 Hawaii, the state of clean energy, Ray Starling and me. And today we're doing a special show as part of our Neighbor Island series this month. With Sharon Suzuki, she is the president of Maui Electric Company, Miko, and we're going to find out all about what's going on on Maui, and we're going to distinguish it from other islands because we're tracking around the state. Hi Sharon, thank you for joining us today. Hi Jay and Ray, nice to be on your show, thank you for having me. Oh sure, well I'll track on some of the things we were talking about before the show began, and that is, can you give us, you're the CEO, the president of Maui Electric Company, how did you get there, and how can I get your job? We're caught, I've been with the utility, I started at Hawaii Electric back working on the energy efficiency demand side management rebate program. That was a fun time to get that started. I was there for 12 years, moved to Maui as the manager of customer service, was moved into the renewable energy services department as manager. My predecessor Ed Reinhart saw a vision for emphasis on renewable energy, then four years ago I was promoted to president of Maui Electric. What's it like, what's it like to be the president, that's fabulous. I think it's exciting, challenging, and I'm sure have learned a lot. We have, I mean we serve three islands as Maui Electric, Maui, Molokai, and Lanai, and you know we have a great team here. The kind of smallness of the Maui Electric utility gives us the opportunity to try new technologies, move relatively quickly, and connect with the community in a very nice way. How would you distinguish, I really have to ask, I'm so curious, how would you distinguish, you know, electrical generation, the way the utility works, the grid, customer base, all that, how would you distinguish that from say the other neighbor islands, from the big island, how are you different or the same? And for that matter, from Kauai, how are you different or the same? Well I guess one of the key differences is that as one utility and where the islands are not interconnected, we serve three small island grids. So for example the peak capacity on Oahu is about 1200 megawatts, on Maui 200, Molokai and Lanai are about 5 megawatts each, just in comparison. So you know more rural communities and three separate islands, so logistically sometimes it can be a challenge, but yes it's always an opportunity, right? Yeah, what about your customer base, how many customers, ratepayers do you have in Maui County? In Maui County we have about 70,000 customers, about 3,000 on Molokai, 1700 on Lanai and the remainder on, so most of the population on Maui. And how does that compare with say the big island, big island has fewer I would imagine, yeah? No actually I think they have a little more, maybe 80,000 close to us, but they're, you know, the island is spread out, so they have, you know, maybe different population areas and yet a long way to, you know, transmit and distribute their energy. Before I turn you over to Ray, he has some questions about, you know, vision and exactly how you see the future. I'd like to ask you what role does renewable, you know, your background is in renewables over the past few years and you must watch that very carefully and I wonder where your percentage of renewables as a, you know, percentage of total generation is and how far advanced you are vis-a-vis, you know, the available technology and the way things are going on the big island and Oahu and Kauai. So I'll say that we've made a lot of progress over the last few years and since 2008 when we made that commitment through the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, Maui County was at 14 percent renewable energy source or 14 percent of our sales being sourced from renewable resources. As of the end of 2015, the last confirmed number was about 35 percent and we think that last year we achieved about the same percentage. So we've made quite a bit of progress by integrating large wind developments. So we have a capacity of 72 megawatts of wind and nearly 100 megawatts of solar, mainly rooftop solar, so and one solar farm, one megawatt on the Nei. We also have some small amount of hydro. Where's that located Sharon? In the Lahaina area, it's Makila in the Lahaina West Maui mountain area. And you have wind in Ula Palakua. I recall there was some issue recently where the turbines, one of them or maybe more than one, got broken. Are they back online in Ula Palakua? Oh yeah, they're back online except that one turbine, but they're selling us power. So they're back in operation. Yeah, that's a very interesting facility. I was there at the opening of that. I guess you were too, but we didn't know each other then. Ray, you had questions about the concept and the vision for Maui Electric. Well, I just want to say Sharon, I think you've done a really good job, especially getting the community going behind what you're trying to do there. And I think you've got the capacity to really move forward on our clean energy goals. And I was wondering, sort of from you, how do you view what Maui Electric is likely to look like in, let's say, two years? And then I'm going to ask you five years and 10 years. So in two years, if you get to move things the way you want and the way the county is moving on clean energy, what changes from what you've got right now do you think you'll see in two years? So in two years, so we recently updated our long range energy plans with focus on the next five years. And we have set a very ambitious goal of reaching 100% renewable energy on Moloka'i by the year 2020. So I imagine that we will have had commitments for new resources on that island. And I see it as a combination of distributed rooftop PV resources as well as potentially a new centralized renewable resources coupled with some storage technology and running our generators as backup using biodiesel. Oh, that's great. That's a nice package. So to the extent that the other resources are not available, we can always turn them on and we know that they can run on biodiesel because we've done the testing. So it's still ambitious. I think the challenge to get 200% is balancing, maintaining reliable service to all of our customers on each of our islands while keeping costs of electricity affordable, right? I mean, we could probably do it tomorrow or next year, but cost of, say, storage technologies and even biofuels has been high or at a premium. So hopefully technology is improving, costs are coming down and biofuels will be more affordable. So we need to find different ways to work with partners to collaborate with the government, businesses, developers, the community, our customers to find ways to leverage maybe other sources of money so it's not coming directly from us as an investment with somehow getting back to the customer bills. But looking at grants, applying for grants, seeing what other organizations say on Moloka-e may be able to get access to to make sure it doesn't increase their bills. Moloka-e is a really interesting sort of laboratory. You've got a number of homes there that have rooftop solar and from what you said, I gather you're also putting in some kind of community solar or utility-scale solar there. And then you'll keep the existing generations for use with biofuel. The existing, my recollections, the existing generators go way back and they've been running Moloka-e for a long time, but they are convertible or they will work with biofuel and therefore there's no reason not to use them for backup anyway. So what I guess what I'm coming to is I remember we've had some shows about energy costs and the prices in Moloka-e and people in Moloka-e, this is three or four years ago, we're very concerned that the cost of energy from the utility was really high, maybe the highest in the state. And so my question is how is the cost of energy in Moloka-e doing now and has and will renewables reduce that cost? So cost for energy now, fortunately oil prices are lower than the recent past and it hopefully stays lower, not necessarily or stays flat, but renewable energy could, depending how it's done and how it's funded, could initially increase bills and that's what we show in our plans because we need to make investments. But like I said, what we're trying to do is find ways to leverage other people's money, grant funding that maybe some of the organizations on Moloka-e may be able to qualify for. We have also applied for grants for small scale battery and PV as a part of the solution. We're still waiting to hear from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Communities group. So we continue to look at ways to leverage other funding to improve the infrastructure there to be able to integrate more renewable energy. And buy batteries. You know batteries aren't cheap and you want to buy them and make that 24 hours. Or use it in a way to support the grid and integrate more renewable energy. So there are different functions that the batteries can serve. It could help to regulate the fluctuations of variable renewable energy like solar that's not available all the time or potentially just shifting, right? Load shifting so that you charge the battery with solar when it's available and discharge it when we need it. Sharon, one thing we did. We were fortunate to have a battery provided to us through Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. We're still working to develop the algorithm for that battery to respond quick enough to the fluctuations in the grid. I'll take a short break. Sharon, if you don't mind. Ray, if you don't mind. We'll take one minute off to do our standard break here. Sharon Suzuki, she's the president of Maui Electric Company and we're talking about our series of renewables on the neighbor islands here on Hawaii. The state of clean energy. We'll be right back. Aloha. I'm Carl Campania, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I hope you join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. Join us as we have good conversations with our farmers, our producers, our conversion technologies, our investors and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals. See you soon. Hello and Aloha. My name is Raya Salter and I am the host of Power of Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to figure out how we're going to work towards a clean and renewable energy future. We have exciting conversations with all kinds of stakeholders, everyone who needs to come together to talk about renewable energy, be they engineers, advocates, lawyers, utility executives, musicians or artists to see how we can come together to make a renewable future. Tuesdays at 1 p.m. Back with you Jay and I and we're talking with Sharon Suzuki who is the president of Maui Electric Company and we were talking about things happening on Molokai and one of the questions that popped into my head was you know one of the things that seems to be necessary to make a clean energy grid work well is to have smart meters and I was wondering is is that something that you that you would really need on Molokai since it's so small could you get by without smart meters or are you planning to put them in place before you reach your your goal of 100% clean energy? We had plans to install meters at every location. I thought the request at the commission was deferred so we're looking at different ways to potentially get the communication and information to and from our customers so I think if we can do it in a cost effective way we'd like to have that type of technology to be able to have controllability of different resources out there on the grid. I don't think it would prohibit us from getting 200% though so we're definitely looking at trying new technologies implementing innovative solutions and different types of customer programs like time of use rates and demand response where customers are more involved with us in terms of operating the grid and ensuring the reliable service to the whole island so that's part of what we're looking at in terms of other solutions and to the extent that we can prove it out on a small island grid it may be we may be able to showcase it and transfer on the knowledge gained to our other islands. Yeah so yeah that's a really important point I'd like to pursue that for a minute so you know we have statewide regulation of course which I guess applies to Hawaiian Electric and its subsidiaries all at the same time the same moment the same regulation and yet you know Molokai for that matter Linai can be test beds so when you say time of use for example you can be more nimble you can do it in this laboratory environment of yours and as you said you you might be able to learn things and then export it back to Hawaiian Electric but how does that work are you going to be ahead of other islands because of that laboratory environment because of that nimbleness where are you now are you ahead now. Actually Hawaii Island has the highest penetration of renewable energy there about 50% renewable with geothermal wind solar biomass and hydro I think you know actually we do all islands in our Hawaiian Electric Hawaii Electric like Maui Electric have a pilot residential time of use rate that's available to customers potentially we might want to see time of use rates on Molokai that encourage the use of electricity in the middle of the day for businesses also to be able to encourage them to help use the available PV energy that's currently on the grid so to some degree I think all of the islands in our service territories are moving at a similar rate what we see are some of the high penetration issues sooner on a grid like Molokai and trying to address those issues with solutions to ensure like I said earlier reliability affordability and high penetration renewable energy. Can you can you compare what's going on in Molokai with what's going on in Lanai? So Lanai is we've been working very closely with Pu La Ma Lanai to understand their plans for you know expansion and improvement and working with them on different renewable energy solutions so of course I think it it kind of depends more on the timing of their plans and then of course the different availability of resources there so similar to Molokai I think we're looking at solar if it is wind it would be to just be to source the on island demand storage and also you know biofuels. Well can we can we turn to Maui and kind of talk about them because that's a much bigger operation and it's it's going to take a lot perhaps a lot longer to get there. Do you have a target date for Maui to be a hundred percent? For sure by 2045 if we can get there sooner 2040ish time frame. Okay so for go ahead. Also in addition to solar more wind storage biofuels will look at biomass and any other potentially geothermal you know there was a developer looking at geothermal at one time but you know we know there's a resource available it just not just but it would take someone to test and you know develop that resource right to make it available. So so what what would Maui look like in the next five years what changes do you see coming that you really would expect to to arrive within the next five years. Okay yes so for Maui we have made a commitment to retire our Kahalui power plant and that provides about 33 megawatts of firm capacity to the island. So we're looking to do a solicitation to replace that capacity through our request for proposal process. So that we hope to complete you know in the next five years. So 2022 time frame is what we're targeting. We also do need to upgrade our central Maui transmission infrastructure because Kahalui does provide additional support to the grid in terms of providing voltage support or some form of stability and reliability to the system. We also will be looking to acquire more renewable energy solar wind and other sources that are available through a separate request for proposal process. So we look forward to I guess seeing what type of competitive pricing can come through that type of solicitation process. What role Sharon does utility scale solar play in all of this. You know I think there's been attention on that issue in all the islands. Should we have rooftop. And maybe we have we've taken all the low hanging fruit in terms of customer base who can afford rooftop. And that's why the installers are having so much trouble among other things. But what about the utilities plans on putting in utility scale solar or encouraging community solar as opposed to single family rooftop solar. And how's it going on Maui. I think it's from for solar or any type of renewable energy resource. We think it just needs to be price right. So that all customers benefit. And I think that's the benefit of centralized solar. We have contracted with a developer for two separate solar farms. The first for Maui. One is in South Maui and one is in Lahaina. So that is a those two solar farms about 2.8 megawatts each are expected to come online later this year. The pricing was very good at the time 11.06 which is we in our analysis would result in lower cost to our customers. And that's something that we do. We look to see if it's going to benefit customers before we enter into purchase power agreement. I think rooftop solar we want that to continue to be an option for our customers. We want to make sure that it is also priced right so that those who cannot afford to put in rooftop solar can won't be paying higher bills. So that's something that we're addressing at the commission in our active proceeding. You mentioned community solar. I think we certainly are looking to looking forward to implementing that type of program because it gives customers who maybe cannot participate in rooftop solar install it on their roof. An option to be part of our renewable energy future. Sharon do you do you have any one two or three things that you could tell us that you you need that you don't have yet that would would be helpful in moving forward faster. Is there some missing piece or is it just the process you have to go through. I guess a couple things I think we definitely need the community support so we are working very actively to share information about our energy plans and get their input to build support and answer any questions or concerns that they may have. And the other is to I hope that the request for proposal process can move forward quickly because that's the I think we believe is the best way to get a competitive price for the resource that we need on the island. You know did you have public support do you you know I mean for example different islands have different levels of public support different islands have different resistance on certain issues. I mean where where is the public on Maui are they in favor of everything you do are they giving you signals of one kind or another or resistance on one kind or another of things. I think that we've had support for the plans that we recently filed they're quite aggressive in terms of getting to 100 percent renewables for Molokai by 2020 for the night by 2030 and Maui 2040 2045. So I think there's support for that. We hope that we can continue to get support. We've worked very closely with Molokai because we needed to understand that us getting to 100 percent and using different types of innovative technologies would be something that they wouldn't mind. So when we went out to meet with them in September we did get some confirmation that they were willing to as long as we continued to work with them and talk to them about their energy needs and desires. Yeah that's true. I mean you really have to deal with the local ratepayers especially in a place where like Molokai where they they can be they can be very resisting. They like so it really pays to stay friendly with them. I wonder I wonder one last thing for me anyway is do you have people going off the grid in these remote areas in Maui and I know it happens in neighbor islands more than it does here in Oahu but do you have people going off the grid and building solar facilities and with batteries where they don't need you want don't want to be connected? Yes we do. Is it significant numbers? Oh I don't have numbers but I know that you know we have heard of some projects that are being done and that is definitely a option for our customers. I think if customers have new loans that they want to interconnect we're certainly interested in finding different solutions or evaluating different options with them to to stay connected to us and to make sure that it's done in a way that's fair to everyone. Thank you Sharon. I'm going to leave it to you to thank Sharon and to close the show. Sharon I really do appreciate your being with us today and I'm really excited I did not realize you you really might cross the line in 2020 on Molokai that'd be a great thing to have upon your wall the big banner showing that you were the first to reach 100% here in Hawaii and so we're looking forward to hearing more so we'd like to have you back sometime soon maybe next time you're on Oahu you can come on in join us up front and personal. Yeah amen to that thank you Sharon. Yeah I would look forward to that thank you so much. Thank you.