consumes energy. So we're eliminating need for the compressor or just making the compressor's life a lot easier. We're making them a lot more efficient. So we, when the sun is out, you can look at the panel as a second compressor, if you will. So it takes about half of the load of what the compressor would be using. So it reduces the bill automatically just by that alone. And that's why we love this technology. It's just real simple. It was patented in 2009 in the United States and we've been using it since 2014 here. Beautiful. And this is part of nationwide company. You're the Hawaii rep for it. Correct. It's actually, it evolved into three different generations. It's in the third generation now. We actually get our panels from a company out of the UK, which has a new patented technology on a very similar type of approach, but these panels that we have now are pretty impressive and they're quite good. Yeah, the Japanese have a term for this type of evolution. It's continuous improvement, and I used to know the Japanese word for that, but it sounds like this is undergoing continuous improvement here. It is. And they, the company has put a lot of energy into the research and development side of it as well. Pun intended. Right. And so it's good. We're very excited about it. We've done about 120 installed by now. And we have, we're getting into the monitoring phase. We have a little, we have a small unit on a site at one of the DOE offices. Yeah. We're testing it right now. Let's look at the next slide while we're talking here. Yeah. So the panel itself is called ThermEx. That's the brand of the panel. And that's coming out of the UK. And it is, as it says, solar assisted air conditioning. And these panels are, he evacuated two panels. There's about, well, there's 20 of them in a row. And they're about five by five on the roof. And so as you'll see in the presentation, you don't need much roof space at all to do the job. Yeah, let's take a look at the next slide here. Yeah, there she goes. There's a panel right there. Obviously, PV in the background and panel in the forefront. And it's really tubes in a header on the top. The air, the refrigerant comes in one side, comes out about 40 degrees hotter on the other side. So would, would the incoming be ambient water temperature or would it already be pre-cooled by the compressor or? It's actually pre-preheated. Preheated about 90 degrees, depending on the type of the system. But some of the systems go in on one side at 90, come out at about 130 on the other end. And then it gets into a deeper technical reason why it works. But that's the general reason, that's the general layout. Now, what's magic about 130? Because anybody who has a solar hot water heater on his roof knows that on a really hot day like we've been having, you're getting up 160, 170. Right. So that's a good question actually because, because the, the refrigerant only has one pass through the header. It can only capture so much in that one pass. And it's called the heat exchange process, as you know. But it comes through. But at the same time, because the, the panel is so hot, it does get at least 40 degrees rise, which is a lot for an air conditioner. Why not make multiple passes, loop it around again, and give it another boost. Okay. So you were just tapping to the next generation. They're doing that. They're working on that right now. Yeah. Because I know again, with solar hot water heating, we all, on our roofs, we have an escape valve. And I've had reports of that escape valve escaping very, very hot air, i.e., I don't know if it's actually getting to boiling or getting close to boiling, but the water has expanded. Yes. I think the escape valves on solar hot water is about 180, because you don't want to go too much hotter than that. Yeah. And the difference between a hot water panel and our panel is the thickness of the copper. Our copper is a lot thicker because of the pressures and the temperatures, you know, get hotter. Yeah. And if you just let, left it on a roof, that panel might get up to 300 degrees. Yeah. For a way, you have a danger factor here. We do, but we have a way of mitigating that, which is a proprietary to the company. So I won't mention it, but it's safe. Okay. Let's take a look at the next slide and see what we have here. Yeah. It's an inactive patented technology all over the world. So it's, there's about 600 installations around the world by now. And most of those are commercial. And we've been unique in that we've done quite a few residential systems as well in Hawaii. And so the residential systems, oh, they're strictly for the residential air conditioning? Yes. Wow, because I would think such a technology would apply only to larger commercial, but you can scale it way down there. You can. You can. You can scale it down to a certain degree. We don't recommend putting it on a home that has an air conditioner of less than four tons. Okay. So these are the big, big homes? They're the bigger homes. Right. And these are the bigger homes and the bigger users, the guys that use it a lot, absolutely perfect for those guys. You know, a lot of the homes in Eva Beach, as an example, have central air conditioners. A lot of them are four and five tons. They use it all the time. The panel works really well down there. Interesting. Yeah. So yeah, four or five tons that sometimes can feed as few as say 2,500 or 3,000 square feet. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly, right. Yeah. So what are the results then with the? Yeah, so we claim that during the, during the sunshine hours that it'll reduce the compressor load by about 50% in the sun. Now, if you think about it on a residential scenario, most people near typical use will do it mostly at night. So we don't, you know, it's not, I mean, it's great for the typical house with a central unit and they keep it cool all day long. Fantastic. But we're really particularly suited for business because most businesses are open during the day and they shut down at night typically and they have bigger units. Yeah. You're shutting down just when the sun is shutting down also. Exactly. So it's kind of a perfect marriage. There's tax credits involved and the business owners get depreciation as well. So the panels are basically paid for. And the tax credits are because due to the fact that this is powered by PV, no, let's see, the heater heating unit is just like a solar water heating unit. Right. So that's a one to one. Right. And do the PV panels get involved in all, in pumping the, no, it's just pumped by pressure. Just by pressure. Two independent systems completely, but the net effect is one is making it electricity, the other one's reducing the load. So they do work concurrently in a sense. So let's take a, take a look at another slide. Yeah. So you're going to, we're going to go into just a little bit more about what Thermax is and what it is not. We probably should go right to the next slide because we'll get into it. Okay. Good. So it's, it's called again solar assisted AC Thermax brand. It is a system that uses glass tube solar panel that heats the refrigerant. Again, that's something people have a little bit of hard time getting the grip on. This causes the system to use approximately 50% less electricity and it requires very little rough space. Thermax is not a system using PV panels, which are far more costly and less efficient. Yep. And I would add just as a little bonus, you're partially shading the roof and therefore there's less heat gain on, on the roof. Exactly. You're an energy guy. I think, think of all the angles there. Yeah. Yeah. And so let's take a look at one more slide. We need to take a break pretty soon. Yeah. So this is a, just to really, to point out that it's not PV and it's comparing the amount of PV it would take to do what one of our panels does. So it's about 14 panels versus one of ours. Two big differences. One is the PV is quite expensive to do 14 panels compared to ours. The second is the amount of roof space needed. So what's happening nowadays real quickly is that there's a lot of commercial guys out there that max out their roof. Maybe have a little bit left. They still have a big bill. And so we're perfect for those guys because we can still take care of their AC unit or refrigeration unit with a very small footprint. And ideally, wouldn't it be ideal for, say the homeowner again, people who maybe have somebody in the house all day long and want to keep cool or some people say, I have to run my AC because my dog wants to stay cool or my cat wants to stay cool. It's remarkable how many people say that. It's a big deal, especially with the, with the humidity and getting hot, I mean getting hotter in Hawaii. And it's more noticeable now than it was before. But the animal thing is a big deal. Yeah. Well, we need to take a break. This is Howard Wake, Code Green, Sink Tech, Hawaii, back in one minute. This is Sink Tech, Hawaii, raising public awareness. Big game. Watching at home just doesn't feel the same. Sponsibility. Captain of our team. It's the DT. For every game day, a sign a designated driver. Here. What are you doing? Okay, cool. Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? Oh yeah. This is the starting line. Posh! This is over. You're dead. Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child. Every parent. Every day. Good afternoon again. Howard Wake, Code Green, Sink Tech, Hawaii. I have the esteemed Byron Thompson with me. We won't go into genealogy here. That would take the rest of the show. So instead, let's focus. I'm intrigued by the fact that a air conditioning efficiency technology like this would be of use to residential people, because most of us, normal type people, think we leave the home in the day. And ideally, if we have central AC, it would shift on, say, half an hour before we get home so that we enter a nice cool home again. But you're saying, no, no, there are quite a few users, residential users, who like to have the AC on all day long. That's true. And it didn't, you know, we just got into the marketplace, so we didn't really know how people were going to respond to it. But more, the thing that happens with the homeowners, all of a sudden, they realize that they're running their AC, but it's not costing as much. So they tend to want to run it longer, and they get comfortable with that. The other thing that happens, too, is that they start, rather than, you know, ramp it up and say five in the afternoon, the cold on the house, they'll start at like one in the afternoon. Slowly ramp it up, the air conditioner hits where it's supposed to be, the compressor reduces even more, and it just stays at the low level the rest of the way. So it becomes, you know, an efficiency thing, plus it's a little bit of a luxury for them that they like. And it just started to go that way. Yeah. And we were talking about the fact that people with dogs or cats, maybe even birds, say, oh, I don't want my little phyto to get hot in the middle of the day here. And in fact, we've gotten to the point when people call in and they want to know about the product, we ask them if they're going to be cooling down their pets. You will be surprised how many people say yes. But we have dogs as well, and we put them in air conditioning when it's hot as well. So we understand. Yeah. We do live in a rather affluent society when we can. We do. Yeah. We do. Especially, you know, Hawaii, the mildest climate in the world. Yeah. Yeah. So why don't we take a look at another slide here? Yeah. So we're going to get into real simply how this thing works. So this chart is really just a simple chart. The blue is with, it's the electrical load with a panel on the system. The red is without. And you can see by the amount of the difference between the red and the blue, that's the electrical savings that a person will gather during the time of using the system. Now, where the brown line is savings or no, that's demand without. Without. If you see it says non-solar inverter, meaning inverters, the tech is the type of air conditioner it is. And then the blue is down below. Now they overlaid the two in different time periods. But actually I think in this case there were two identical systems, one with and one without a panel. So the two spikes in the brown, I gather that's morning and evening. And that would, the spikes would go down. This is, assuming with a PV system, I'm guessing. So that in the middle of the day, PV is producing like mad and taking care of the air conditioning load. And then the sun goes down and the air conditioning load goes back up again. Yes, that's a really good point. And in case, and in that regard a lot of people do have PV systems on their homes. And they have most of their bill covered, but they still have a little bit of a bill. And now they're thinking about putting an air conditioner on their house. So that is going to increase the bill back up again. And because of that we can help them not to increase it that much. And what kind of warranty is on this equipment? It looks like a very, very simple piece of, and in my long years of experience, the generally speaking, the simpler the system, the less the breakage and less the maintenance. And I'll second that motion as a contractor. And the warranty is 10 years. So if anything goes bad with the panel itself, we'll come and replace it over the 10 year period. They have done, they're estimated it's going to go longer, but most people say that. So we'll see how it goes. But for sure, 10 years. And monitoring, was that chart that we saw the result of monitoring, I guess? Yeah, this chart was from the UK. They sent it over from the corporate office. We are monitoring systems right now in Hawaii because we're in Hawaii. And when I have proposed a system to many people, they're going, I'm fine. They have all these results from around the world. I want to see what happens in Hawaii. I come across that. I've been in this business for, well, I can't say since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. But I see it time and again. And California generally leads the nation in many energy efficiency technologies. And I say, look at what California is doing. Yeah, but that's California. Exactly. All that resistance. So we're faced with the exact same thing. And we're happy to do this. So all of the systems we put in now, we put monitors in. We do a before and then an after. And we're now tabulating all the results. We have one done completely. We have another one just about done. And we're going to do about 10 in a row. And then so we have our own local results that we can show people. And plus we're putting them now in big commercial jobs as well. And so our goal is to have enough people by reading the data will have enough confidence in the technology. Yeah, the larger your sample the more scientific your study becomes. Exactly. Because scientists are always saying, can we replicate the results of this study? Are you planning to publish it at all or publish the data or? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, one of the reasons we're doing it is to take it all down to Hawaii Energy, right? Oh, absolutely, yeah. Because they've been asking for it over the years. And so we were doing like that. We're doing a monitoring system on a DOE admin office right now. One of the first ones we show them. And we'd like to get five or six others. And we've talked to the people down there and they've given us the parameters that are necessary, what they're looking for. So we're gauging everything in that direction. And then once we've got enough, we're going to go back down to them. They might want to do one on their own, we'll see. And nevertheless, we're planning on publishing whatever we get. Absolutely. And the governor, as you know, had a struggle with cooling classrooms. And now it's finally getting up a really good head of steam. And do you hope that your product will be cooling classrooms also? Yeah, when we first got the product, we weren't ready for the DOE launch. So we wanted to test it in Hawaii. We wanted to have our own results. We wanted to prove it to ourselves, which we've done all of that. So now we are in conversations with the DOE, the people in the DOE office, they're engineers. And so they're testing the results. And then we have a engineered system that we think will work really well for the classrooms. And yeah, but, well, maybe it's too detailed, but I'm thinking summer, all that nice energy is just sitting there in unoccupied buildings. Exactly. Yeah. So we're going to be doing a system with our panel with some PV and battery backup. Battery backup. Because as you know, the DOE has a big problem with old infrastructure. So it's not cost-efficient for them to bring in new electricity. So to get around that, you bring in batteries. Yeah. And then with you, with your product, you'd have to bring in that much less electricity. Exactly. Exactly. We're excited about it. We're just not there yet. Because even state employee electricians don't come cheap. Exactly. And following all the rules and everything. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You would know better. Oh, yes. Just about anybody. Yes, yes, yes. Well, let's take a look at the next slide here. Yeah. Oh, what is all this? Yeah, these are just samples of the different installations and how they're racked around the world. So one of the things you'll notice is that in some cases, the panels put right on top of the air conditioner unit on the roof. Again, it gives the ability to use very little roof space and still perform the process that we need. I think this might go into a couple of these. There's another one, same a close-up of the earlier one, another close-up. And this is a just an interesting looking. Yeah. This is a package unit on a big house. And again, with the panel right on top of it, looks like about a 10 ton package unit. These are smaller units attached to wall units. And let's see, you mentioned big buildings. Well, I was going to say you need roof space. I'm thinking of PVs. With this entity, you don't need all that much roof space. Not very much. Are you dealing with high rises or semi-told buildings yet? Or is that? We're going to commercial buildings like the Servco's and the Adiotani's and those guys. And they have usually one or two-story buildings. So that's that. When you get into the similar scenario with solar hot water and higher roof spaces and high rises, hard to do because the piping is so long. Yeah. And with the higher end buildings, there's the aesthetics. Exactly. So you don't be running pipes up and down a nice, beautiful wall. Exactly. So we're going to go after the smaller buildings for now. There's a ton of them. And we'll evolve into that as we go. And when is the next generation of PVs come out? As I was saying, the recirculating. You mean of this panel? I'm not sure. It's in the hands of the engineers right now in the corporate office, the UK. And we had a slide with a lot of writing on it. Can we bring that up? Any words of wisdom? Yeah. So again, it's solar assisted air conditioning. It's a combination of high efficiency integrated with solar thermal panels we talked about. We do not generate electricity. We generate heat, which makes the whole system a lot more efficient. And it reduces the electric bill between 40 and 60 percent when it's in the sunshine. We actually have a document at home that has a Mitsubishi unit. And it went all the way up to about a 78 percent efficiency. It was amazing. Probably in a very sunny area. Yeah. And then that person ran the AC many, many, many, many hours. They did. They kept it on for two weeks, just to test it. Wow. Yeah. It was amazing. But we took the data primarily during the sunshine hours when it was at the maximum. If we did it for the full 24 hours, it would have come down to maybe 35 percent altogether. The great thing about this product is there's no HECO regulations on the product itself. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like solar outwater. It just reduces the load. Yeah. And so, and it gets tax credits as well. And it's very beneficial. And I've been an energy guy for a long time. So I'm in line to support the governor's 2045 mission of 100 percent renewable. Yep. Yep. And we are finding that, you know, our foray into the air conditioning and refrigeration world is a big deal because it cuts big bills down. So we're excited about it. Yeah. Absolutely. Especially since you go into commercial also. Yeah. But on that cheery note, the time has come to bid. Fawn farewell. Thank you, Myron Thompson, CEO of Solar Cool Hawaii. Wish you all the best. You're just really lifting off the ground. And as you know, the market out there is almost infinite for this product. You have competitors, but there's plenty of room for all of you. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you for having me. So Howard Wigg, Cold Green, Think Tech Hawaii. See you next time.