 Welcome to Kondo Insider, our weekly show about association living, primarily Kondo associations. I think it's interesting to note that about 38% of our population lives in an association here in Hawaii and there's a lot to learn. So this is for boards of directors and homeowners alike and we welcome questions if you want to call our hotline at 808-374-2014. We'll try to answer your questions but you know now the last couple of weeks we spent a lot of time on the legislature and a lot of the bills out there and we're not going to go into that. I would like to encourage all of you to donate to Think Tech of Hawaii, you may have seen a little flash note at the beginning because you do a wonderful service and wonderful topics and I know I've personally donated as well as Hawaii Council of Community Associations and these types of programs bring a lot of insight to our residents in Hawaii on topics that sometimes rarely get discussed. So I know even a few bucks you know helps them a lot because all nonprofits do that. But today this is an exciting show for me, it's very rare, maybe never, we have a show where we're going to offer you something for free that may save you money. One of the things that I've always been proud of in Hawaii and I first heard of this initiative I said that's never going to happen is our state's objective to be energy free by the year, I want to say 2040 but I'm not exactly sure. 2045. 2045 our guest says. So I invited today a good friend of mine, CEO of Shifted Energy, Boris Rizal, to talk about a program that's being launched July 1 for multifamily which is condo associations, high rises primarily, although it would work for large townhouse groups or whatever, a program that would do two things. Number one it will provide an instant credit on your electric bill there every month and number two potentially reduce your electric bill. It's a very novel creative technology program so Boris welcome to the show. Great to be here, thank you for having me. Tell us something about you and your company and give us a general overview. Yeah, so I live in Waimanalo, Hawaii, a proud graduate of the University of Hawaii. I've been in technology my whole career, love tech, I did five years and split between state and city and county government, worked for a Hawaii gas for a utility and a friend of mine was the founder of Shifted Energy, Olin Lagon and he'd been working on this idea for a while, had some prototypes and he asked me to come on board and help to commercialize it, get some finance money and get some pilots going and you know I'd always wanted to do a startup and so I decided throw caution to the wind and let's do it. So what and I want to get into more detail on this but in general terms what is the objective, the kind of the global objective of Shifted Energy? I know you're a startup, you're gonna have a startup program for our new subscribers, what is it generally doing? Right well so the idea is global, there's 600 million electric storage water heaters globally, oftentimes they're found in multi-unit dwellings like condos, apartment buildings, townhomes and there's just not a lot of opportunity for utility scale programs in these regions so you think solar, solar plus storage, electric vehicles, typically those are sold to the single family homeowner and condos, apartment buildings and especially renters are kind of left on the side with those type of programs but they all have a device that's grid connected, it's already attached to the grid that is the first or second largest consumer of energy in the home. That's the water heater. So what is your, how's your company tackling that problem in general terms before we get into the specifics? Right and so because we're tech guys we took a little bit of a different approach and so we use machine learning to understand how each family uses their water heater and we do that so we get a unique profile so we can maximize the amount of capacity we get for that water heater without affecting access to hot water and so if you think about one water heater maybe it's a kilowatt it's not a whole lot but then you magnify that you aggregate that up and you do 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 water heaters you're able to control megawatts of energy so in the case of Hawaii if we want to use all that rooftop solar that we're creating turn on those water heaters during the opportune time of day from 10 to 2 that way you can shut them down from 5 to 9 when you're not producing solar avoid burning fossil fuel and you drastically can reduce that demand curve in the evening. So you, I'm a lay person, I come from technology you know so what you're doing is hooking up a device to a water heater and it kind of learns your individual habits and when you're using hot water when you're not using hot water and then it regulates when it turns on and turns off the water meter so you have hot water when you need it but at the same time you're not paying the heat water when you don't need it. Right and we've really engineered our product to be invisible to the rate payer and so our controller it's small it splices in line completely agnostic to the size that make the model of the water heater and we're just in the quietly in the back where you sell cellular internet of things technology for communications so we don't need to borrow your Wi-Fi we don't need to run any cables and it's so it's really simple for the for the homeowner to participate or the renter and it's a 15 minute install we're in and we're out. You have a little device how big is little just in your hands? Yeah it's you know it's about I would say four inches by about seven inches it's really small. A little device that's kind of in a way a little mini computer because it's understanding what you're doing your own personal profile you're not stuck with everybody's got to be the same in your building right and in the meantime it transmits the data through our cloud software your cloud software and in the meantime it's connected to turn off your electricity meter at the appropriate time. Right and so we're working with the utility then to kind of dance with their needs because if you think about especially renewable energy it dances right sun and wind are dancing like this and you need to be able to match that and that's exactly what we're doing think about it as a battery but it's thermal it's a thermal battery. Is this something you have to seek approval from HECO or the PUC where does that stand because we're very regulated in the industry so I mean I mean is this on your own or do you have the government and the utility behind you? Right well our business model here in Hawaii so we have agreements in place with Hawaiian Electric we're waiting on approval from the utility commission we're gonna do about 2,500 units about two and a half megawatts here in Hawaii so we'll actually go out we'll recruit we'll install and then we'll aggregate that capacity and we'll sell that back to the utility. The utility wants that because it's a it's a cheaper form of energy than burning fossil fuel and it gets us to our 2045 goal. Now the PUC and the electric company are on board with what you're trying to do. Absolutely. You know I really like to give Hawaiian Electric kudos it's easy to beat up on them and a lot of people do but as a startup we've done multiple pilot projects with them they've been an incredible partners of ours I mean really our company is where it's at because you know they've been willing to work with a local company and we've been able to now scale that into a you know a commercial space so I give a lot of credit to one electric. Before I go on with some other questions I just want to summarize something yeah have you correct me if I want. So they would call your company once this is approved by the PUCs you're looking for like a July startup of this kind of a thing and their building would say we'd like to participate in your program right and there you would come install devices in each unit it costs them nothing to have this installed this is all free right that little device a little computer would be connected to your clouds of software turning on their hot and cold water to the extent of when you're heating it in line with their habits within their own unit and at the same time because they agreed to participate they would get between a three and five dollar a month credit on their electric bill. Exactly and so typically we'll reach out to the property owner or the property manager and we'll work with them to get access to the building and we'll then work with their either security or their building maintenance and it's it multi unit really facilitates rapid scale because we can do a notice we're going to be there and we typically we go door-to-door we do our installs we're in and out in 15 minutes and one of the things that we've you know we've pulled a bunch of property managers and owners so above just you know the bill credit we'll do a courtesy check of the thermostat and the heating element this is something that nobody pays attention to but if one of those are bad in your in your water heater it's not working optimally and you're you're going to be ultimately paying more in your electric bill so we'll optimize that along with the bill credit along with some leak detection and some other benefits and then like I said rapid scale and multi unit buildings I know phase one you've talked about 2,500 units so I assume because you know that's the out of a hundred 150 30 units of building you're not talking about more than 10 12 15 buildings to you know there's hundreds if not thousands of buildings that would qualify for this yeah I'm assuming that that's like a startup phase you want to do more that's not the end of the program absolutely our goal here in Hawaii is a hundred thousand when electric will do subsequent yearly contracts like the one that we're working on right now and so each year we're going to go out and we're going to recruit and we're going to install until yes we would like every dumb electric water heater in the state to be smartly intelligently controlled and and empower our community to be part of the process of getting off of fossil fuel generation let's just say I had a building of 200 years to want to do this and they called you and they say this is a good idea let's do it about how long to get an approval and they really get their program started is that like a couple weeks a month years yeah the installation process is fairly quick like I said it's about a 15 minute install we would typically schedule to do it all at one time so maybe we'd be there for a week and a half getting all the installations done we would collect some information from the rate payer typically well primarily we need their account number their one electric account number and then we sign them up and as soon as the program goes live which is going to be sometime this year they they start receiving their their bill credit and we can just keep replicating that throughout the island let's just assume it's approved by the PUC with a final legislative regulatory phases in place so I called you and our board voted yes to do that and we notified the residents is it about a month before it gets installed or two months or six months yeah I know I would say a couple months right we would we would there's some planning just finding that the day that works best to come and start those installations depending on our manufacturing schedule how many controllers do we have in the shop but it's it's really it's pretty quick so if I partnered with you you wanted to do those 200 units we would have it signed up and done within a couple months okay well what we're gonna do right now is we're gonna take a short break I'm with forest facility CEO of shifted energy talking about ways you can say three to five bucks a month for doing absolutely nothing and support our state goals on energy renewables so we'll be right back in a minute hey loha my name is Andrew Lening I'm the host of security matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on think tech Hawaii live from the studios I'll bring you guests I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe your co-workers safe your family safe to keep our community safe we want to teach you about those things in our industry that you know may be a little outside of your experience so please join me because security matters aloha hi I'm Rusty Komori host of beyond the lines on think tech Hawaii my show is based on my book also titled beyond the lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence leadership and finding greatness I interview guests who are successful in business sports and life which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness join me every Monday as we go beyond the lines at 11 a.m. aloha well I was just watching that commercial for beyond the lines and they're talking about the great program by the way interviewing these people who achieved greatness and I sort of feel badly I haven't been invited to appear on the show yet but I guess I'll get over that in time we're as far as Frizzell right now talking about renewable energy and maybe it's because I'm in the condo industry you know in the condo industry most of us think we need a psychiatric care you know it's the tough business start-up industry could be anyway I just want to review a couple things so you have a program that basically will provide a credit in your electric bill for these multifamily units that will help us become more energy efficiency as a state if not the world by controlling your demand for electricity to heat your water meter by using it when you need it which kind of makes sense and we've said that if you sign up it's free for the installation no costs is there any maintenance things they have to come in once a year every other year that is this all driven by technology you know if you have a bad meter or a bad reader or whatever yeah no so our controllers are built to last at least 10 years because we're using a cell chip we don't need we don't have to worry about your wi-fi connection or anything like that what's also great about our technology if the controller fails your water heater will not fail because we wire it normally closed and that's a really important thing to think about because we don't want anyone to experience having a cold shower because that's just not a good experience and and then that allows us you know say a controller fails we can wait until we have a dozen or so and then we can go out and we can replace them all at one time it just makes it easier from a maintenance standpoint there's the controller always learning for lack of a better word so if all of a sudden you changed your habits that it would adjust accordingly yeah that's an excellent question we actually go out four times a day and so we're always relearning the environment and that can be seasonality it could be because you go on vacation and and that's actually what we area we haven't touched on say you go on vacation we'll sense that and we'll automatically shut down the tank until we see usage again and so we'll learn these patterns we'll learn your family typically takes three showers in the morning and two showers in the evening and that helps us to have that again that unique profile for how your family is using the water heater so we can maximize how we're using it but not give you a cold shower now are you able through this process at all to identify maybe issues with the water heater it's thermostat and things as you're going along you're saying does not being efficient a couple yeah so we've seen this in a couple different ways we sent a signal to turn on and we'll we'll see that a thermostat doesn't engage and so we can we'll have an alert for that we've detected leaks actually we had a controller on a friend of mine's home and his brother kept calling me telling me he was getting a cold shower and i was i was promising him that we weren't running any any kind of testing and so we finally just went out there to just check on it and it turns out they had a leak and we helped them find that leak and we potentially saved them thousands of dollars and they were actually really grateful for us because they would have never have known that they had that leak and the one thing i think you said i'd like to just explain a little bit more about this that if the association agrees you're now installing the controllers tell me just repeat a little bit more about the courtesy check you're doing and why that's valuable yeah it's valuable because so almost every water heater typically has two thermostats and two heating elements and nobody pays attention to those so if you have a thermostat or a heating element that's gone out your water heater is now not optimized and to heat correctly and so you're going to be burning more energy than you should be and so we'll come in we'll replace those if need be to help optimize the water heater and in the way that it's you know working efficiently because my wife tells me i know nothing about nothing so so i think i'm smarter than that but to me my perception is this is a big problem i don't think people look at their water heaters very much other than they expect hot water when they take a shower or do the dishes or whatever it may be and and so i would suspect that there's lots of controllers that aren't ideal and often operating in an optimum that a lot of us are paying the heat water we aren't using and we just keep it heated all the time just in case and and i say paying for it we're paying for it in different ways you know just because you're you're certainly it's in your electric bill i know your your company doesn't promote utility saving but there's potentially utility savings out of this absolutely yeah so a couple things there so most people don't realize you're actually supposed to drain your tank once a year and and that helps to prolong the life um and another thing to think about if there's a hurricane and you lose water you can actually drink the water in your in your water heater you need to boil it first but just a you know a safety tip out there but but absolutely people aren't paying attention the water heater is the first or second largest consumer of energy in the home so if you're if you're not running ac then your water heater is your largest consumer of energy in the home and if it's not optimized like you know you optimize your car you optimize all these other things these cost centers in your life but nobody pays attention to this hidden device that's sitting in your home but it's it's you're paying for it every month well see i learned something new because you see you said you should drain your water heater once a year i thought it was once every 15 years and i'm draining mine in about two weeks now because i'm putting a new water heater in yeah yeah once a year you're supposed to drain your your tank well i'm replacing my water heater not because there's nothing wrong with it but because i'm in the property management business i i've learned i'd rather do it now before i have a burst and i have a insurance claim and all those things on top of it because uh believe me after about 15 years you're it's about the useful life of a water heater before you have a risk of a leak so i'm putting that into effect i notice in your in your thing you say you track all this data and and i i'm just reading this that says um monthly reports you provide those to the owner or is it to the association or so we can and the utility can also provide some usage data for the building and they can do some comparisons with other buildings in the area and you know you can't measure what you you can't understand we can't measure right and and we feel that getting these reports in your hand and you can actually see it it really helps you to to kind of paint a picture of how you can be more energy efficient more energy cautious and and i think that's a great way to engage with your tenants or your if it's a you know a condo association then your your homeowners um because again you just don't know but if you have the data then you can go out and actually make some changes so i know associations in some cases have or everybody has their own electric meter most common associations they all have a central water meter but the electric meter is individual and sometimes it's a central meter for everybody they just submit or build out accordingly does it work for both types of buildings right and so the master meter you'll you would you would receive the credit you would be a much larger credit because you're going to get all that capacity all that kilowatt usage to one meter and so then it would be up to the building owner or the building manager to decide what they want to do do you want they want to use that to do repairs or bring down the monthly association fee but that bill credit would go to this single um rate payer yeah i think i haven't thought this through i know we're going to be talking about some test buildings with our company um whether you would want to take the fee and have the owner see the five dollar credit or the three dollar credit to encourage participation understanding why we're doing this program you know it's certainly occasionally issuing a report to the unit owners how it's affected you know what's what's going on but only promote your business and and validate it and um so what kind of reception you get when you're going out through with people right and i think that's that's important we do a lot of surveying um we've done that this through our pilot projects and whatnot and and even above the bill credit what people have said over and over again that the fact that they know that they're helping the state achieve its energy goals we were the first state in the nation to set a hundred percent renewable energy target and that is really awesome and that's an incredible thing to think about and be proud of but oftentimes you know if you're in an apartment and especially if you're a renter how do you do that you're not getting solar you're probably not driving an electric vehicle you're not getting batteries home batteries but here's a way to participate and people feel really positive about that and they want to participate and um and so this is just another way to get people engaged and excited about where they live and i think that's really important is having pride in where you live in this control or the device i'm assuming it's hardwired into your utilities you don't have to change batteries or anything like that yeah it's hardwired and no no battery changes and those things use very little electricity right when we've done studies to make sure that we're not adding any load to the to the bill and we're not so if you know we're getting near the end of our show so people want to if they're interested in this this association what do they do they should send you an email contact you they i know you're we were talking earlier that we're looking for maybe starting some of these in july but um you know the reality of it is you said you have an initial capacity of 2,500 units so if you want to get in early you should probably sign up early i would think absolutely so you could email me forest at shiftedenergy.com and i'm a forest with one r that'd be the best way and i would love to come out and meet with any of the property managers meet with tenants and homeowners and discuss more about the program that's forest with one r at shiftedenergy.com and you also have the ability to contact us here at think tech if you didn't write that down or don't know and say please send us the contact information and we will get it to you but i would say in general as you summed up this is supporting our energy goals which is wonderful number two you're getting a credit which is wonderful number three potentially reducing utility costs and i say that it may not be your personal electric meter but certainly by reducing our demand of purchasing fossil fuels certainly helps maintain the rate basis for a Hawaiian electric company absolutely especially you can reduce that there's pluses to get up to the technology age and and have your board consider this program i know that our company is going to send out notices to our major clients and that would this criteria fit into and suggest they take a look at this at their board and so i think it's a wonderful program we should be very happy to is there any downside to this not participating yes the big downside right but no it's it's it's really seamless it's invisible you won't even know it's there other than the you know the 15 minutes that we're doing the installation um you won't even know the we're there and to all of our guests out there you can think about think tech Hawaii and kind of insider and said hey we're nothing for free they bought a way to save me 50 60 dollars a year not for one year but forever more and also do good for our environment i want to thank you for being on the show today yeah it's always a pleasure i'm always excited by your program and i know i'm going to beat on you to come make a presentation to our property managers and to all of you in condo world out there you should talk to your board and talk about this program and email farce and he can send you a flyer on this program and he's willing to come out to your condo board and discuss it with you i think this is the wave of the future and think about getting it on the ground floor in the meantime i would tell you that we're going to have condo insider again next week and we're changing some of our format so you're going to see a little bit more of like case studies of reviewing what happened in a real condo case and a learning curve as well as some more educational material on the new laws as well as the existing laws your ethics responsibilities things along that line on that note i want to thank each and every one of you for giving up your valuable time to watch condo insider and we will see you next week and aloha