 Aloha and welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. It's Wednesday. Mitch Ewen from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute is here. I'm your host today. Our sponsor is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum and funding is provided by the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, who is my alma mater. So we have an interesting show for you today. We have two guests. We have Peter Razzig from HECO. He's going to tell us the latest good news they have coming out of HECO. Very good news. And I'm also very pleased to have my long-term friend, Keith Avery, president of West Wind LLC. And he's going to talk to us about wind turbines. But first, let's talk about the successes at HECO from Peter Razzig. Peter, tell us your great news. Well, we're very happy. We've just reported the RPS Renewable Portfolio Standard for 2019. We reached 28 percent, actually 28.4, so we're rounding it to 28. But I think the audience of ThinkTech can handle a few decimal points. We're 28.4, up actually almost 2 percent, 1.7 percent from the year before. So the year before we reported 27, actually it was 6.7. Now we're reporting to 28.4, and the reason this is particularly exciting, and we're moving forward, that's always good news. But we didn't have any geothermal energy this last year, as we did not for about half of 2018. Had we had the geothermal energy available, we would have been at something like 32 plus percent. And our goal for the end of 2020, for the end of this year, would be to be at 30 percent. But we think we're confident we'll be there because of things that are happening on the system, but we would have been there already if Metapellae had not messed around with Pooner Geothermal. And the other reason it's exciting news is that two other things, really. First of all, last 2019, as we all know, was a very hot year. And the heat continued well into October, I guess, and that meant more air conditioning was being used. So our sales overall were up, which is not a good thing for this company. Most companies would be excited about that. It's not a good thing for us. When the sales go up, then our renewable portfolio standard, which is the percentage of that, could go down. But even though the sales went up because of that use, our RPS went up. And one more factor is that wind fell off last year. We're not sure exactly why. I think you could probably generally say climate change is affecting our wind patterns again. We all experienced the hot weather, a lot of what we used to call Kona winds, a lot of wind that wasn't just flowing in the normal way. So there was less wind generated on our systems. So we had no geothermal, less wind, and more sales, more air conditioning being used. And we still were able to go up by almost 2%, 1.7%, almost 2 percentage points. And that's good news all around. We've got a goal of 30% by the end of this year. And as I said, we're confident we're going to make it. Rooftop solar was up last year. And overall, solar was up 21% because of some new projects that came online, including the Westlock Project, including the Clearway Projects, 110 megawatts. Hamakua Energy Partners started using biodiesel from Pacific Biodiesel. So a good chunk of their generation now counts as renewable. So the overall message is we're moving in the right direction. And we're moving there perhaps not quite as quickly as we hope, but we're still moving forward at a good pace. So that's our good news for today. Well, it's interesting to translate those two or three percentages into actual kilowatt hours because the kilowatt hours represented one or 2% is tremendous amount of additional energy. Right. The overall additional energy generated is about 6.7%. I could tell you the numbers, but my mind gets confused. Between the rooftop solar and the solar energy from big farms and wind and waste to energy and everything, we had a fairly dramatic increase in the total amount of renewable generation generated in our service territory in Hawaii in 2019. And considering all the things that we're going against us, that's pretty good news. You've got some other big PV projects going to be coming online in the next two or three years as well. That's right. We're making really good moves here. I think we're going to see, first of all, we signed a bunch of contracts late last year that will start coming online toward the end of this year. We're about in May to announce another staunch of probably mostly solar, but maybe some other kinds of projects, perhaps as much as another 900 megawatts of renewable energy projects. So we definitely are moving. We think we're going to be well ahead of our milestones as they come along. The last part may be the toughest part, of course. Just like when you run the marathon, everything seems to be going fine until you're about a quarter of a mile from the finish line, and then you realize how much trouble you're in. But we can't get there. We'll deal with that when we get to that, but we can't get there without these steps that we're taking right now. And it's a combination of customers and the solar industry putting more and more panels on the roofs. We have, I think, and then 3.5 million panels total in the state, which is kind of mind boggling in this state. So combination of customers and the companies like Clearway, Hawaiian Electric owns the West Lock. We didn't install it, but we own it and operate it. So the big solar farms are coming in. The wind farms, we are expecting one at least to come online in the next year or so. So there's no way we're not moving in the right direction, and it's recognized. People talk about us. We were named utility of the year last year, as you know. Rocky Mountain Institute, which is an independent think tank and consultancy. They just came out with a 92-page booklet saying, here's how Hawaii does it, and here's how other people should do it. Across the country, around the world, we're recognized for really incredible steps. And the part that you can't see, the grid and the systems that run the grid, we're working on those too. We have an integrated grid planning system that's coming into place. We're modernizing the grid. We're approving the computer software and hardware. We're improving the communication between the various parts of the system. Those are not so visible, but they're absolutely essential to getting to this goal that we have. And so despite setbacks, despite the wind not blowing when you want it, despite cloudy weather, we're getting there. And I think everybody in Hawaii should be proud. We're glad to be part of it. You couldn't do it without Hawaiian electorate, but Hawaiian electorate can't do it by itself either. It depends on a lot of people, government, business, institutions, the university. A lot of people, the analogy is kind of old, but we're all paddling in a canoe and we're all paddling in the same direction. That's great. Well, that's great. Thanks very much, Peter. Pleasure, it was good to see you. Yes, to our next guest, Keith Avery from West Wind Works. Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines. I have a TV show based on my book, which is also called Beyond the Lines, and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, and building winning teams. We are having a fun drive for ThinkTek Hawaii, and please, please, please help us keep these shows going. Please go on our website, ThinkTekHawaii.com, to donate. Thank you. Back from our break, and I'm here with our second guest of the afternoon, Keith Avery, president of West Wind Works. I like that play on West Wind Working. Keith, welcome to the show. Thank you. I've known you for a long time, like 15 years, and you're one of the pioneers of wind energy here in Hawaii. Give us just a quick thumbnail background and how you start out in Hawaii until where we are today, and then we can talk about today and the future of wind. Hi, Mitch. Thanks for having me. I started doing wind energy in 1981 with Wind Power Pacific, and we installed the first wind turbines at Kahua Ranch. It was the largest amount of wind turbines ever put in, even though they were only 15 kilowatts today. Siemens is looking at a five-megawatt ground turbine. So we started small, and then we moved to doing projects on the outer islands, including Maui at Kahiava Pastures at Hawaii, which was another wind farm that was going to update the Kahua Ranch wind farm. But it was then sold to EDF Renewables, and they operate the Havi Wind Farm. And lately, I've been working on the Oahu projects. I originated the Huku Wind Farm as well as the Napua Makani Wind Farm. And what I do is I originate the projects. I prospect for the wind. We install an anemometry to collect long-term wind resource data. And then we go to the community and ask for permission to put up a project, and noting that they take anywhere from three to five the Kahuku project because I lost control of it. It ended up taking almost ten years. And today, wind is the cheapest renewable energy available. In probably the world, solar is very cheap, and we're replacing coal. The only issue with coal is that it gives you firm power, and wind energy gives you power when the wind blows. And so we're solving that problem through storage, which HIKO is now adopting energy storage with their wind projects in order to make wind more dispatchable. Right. So let's talk a little bit about the wind situation in Hawaii. I mean, you said you were a prospector and prospecting for wind sites, kind of like a gold miner, panning for gold. So how are we doing? Like a Wahoo, what's the status of wind on a Wahoo? Are there any more gold mines to be found on a Wahoo, or what are we going to do? Well, ironically, we are blessed with renewable resources in wind and solar on all our islands. The issue for a Wahoo is we have a million people here in a small island, and when you put wind energy up in the hills in the mountain areas where the wind typically blows there, you have more of a view playing for those wind turbines, and it impacts more people. And so hitting on the theme of today's discussion is wind a foe or a friend. It is actually our best friend, and Hawaiians have been using the wind from the beginning of time and their time, and they sailed here using the power of the wind. They have hundreds of names for the wind from where it blows from, which island it's on, what direction, which valley, what intensity, what season, all different kinds of names for the wind, and appreciation for what it does for us. So on the outer islands we have a great opportunity to become 100% self-sufficient with wind and storage, and we could do that probably easily within 10 years, and probably we'll do it within five to seven. The outer islands have smaller loads. They also have higher penetrations of renewables. I think they're in the 40 and 50% compared to the overall state of 28%. So what we're going to see is wind play an integral part, the friendly part of the outer islands. There's more land, so less view impacts. The full part is the view impact. If you move to a place and there are wind turbines already there, you adopt to them and you accept them. If they're not there, just like transmission lines, if they're not there and you move in and then somebody wants to put those in, you have an issue with it. It's about change. When we put up a wind turbine now and they are very large, it does have a visual impact. What we do see is after a year or two years, people have accepted and the view issue typically goes away and the benefits of the renewables step forward. We were talking yesterday or earlier yesterday about talking about view plane. People are really accepting of basically a power line. If you drive around the island, you see all these telephone, what I call them telephone poles or power poles with stacks of wires on them. You don't even know they're there because you tune it out of your brain. Now maybe if you're buying a high-end house in a master plan community and like you said, you're just moving in and very aware of it, but it's like you said, you get used to it and you dial it out of your brain. How can we get wind power to market? We have the neighbor islands with really good wind resources and lots of land and here we are in Oahu. We're almost maxed out for some good gold mines here. How do we get the wind from the neighbor island over to this huge market here on Oahu that really needs to win but doesn't have available land? So is there a way to do that without, I mean we looked at cables and we saw how that went, but what are your thoughts on that? So it's a pretty exciting time for renewable energy in the world and Hawaii can actually be the leader. We initiated a lead position. I'm making a goal of 100% renewable for electricity by 2045. As I mentioned earlier on the outer islands, we should be able to do that much sooner and the way that we're going to do that and we can do that is we have to add storage. Today's storage is typically batteries. Battery banks put in containers and that holds a short term storage. That short term storage will not take us to the goal of 100% renewable. So we need something that has a better storage framework. So there are new technologies, molten salt and electrothermal batteries that convert renewables into heat and the heat into steam and then we can run firm power out of that storage mechanism. Very cost effective, more cost effective than the battery. And then to get us to 100% renewables, what we're looking at and what Westland Works has been dedicated to and for the last 15 years is to make renewable hydrogen. And it is as simple as you take wind energy or solar and water. You split the water atom into hydrogen and oxygen and then using space technology, we reconvert the hydrogen with the oxygen and we get a spark and we get water. That spark comes out of what's called a fuel cell. And to convert the water into hydrogen we use an electrolyzer. Those two components now have dropped in price over 70% in the last three to five years and have now made renewable hydrogen from wind more economical than using fossil fuel natural gas, which is our main source of hydrogen today. The great thing about the hydrogen is we can, using wind, we can fix the price for up to 20 years. We have zero emissions and we are a local resource. And so we are basically bold mining or green mining, if you want to use that term, because we're basically making money out of the air. It's as crazy as that sounds. We don't have to pay for fuel. We don't have to use wires anymore. So we're really going to have renewable hydrogen creating wireless electricity and we will distribute it through tanks, storage tanks, or pipeline systems to the various customers. A side part of that is I'm just thinking of him because the winds were blowing so hard out here on the North Shore. It took out our catamaran and micabana. So we won't have an issue of taking out power lines if we have a hurricane or big storms because the hydrogen will be in pipes and tanks and we won't need those wires. So the other benefit, of course, of hydrogen, that scale, we call it scale because of large storage is also applied to our transportation system so that you can essentially convert all your vehicles over to fuel cell electric vehicles. They still have batteries in them and they can still use power from the grid as well. But instead of having these massive amounts of hydrogen just building up at some point, you can say, well, I can use some of that to feed my transportation system. We're doing that on the big island. We're trying to convert the big island bus system over into hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles or hydrogen electric buses. And we'll see how that goes. One question I have, I brought it up to you or something for the show, was what about a trade-off between smaller wind turbines that don't affect the view plane as much as these massive, you know, the five megawatts and up turbines that we're going today. I understand that you want to get as much out of that patch of land as possible, but is there a trade-off that can be made? Can you comment on that, Keith? Yeah. If you use smaller wind turbines, obviously there's going to be more. And the way the wind blows, the wind closest to the ground receives friction and that slows that wind down. So if you are a hundred feet above the ground, your resource is going to be much less than it is if it's 300 feet. So we gain wind speed as we go up higher. And that's the reason for the tall towers and the big rotors. So the bigger the rotor, the more energy we capture. And then we turn at a much slower RPM, which helps in the view plane and also helps to maintain the integrity of the turbine itself. So smaller turbines just a bigger profile and not as much power. So just it's much easier to put in a large winter. For instance, from Molokai, we could put in two turbines, two, three megawatt turbines, and maybe a third turbine for making hydrogen all day and storing that, firming up the other two turbines. And now we have Molokai 100% renewable. The added bonus, as you mentioned, is that we get a transportation fuel out of this also. So the goal of the Hawaii is 100% renewables by 2045 only gets us 25% reduction in imported fossil fuels. We use the fossil fuels mostly for transportation, jet fuels, et cetera, military fuels. And by using the renewable hydrogen, we get a zero emissions fuel that's based here that will not only run our cars and buses, but would actually be able to operate the rail, as well as the jets and boats, et cetera. Everything can ultimately run on hydrogen. So here's the GED. It's actually got a gas turbine now. There are gas turbines that run on hydrogen or mixtures of natural gas and hydrogen just to get the carbon content down. Also, it's a much lighter weight fuel. So for the aircraft, they can carry more payload because the weight of the fuel isn't quite as much. So we're coming towards the end of our session. I told you this would go fast. So I want to leave it open to you, Keith, to give us any final thoughts you have on wind, spend, or flow, and on hydrogen, or anything you want to bring out that we may not have touched. Yeah, I think that our main goal and the main purpose of West Wind Works was to promote the renewable hydrogen, and not only for Hawaii, but for our world. The way we're going, I heard this morning the Antarctic at 64 degrees, the highest temperature ever recorded there. We're basically warming up the atmosphere so much on our planet that we're having, of course, climate change. And our only solution, and our only solution for Hawaii, because we need a gas to give us firm power. Wind Electric is going to use liquid natural gas imported for the next 20 years until they actually get to the renewable hydrogen. They've shown great interest in this concept. So I think they look forward to the first demonstration projects that we're looking forward to doing. But the whole purpose is really to show the world that Hawaii is the leader in renewable energy. We're 2,500 miles away from everywhere. We've been importing fuel for many years, although our initial effort for energy came from sugarcane. And we were totally indigenous and self-sufficient. So that's where we're heading back. And we're going to do that at the lowest prices using green fuel and green money. And then we're going to create a zero emissions energy source that will then be used worldwide. That's great. I really appreciate your leadership in this area, Keith. And your drive and determination to do the right thing and clean up the atmosphere. And you've known this solution for years and years and years. And now I think I feel that we're finally getting to the point where people are going to start recognizing it. And all of a sudden you're going to wow, we're just not about hydrogen now. And you've been doing it for at least 18 to 20 years, as long as I've known you, for sure, anyway. But Keith, thank you so much. Appreciate it. And this is Mitch Yuan, the host of Hawaii's Native Clean Energy, signing off until next Wednesday. And thank you. And if you like this video, please send it out to your network of all your friends. And Keith, we'll make sure we put on your contact if people want to get hold of you when they post-produce this episode. Aloha, everyone. See you next Wednesday.