 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Aloha and welcome to another Stand the Energy Man show segment. I'm Dave Molinaro. I'm a project manager with the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. Stands off Island this week working on a secret renewable energy project on an undisclosed location. That's okay because he usually brings back Donna's cookies, oh, so much for the undisclosed location. So today's guest is back by popular man, Mr. Ryan Wubbins from A&E firm Burns and McDonald. And we're going to share and garner his expertise on all things related to renewable energy. Ryan welcome back. Good to see you again. And looking forward to this conversation within the next half hour. So what we're going to talk about and cover today is a topic very important to both of us obviously, microgrids and how they enhance power quality. It's an issue that traditional utilities contend with on a daily basis. Now we've all experienced power surges and sags which can have significant effects on electronic equipment like televisions, computers, communications gears. And fortunately for us our local utilities do a very good job at managing power quality on the grid. But Ryan, we've all experienced challenges and power qualities like surges, sag, spikes, outages on occasion and it's a really significant and costly problem. In fact, worldwide damage to equipment, loss in productivity, downtime for production like manufacturing runs into billions of dollars every year. So it's really a worldwide challenge that we need to deal with. And what we're really talking about is good quality power that can be defined as a steady supply voltage that stays within prescribed ranges, frequencies and rated values and really a smooth voltage curve. That sine wave that we all know and love very much in the electrical industry. In other words, it's power quality that's compatible between what comes out of the outlet and the load that is plugged into. And what we're talking about too is very short periods of time relating to seconds maybe in a few minutes which responds, required rapidly responding technologies like flywheels, capacitors, maybe a variety of batteries that respond to these short time scale fluctuations. So it's all helping in managing the grid's electrical capacity within those narrow bands and boundaries that we have to have to maintain electrical balance. So again, power quality is really important to our national grid. It's obviously a power quality is a very important thing to the islands as well. So any momentary sag, surge, outage can cause problems. But Brian, what I wanted to get into you and Garner from your technical expertise is let's talk a little bit about power quality. And it can deviate in three ways, voltage, frequency, and waveform. So highlight us, talk a little bit about what each of those issues are and what they mean to us. Sure. That's a good question. Voltage and frequency are the two main key factors when we talk power quality. When we talk waveform, we're bringing in multiple aspects of the waveform. The waveform is just a derivative of voltage and frequency. But when we stack waveforms, the voltage waveform on top of the current waveform, we can start to measure what's called a phaser. A phaser will give us power factor. So a bunch of variables I'm just going to throw out there. Power factor is also a very important power quality issue, especially when you go to the grid. At your house, it's a little less important because you're contained in such a small environment for power factor. But the voltage and frequency are the big ones. So voltage, there's all different types of voltages that you're used to seeing. 120 volt, 115 volt, 200 volt, 208, 220, 240. All of those are actually the same class of voltage being a single phase or three phase off of probably 480 or a distribution line. The key that you want to make sure on voltage is that you're within, it is actually a typically small percentage deviation from that. Let's just stay on 120. You need to be very close to 120 because that's what all of our components that we're plugging into the wall are made for. Your plug is designed so that you're not plugging in that plug into the wrong voltage outlet. So 120 or 115 are essentially the same. For all of your components, let's say, and your HVAC is probably a 220 outlet. HVAC is an HVAC, just the window AC unit. It's got a different plug on it once it gets so big. When the voltage comes off of its narrow band, it depends on the rating of the air conditioner. But as it's starting to dip down, you will get to a point where the motor within that air conditioner, it doesn't have enough oomph. The voltage isn't giving enough power to keep on spinning, and it'll just drop out. It'll just shut off and say, I can't do it anymore. That's where we start to say, OK, we have a power quality issue because our components are shutting down. And they're shutting down for the right reasons because it doesn't have enough power to do what it was designed to do. That's a case on a voltage basis. When you go to other countries, you're going to have different voltages, but the tolerance is still going to be the same. We've got to be within that narrow window. Frequency is how fast our voltage is actually alternating. We have an AC current that was decided a little battle a long time ago. That AC was going to be what we're going to use instead of DC. Frequency for us is 60 hertz. Typically on power quality, the same thing with the components, your cell phone charger, everything is wanting to see a certain frequency so that it can convert it and use it for its own use. Consumers are going to spin in accordance with that 60 hertz. What's the level of tolerance if you deviate from 60 hertz? Where you really get into problems? It's very, very small. We would tend to say anything outside a couple tenths of deviation off the 60 hertz. So maybe at 59.9, I'd start to say, OK, we're getting off of what we need to be at. The islands are a little bit different in that they're all only providing power for themselves. So you've got a little bit wider window because frequency on the mainland is all contained because that is a giant machine, the whole grid on the mainland. You've got grids that are interconnected on the mainland whereas here, the islands are not. Each island, it's own separate grid. So while it gets more complex that that massive grid, it needs to cooperate with the other components. Because it's so big, it's really well once you get that 60 hertz generated, it's really hard to come off that 60 hertz. Every time you plug in a motor, it's going to try and pull off of the voltage and it's going to bring you a little bit of a dip because it's asking for a little bit more power. Same thing can happen with frequency where it's getting pulled back a little bit. That really giant machine? Not a problem. Here, it's just a little bit easier to come off it. So over the years, the rule, I think it's rule 14 with HECO will designate what that frequency band is and we'll get to that in a little bit on why they're changing that band. But they're really good at hitting that plus or minus a tenth of a percent. Again we are very fortunate with HECO and their capability to manage the grid in an expert manner. Let's talk about some of the common causes for power quality issues. Sure, so a voltage sag can happen in a couple of instances. What's really common on the mainland when you look at power quality issues, just a lightning strike on a power line, that's going to cause a big disturbance on the grid. We don't experience it that here as much, but vegetation faults. If a tree were to fall on a line or on my side of the island, people like hitting the power poles with their cars and that just knocks them over, all that causes a disturbance. When we get that fault, there's a lot of clearing to make sure that we don't escalate from a fault to a fire. A lot of clearing will happen turning off those power lines. That changes the design of the grid very, very quickly. And all the prime movers, all the machines are adjusting to that change in a short amount of time. That's one change that you can start to see power quality, just the stability of the network change. Everything is changing very fast. So you're going to just see some small deviations in there. Also distributed generation, as we add a lot of solar and wind, does a lot of the same effects because it starts changing the grid for you instead of being a traditional load, which is easy to predict. So it really doesn't take a huge catastrophic incident, say, for example, a hurricane or a tsunami to cause any type of grid instability. It could be like we've experienced over past years where we've had a pole failure or a lightning strike that really destabilizes the grid to the point where it has actually shut down in some areas, too. It's interesting. So talk to me about how does utility like HECO improve power quality? And now, when you talk about improving power quality, is that called power conditioning? Is that we talking one and the same? A little bit. If you have a power quality issue, you might start to add power conditioning to morph it back into what you would deem necessary as quality power. Power quality from a voltage and frequency standpoint is generated at the prime moving power plant. So those are the ones that just say, here's our voltage, here's our frequency. Everybody else follow along because I'm really good at setting that voltage and frequency. As long as that mover is big enough, it's kind of like a tug of war competition. You're not going to have something else. Another generator come in and say, I want to operate at 59.8 because of the way the machines are built and we're all tied to that same grid. If you're not big enough, you're not going to be able to move that really large power plant. When we get away from large power plants, it gets a little bit trickier because now we're switching to distributed generation. Distributed generation gets cheaper. So everybody starts doing it themselves. That includes wind mills, but includes all the solar on your house. That's included in that discussion. So the solar that you put on your house, it's not that big. As far as the grid's concerned, the grid doesn't care that you have that. But when you stack everybody's house doing the same thing, now we have an issue because all of those are starting to pull at the same time and coming off of that voltage and frequency altogether, potentially. Okay, interesting. So we're at home in the office. How do we protect ourselves from power quality issues? I mean, I know there's UPSs. There's surge protectors. What else is there that we can do to really handle things at home, if any? Those are the two big ones that you want to be working with. Putting a surge protection at your main panel board is a great place to have those. Those are not that expensive a device. A UPS, just your power strip that you get that you're plugging everything into, they can have their own surge protection built in or their own UPS, which is an uninterruptible power source. So it's taking power in. It's conditioning because it's providing it right back out through a battery. So if you get a power strip that has a little backup time in it, you're going to be held to the power quality of that. I can't speak to the power quality of the actual device because you could buy a really cheap one and you'll probably be worse off than what you're getting off the grid. Interesting, okay. So a few moments ago we just dabbled into the renewable energy challenge of power quality. So let's talk a little bit about what renewable energy like PV and wind have with respect to power quality on the grid as it is right now. When you add distributed generation that's for renewables, you do affect the grid in that you're actually making the power quality worse. That's if we don't install it correctly. This is what started. When you have just a little bit, everybody's falling along with that prime mover. As it increases, you've got to be a little bit more concerned because you don't know when the wind's going to blow. You don't know when the cloud's going to hit and that solar production's going to go down. So you're having to deal with that loss of production elsewhere. So it becomes a balancing act between who's actually providing that power quality. Over the years, the inverter technology, the device that converts you from the DC coming off the solar back to the AC, that device has gotten tremendously better over the years. And that technology has enabled us, the inverter technology has gotten better to the point where we can actually bring a higher percentage of renewables on a grid at any point in time. Absolutely, that's exactly what's happening. So that inverter as it gets better, we're able to do a lot more with that inverter. Today, that inverter can even possibly help us with power quality issues at the distributed level. And that's the advances you'll see with HECO on there's so many different classes of solar that you can be. There's so many different programs you can fall into as you add solar on your house. And that's them increasing the capabilities of that inverter to help support the grid from a power quality standpoint. Interesting. Okay. So we're coming up on break right now in a couple of seconds. And what I want to get into is we've talked about the grid writ large after the break. I want to talk a little bit about, again, a project that's near and dear to both of us. And that's the Pearl Microgrid. And let's talk about power quality issues that micro grids can help prevent maybe some nuances and stuff. But with respect, because it's a military micro grid, we'll talk a little bit about micro grids at writ large too. So all right. Thanks. And Aloha. My name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaii Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring in the latest in what's happening within the military community. And we also invite all your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here, Hawaii Uniform, Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Hello and welcome to Out of the Comfort Zone. I am your villainous host, RB Kelly. Today we are playing Two Truths and a Lie. And I will tell you two truths, and you will tell me which one is the lie. Truth number one, this is a real mustache. Truth number two, I want you to watch my show on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. So tune in and let me know which is the truth and which is the lie. I'm RB Kelly with Out of the Comfort Zone and show up next Tuesday to see my mustache live. Okay, great. Welcome back to Stay in the Energy Man. We're discussing power quality. My guest is Ryan Wubbins, double-E extraordinaire with the A&E firm Burns and McDonald's. So Ryan, we talked about power quality, what it is, what some of the remedies are for home and office, some of the challenges that renewable energy provides, or I should say causes with power quality. In this segment, this last few minutes of the show, I really want to talk about how microgrids play into this role in affecting power quality and enhancing power quality in the grid. So as a refresher for those of you who don't know what a microgrid is, you've got to have a definition in here. So what a microgrid is and what we're referring to is this is a Department of Energy definition that a microgrid is a group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources with clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid. Microgrid can connect and disconnect from the grid and enable it to operate in both grid connect and or island mode. So the key is microgrid can basically operate separate from the grid at large. Why this is important and why Ryan and I are talking today is in respect to the power quality issues. We are building a renewable energy microgrid at Pearl, that's a Department of Defense Air Force project called the Pacific Energy Assurance and Resiliency Lab. One of the challenges that we are focusing on obviously is power quality. So Ryan, real quick, real short, what can a microgrid do to improve power quality? A microgrid can help power quality, absolutely. When the inverter technology starts to increase and distributed generation being solar or when it starts to increase, the inverter becomes the key component in there. So as the inverter capabilities get better, you can now manage the power quality at a distributed generation spot. Instead of the power quality coming from that prime mover, maybe we are helping support or correct or giving ourselves our own power quality at the microgrid level. The difference starts to come in now that we increase our renewables and much higher and higher like how far can we go and still retain that power quality. The inverter is always going to be the limitation of that in addition to the control source that is deciding whether or not we do or do not have power quality. If you bring that right back down to the inverter, the inverters today are possible to be grid forming inverters that you open up your point of comic coupling, you become your microgrid and you are going to power up yourself. It is due to that grid forming inverter to say you have to give us the power quality which is that voltage source, that frequency source that says this is what everybody else has to follow along with. So you said the level of penetration was 20 to 30%. We could probably get 50% even higher and a lot of that is predicated on maybe the inverter technology as it develops and the controller software obviously as well too. Right, the devices that are deciding how far to go or who is in charge. Right now I think we are at 20 or 30% pretty easily, 50% is achievable if you have got a lot of spinning reserve sitting behind you. If it is a diesel generator you can get to 50% because you have got to be ready to just lose 50% of if you are at 50 you have got to be ready to just lose it if that cloud comes. It is not going to be the whole 50% but it will be a lot of it. You have got to start asking the questions where is that energy coming from very quickly. Spinning reserve is a great place to hold that and that is going to hold your power quality. Define what spinning reserve is. Spinning reserve is asking your generator to be sitting at 50% capacity so that 50% is spinning ready to be used. If you are in your car and let us say you have a manual you are about halfway through your revs that you are going to allow on that gear. So do not get all the way up into that red band but sit somewhere right on the bottom side of that band so that you are ready to hit it when you need it. That is kind of like spinning reserve. Another thing that you can have is energy storage and you are ready to convert that very, very quickly into the spinning reserve that you need which is possible but you need a very good inverter and very fast energy storage to get that. Okay. Well you have already dabbled into some of the technologies so talk about some of those technologies. The spinning reserves, the energy storage systems that you see playing a key role in power conditioning. So on power conditioning, spinning reserve right now, your diesel generator for here is a great spinning reserve because we are just used to having it but it is not very renewable in that right now it is not renewable at all because it is steel. It is not and will not meet the 2045 mandate for renewable energy. It will not get us there. Bio diesel maybe has some ability to get you there and it is going to act and perform just like an engine which will be great spinning reserve to have. When you go to the other renewable energy sources, let us take hydro off because we are not dealing with hydro at a large scale right now but that is a very good spinning reserve as well. Now we start talking, if we want to talk battery and hydrogen, there is more energy storage devices we can talk about but once you sit behind the inverter, power quality comes out of the inverter. So we can stack anything we want behind it. The inverter is going to be due up for deciding the power quality that we are dealing with on our micro grid. So that power quality issue is really the type of energy storage, instantaneous response to act upon a SAG or a lag or some other type of maybe a frequency issue. That is a good point. So I should clarify to meet your question a little bit better that the inverter will have its capabilities. The energy storage needs to meet the demands of the inverter. So if you have a slower acting battery, you can't demand a lot of power from that inverter in a very short amount of time. The inverter will be ready to give it to you but if it can't request the energy coming from the battery or the fuel cell within the right amount of time, it is just not going to be able to give it. Same thing as far as duration. If you want something that provides power quality for a really long amount of time, once you're out of gas, once you're out of battery, once you're out of hydrogen, then you're out. The inverter is only as good as the energy behind it, but it's due up for the quality. Definitely. So again, the challenge we've got are the type of energy sources that can react quickly to any type of environmental change. With respect to the microgrid, it's on a military installation. Are there any other unique challenges that we've got to contend with? Obviously, you're dealing with an energy load, a load that is very sensitive. It's got to be able to conduct a mission, obviously, and you're dealing with some very high-tech equipment items, too. Are there any other unique issues that we'll have to look at with parole with respect to power conditioning, and if so, what technologies are we looking at? I know you mentioned hydrogen, you mentioned flywheels, as well, too, for maybe power conditioning purposes. So let's talk a little bit about specifically to parole in the military, what challenges we've got there. Sure. When we talk about a military base, we start to talk about power quality and the need for power, like how critical is the power that they have? When we ask about how critical power, we also need to ask, how critical in respect to time? Can you lose power for a second? Can you lose power for an hour? Can you lose power for a day? Maybe even two weeks. Puerto Rico is without power on a large part of their island for much more. So you do need to ask the question all the way from one second. I, as an electrical engineer, go much lower than that. I'll start talking cycles. Like, I don't even want a little blip in the power. And then you ask that back to the base as to what their mission requires. You're going to be a little bit different. Those same questions get asked to hospitals and data centers who are very sensitive computing. That's a great point. Within it. But we each have a little bit different stomach for how much drop in power that we can sustain. But on a military base, you will have very sensitive pieces of equipment that need to be protected at a very high level of power quality. And then you have other instances where it's like, OK, yeah, I could let the lights come off for a minute. I could go for maybe an hour. But you're going to disrupt something that's going on within that mission across the whole base. So you're disrupting a lot. When you stack all those up, the criticality of that power requirement does start to creep up towards the other things like the data center and that health facility where we couldn't lose just a little bit. We need to keep that on as much as possible. Those are the very key parts of a microgrid when you start talking from a military perspective is how high is my critical power? But then let's add on the duration of that. Like, how long can you stomach being without power? Absolutely. The genesis for Pearl really came several years ago when the military started to realize that power was provided by the off base utilities and the inherent challenges and risks that are associated with that. Again, the utilities do a fantastic job of providing power. But with a microgrid, you're really allowing what we call mission assurance or energy assurance. The power quality piece is a huge component of that as well too. And we're looking really forward to demonstrating that at Pearl. So moving forward with Pearl as we conceive that project, it's really going to be a renewable energy microgrid. So the base and the mission will be able to run indefinitely on a microgrid using renewable energy. Power quality conditions will have to be resolved. There's this cybersecurity element that we'll have to lay for another conversation here. But in the last two seconds, I want to talk a little bit about the transition from this microgrid to maybe a microgrid writ large and what something like Oahu has to go through with meeting some of the energy requirements to get to 24, 45s mandate. Right. So you take what you're doing with this microgrid and you get to 100% renewable within your own bubble, extend that to a bunch of other microgrids, and eventually you can get there. Great. A little bit harder than that. Just on a bigger scale, the technology is that there the engineering is certainly capable of doing it. We're lucky we've got the A&Es like your firm, Burns and McDonald Ryan and your skills to help make that happen. So we know this is an important issue and we're looking forward to working with you and your team on developing Pearl. And today we covered a pretty interesting topic which everybody has to contend with every once in a while. It's power conditioning and power quality issues and I appreciate your time and effort and explaining and providing some due diligence on what's out there and what we really have to contend with. So I think that about wraps it up for the show and we're good to go. Ryan, thank you again for being on the show. Yeah, thanks, Dave. We'll talk to you soon. Aloha. Aloha. And that's it. Thanks for watching and we'll stand and be back very soon and hopefully I'll be back on in the near future as well with another interesting topic. Aloha. Bye-bye.