 Good afternoon, Howard Wigg. Code Green, Sink Tech, Hawaii. Gives me great pleasure to bring on board this afternoon, Dr. Reza Gorbani. Yes, yes, I do. Originally from Persia, and a fine example again of the richness that immigrants bring to our country. I swear one out of every four guests that I have is either from another country or they were born here very shortly after their parents came over. And you just bring a sharpness and a zing that we Native Americans just don't seem to have. So great, great pleasure to have you on board. Thank you, Howard. Yeah, thank you. So we are going to talk about demand response. What in the heck is... Oh, well, let me back up a little bit first. The acres of diamonds fable. There was a man in Africa who had a farm and he was discontent with the farm. He wanted to get rich. He heard that diamonds were the way to get rich. And he heard that far and far away lands there were diamonds. Sold his farm, went and wandered the world. Twenty years later came back, broke, busted, disillusioned, went back to the farm to see if he could be a farmhand there. And here was a mansion. And he asked the buyer what in the world happened. And he said, well, I was plowing my field and I saw this interesting looking rock. And I picked it up and it was a huge diamond. The moral of the story is you don't have to go far afield to look for the obvious answers. They may be right under your feet. And one of the answers for Hawaiian Electric for clean energy in Hawaii is right under our feet in the form of demand response. What in the world is demand response? That's exactly what we will find out. So if we could have the first slide, this is Hawaiian Electric's Plan A for getting from 2016, which is on the left, to 2045, when we have 100% clean energy. And I won't bore you with all the details, but that big blue spot in the middle is synthetic natural gas. And that sort of off-greenish splash to the right is alternate fuel source. Well, that was dependent on next era. It was dependent on significant or synthetic natural gas. We don't have either one. What in the world are we going to do? This is exactly what Dr. Garboni and I are going to talk about. So if we could go to the first demand response slide. And since we don't have all of these fuels that Hawaiian Electric was counting on, you and I are in agreement that there's all these different efficiency measures that we can look at. And in this case, there are several, but in this case, it's demand response. And let me walk us through this here. Hawaiian Electric produces electricity with different types of generators. And some, like the blue and the green on the bottom, are very inexpensive. The further up you go, the more expensive they are to produce electricity. So the number one on the left is what we have now. And what you're seeing on the left is, say, six in the morning. And then the two yellow blocks are around 9.30, 10.30 in the morning. And then, boom, it starts going down. What happened? We have all these photovoltaic arrays on all these roofs. The sun really gets serious and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Our demand goes way down. But then what happens on the climb on the right, the sun goes down again. So the production of the PVs go down. And that happens at exactly the time when everybody is coming home from school and work, turning on everything in the homes, and that's 400,000 plus homes. And here's the kicker for Hawaii. Tourism are tourists during the day. They're on the beach. They're shopping. They're touring. When do they come back to their hotel rooms? Right about the same time. They turn on everything in the hotel room. Then they go to the restaurants and the bars. And those are going full blast. And that's why you see this evening peak. That's the peak of the peak is around 7.30 in the evening. And then it goes down again. So it's difficult for Hawaiian Electric to adjust to these loads. And that's a story in and of itself. So now we look to slide two and what Dr. Orbanie is going to talk about. If we could stick to the previous slide. Slide two, we're going to take those yellow blocks and put them off to the early morning time and take the red and the yellow blocks and put them where they are needed with the result. That now we have a nice, smooth, cheap load. And if there's anything that any utility loves, it's a nice, smooth, cheap load. So now we can move to the next slide and Dr. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we go to the next slide. And Dr. Orbanie is going to take over here. And we're going to look. Okay, now if you could explain what in the heck. Yeah, let's just an example. If you look at the right side of the picture, there is a graph that shows the power in the vertical axis in horizontal axis is the load, generation, reserve, and demand response. So let's assume that the load is 400 megawatts. It's a load and island. And we have a couple of generators. Generator number one, two, and three. They are generating the power to need to satisfy this load. And in the power system, usually we need reserves because spinning reserve, you need to have enough reserve. And also you need ramping reserve, which is to support the system frequency. So you need the amount, you need to reserve as part of your generation. So generations are not working at their optimal position. Generation points, they're working a little bit far from it, which is less efficient. So to make sure that if anything happens to the grid, like you lose a big generation, if suddenly a big load, like a big pump, comes to the system, so you can actually match the generation to the load. So what you can do is you can do this one with the actual reserves, which is the actual generators that burning the fuel. It can be biofuel or it can be actual fossil fuel. So or you can replace this one with the demand, which means the loads. And the loads are part of your actual appliances, air conditioning systems, water heaters, and so on that they can add flexibility to the system and they can replace this reserve. So if anything happens at the first instance, let's say if you lose a big generator, the demand can respond first before your reserve. So assume that you increase the penetration of renewable energy like wind power and PV. As you increase them, you increase the uncertainty in the generation. The renewables can be centralized like a big wind farm or PV farm or can be a small residential PV, your rooftops. So all aggregate of those adds huge uncertainty to the grid and it's extremely actually challenging and it's a big headache for utility to deal with it. So demand, as you said, like a diamond is available. So the problem is that, yes, we have the demand available but how we use it. Do we know that we have available? What kind of demand we have available? When they are available, for what kind of service we use them. So we have to implement the actually ways to do that. So that's why if you go back to this figure again, maybe in the left-hand side, so you need a systematic way to connect the customers to the utility. That means that in that figure you can see the generation, the utility is generating using the generation systems like and then they have a transmission distribution line that are connected to your home. But there is a third party, the third one that can be part of utility or can be a separate part of the utility. Usually in the electricity market they are separate than the electricity utility because of the fairness. So they deal with the customers. And they know what kind of availability you have in your load so they have visibility of the aggregate of these loads so they know exactly what kind of service they can give to the utility and they do transactions with the utility. That means that they compete with the generation. So instead of adding another generator for the reserves or the system reliability, you add actually the reserve from the demand. So then either one, they compete to each other and in actual electricity market, whoever that can give the lowest cost service, that wins and gives the service. So if you are flexible, if you can give flexibility to the system and your service is cheaper than adding another generation, keeping another generation on as part of the power electricity system, then it makes sense to have more demand response. Basically if you had more renewable generations, you need a huge amount of flexibility and demand response. Basically it's a very, very good solution. And I'm looking at this. This requires a heck of a lot of communication back and forth with... If you're going to the residential level, we're talking tens of thousands of these. So there are grand challenges. There are technologies that need to be innovated. There are ways, I mean, you have big loads like hotels. They have an HVAC system in the building. In the HVAC systems, they have different hierarchies. And the biggest part is the compressor. They have a big compressor that provides the cool water to the building. So how do you link that big compressor to the electricity network and make sure that you can give the service that they want? So this is a big load, like half a megawatt or a couple of megawatts depends on the size of the building. And you can move to the small residential homes. So they have huge value because you have an aggregate of many people. So it's much more easier to deal with many than one in terms of reliability, maintenance, availability, and robustness of the service. So the only button is the reliability of the devices that they put that I'm going to explain maybe in what we are doing in my lab and also the communication. How do you communicate with the grid in a way that they want and also the computation? What kind of computation do you do locally to give the service? So these are the grand challenges of demand response. That's why at the university we love these problems because good stuff to think of. You know, I didn't even introduce you. I got you're a professor at UH School of Engineering and we need to take a break, but I want to cite one of your papers. The doctor writes many papers, including closed loop control of an intentionally adjustable compliant actuator. That was my PhD work. Completely different work. On that cheery note, we will take a break and be back in one minute. Okay, this is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. A wonderful show we do 4 to 4.30 every single Wednesday. And the progenitors of this show, Sharon Moriwaki, Ray Starling to my left. So how's it going? How's it going, Sharon? Do you like the show? I love the show and I hope everybody watches the show and joins in and gives us their comments on clean energy every week. Every week with incredible guests and topics and discussion and mostly candor. This month is all renewable energy and next month we're going to look at procurement. Each month we have a different series and so it's going very well. We learn so much. We keep the public so well advised. The best we can. Ray, what do you think? Well, I think this is the place where it's happening. This is where we discuss the latest of what is going on in the energy world and it's a great place to be, a great place to meet some new people that are into the energy world that we haven't talked to before. So I'm happy to be here. Okay, this is a... So energy is the biggest thing happening in Hawaii where they realize that it's not going to affect all of our lives, it's affecting all of our lives and it's like a million things are happening in energy. How could you possibly understand what's happening unless you are informed? This is your way. This is the deal. Hawaii, the state of clean energy every Wednesday at four o'clock, right? Join us. I knew you'd say that. Good afternoon again. Howard Wiig, Code Green, Sink Tech, Hawaii. The very honorable guest today is Dr. Reza or Bunny, Professor of Engineering at UH and a great, great innovator. Our topic today is demand response, as you know, and the... if a utility is going to implement demand response, they have two choices. Either we were talking about reserve, if they have to adjust, they can take from their reserve, or they can take via a demand response load and let's give, just in case people don't understand it thoroughly yet, let's give a very simple example of demand response, namely water heating at the residential level, which happens to be the case with your own home. So how does that work? What is the phase between your home and Hawaiian Electric and the water heater? Yeah, let's say your water heater is not solar water heater. It's not solar thermal. It's connected. You have an electric heater inside your water heater and it's connected to the heater. That's great. I mean, utility is great. So in that case, for example, you can have an electric plug or a smart plug that can give the demand response service to the utility. So there are a couple of different ways. It depends what kind of service you can give. So let's say you can say if the system frequency goes below a threshold, let's say system frequency needs to stay 60 hertz, then you just have to fight for it all the time, try to keep it the same. So if you lose a generator or there's a big bump in the load, our generation suddenly you have to meet, you have to always match the load and the generation. So in that case, the frequency always changes. Frequency is not 60 hertz. So your load can be disconnected from the grid if the frequency goes below a threshold. Then that's as you give as actually a response to the grid needs. That means that grid needs more power. So you reduce the demand, the load. That means that grid has enough power to meet the load. So that's a kind of response that you give. So whether there's a small circuit that calculates the system frequency and based on the threshold that is programmable, you can basically response the grid. This is a simple example. It can't be more challenging. That means that your air conditioning can be more smart. It can give your temperature that you need, but also it can give service to the utility, your refrigerator, your stove event. So even if your stove disconnects from the grid five seconds when you're cooking something, you don't even know it, but that is important for the grid reliability. Significantly important. So those kind of things you have to add. So basically the more appliances becomes more smarter and becomes more, you can schedule them, you can program them. The reason I talked about water heating is residential water heating. You've got a tank full of 130-degree water. It goes off for even 15 minutes. That's generally not a big deal, but you're doing Hawaiian Electric Service and they in turn are rewarding you financially. They give you a special deal. Exactly. For the service that you give to the utility, or give it back to you in terms of credit or actual dollar value. So also there's also some other issues with the demand because you have to schedule, let's say at night when you take your shower, the water is, I mean, you don't need that water in your water tank to be actually, to be hot again for the next half an hour. But the control of that water heater is designed in a way, it's a thermostat. When you use it, right after you use it, right after the water is cold, it starts to warm up. That's why you see these big peaks in the lows. You don't need that. You shift it easily, but quickly programming your water heater. Then in the middle of the night, like 3 a.m., it can come up. When you have a better wind, it can come up. So those kind of tweaks that adds more, I mean, intelligence, smartness to your appliances to whatever you are and you have connected to the grid, those are demand response. And you need to find a way to, I mean, get credit for those by buying those devices, by adding these capabilities. And that's where these middlemen come in. Yes, the aggregators. So here we have smart homes. Where in the world do we start? What's number one on this graph? How do we follow this? Let me explain this one. This is a technology we developed in my lab for demand response. So we have different things. So our idea is that since we have Wi-Fi in most of the houses, so we use existing Wi-Fi, we add actually a communication gateway which is connected to your router and your home. It creates a second network. And this Wi-Fi communicates with your appliances. So in your circuit breaker, we have sensors that you can actually connect and read the electricity consumption. And from that, we have algorithms that detect what kind of appliances you have, water heaters, a refrigerator, a TV, or what else. And we have plugs that you can actually connect to your water heaters or stoves or air conditioning. And it can communicate via, I mean, to your devices. Let's say via IR, it can communicate to your air conditioning units. Or it can turn on and off your appliances based on the system needs. So it has a controller that measures the frequency, the voltage, current, and then a response to the system. And all of these can communicate through this gateway that is connected to your router. And this creates a secure network so nobody can come and see what you're doing. So it's not based on a Zigbee or other technologies. It's based on Wi-Fi. It's encrypted. It's secure. You only have the password. Nobody can come and see what's going on. And then that data is still from the gateway goes to a server which aggregator has access and you have access. So you can see what's going on in your home. And then the utility get, without knowing whose home is the data coming from, they have an access to an aggregate of this data. How many appliances of this type and those types are connected and what kind of service they can give to you. So they have visibility of exactly what's going on and exactly what kind of service do you have. So they have better plan in their operation room of the size of the battery that they need or what kind of generation are on site and so on. So this is a technology that we are trying to actually work with a local company here to go to the market basically from my lab. You're saying it's pretty well or absolutely hack-proof? Everything is encrypted. Actually the IP behind all of these devices and the IP that we have beyond this is how we make it secure. How we make it encrypted and how we make sure that nobody can hack and come and see what's going on. The privacy is a big issue for the steel. Anytime you deal with the data, like your Gmail or whatever, you need to be aware of the privacy of your data and so you need to understand what kind of service you're giving to the utility. And they don't want to pry into your lives. No, no, no, no. It's all based on the need. The aggregator actually has an algorithm in a way that actually gives you in a service and based on the service that you give to the aggregator you get your money back from there. Basically you are a generator. You're a load but you're a generator. You're a negative generator. So that's the idea about demand response. So as we were talking, I was thinking about what could be turned off, not just for seconds as you were mentioning, but for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever, depending. And I'm thinking of dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer. Even a refrigerator I think can be if it's off for five minutes and an on for 15 minutes off for five minutes. Air conditioning. You have a thermal generator in your home. It's heat, so it's a storage. Everything is a storage. As you mentioned, your water heater is a storage. Your temperature, your home is a storage. Your refrigerator is a storage. You can have a small battery that battery the same way it can communicate with the grid and give service. So the next stage is how to use them and how you incentivize this one and to make sure that everybody can afford to put this technology in their home and not only afford it, but also make some money out of that. Absolutely. And that brought up a point that's always important to me. Namely, we looked at that first graph and saw that LNG liquefied natural gas blew there. I believe that if a winding electric had converted to that, converting an existing power plant was going to cost something like $250 million. Just to convert. And now we've got to still pay for that gas and have people operate it. What would be the cost, say, to a homeowner? What are the costs to Hawaiian Electric, obviously? And I imagine the homeowner would have to buy the interface? Yes. It depends on what kind of appliances they have. So we got grants from the National Science Foundation in the Department of Energy to reduce the cost of those devices from $500 to $55, for example. So we have spent millions of dollars to reduce the cost of the technology from the manufacturer to your home. So if you look at the scale, you save millions of dollars by saving maybe $200 or $300 for each assistant in your house. And then if it became popular, the economies of scale would kick in at the cost. Exactly. So it depends on what kind of appliances you have and what kind of service you give to the utility so it can be between $20 to $100. And in the future, the appliances become smarter. All these manufacturers, if you go to Home Depot, you see water heaters, Wi-Fi enabled water heaters. You see water heaters, very well air conditioned. So even your toaster, your oven, everything will become because the data is not only to service the utility, the data is for you to understand, oh, when I have to change this and that, the maintenance, you have better, your car, your electric car, or even your car will be connected to the grid. So it's all about you as well. So have a better understanding of when and where, by what kind of appliances. Precisely. And what to do with them. And you're going to get so much assistance from all of this new information that we keep talking about the expensive electricity. It sounds to me like if all this were to happen, the initial capital outlay isn't all that much. We're using a lot less fuel. Yes. Electric does not have to pay for, and it could be realistic that our utility rates would actually go down. Oh, and then EIS, there's no environmental impact statement necessary here. Exactly. Yeah, it's much easier to go to the market. It's much easier to go to the market. You're not producing any fuel more. And no controversy, no protests. So this is why I personally look at the whole greater efficiency field, and think that this is really, really important. Yeah, but all of these technologies we're developing at the end, it goes to each appliances. But if you look at this one, this is a surface of the problem. If you go deeper, there's a fundamental of the math behind it. How you calculate the best price. How you aggregate these services that this demand response devices give to the utility. Who is, I mean, what makes sense. So all of these has a great, I mean, beautiful mathematical problem that we are solving. I mean, not only us, the University of Hawaii, but also the rest of the research groups in the state also nationally and internationally that work on it. It's a great problem. It's a huge future we're looking at on that very cheery note with the word beauty. We have to bring our beautiful program to a halt. Again, so, think, take Hawaii. Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me. I'm Dr. Reza Gorobani, University of Hawaii. And please come back in a year or so and we'll follow up on this. Sure, I will, please. Thanks for that.