 and welcome to Stand Energy Man in 2020. Can you believe it? It's already 2020. In fact, it's already the end of the first week of 2020, even this year starting to go by fast. I'd like to wish all of you a happy new year from here at Think Tech Hawaii and our brand new studios thanks to Jay Fidel and the crew here at Think Tech. We have some brand new digs to broadcast from and we're hoping that the quality and everything will be even better than it was before and of course we already have high quality hosts and guests so we've got that square filled. And speaking of high quality hosts and guests, we have a great guest today to start off the year. Lorena Keeba who has been in the energy world here in Hawaii for quite a while and I met her when she was on the Public Utilities Commission and she came out to Hickam to see our hydrogen station and she's since moved on to be doing some consulting and so Lorena I'll let you fill in from there and welcome to the show and just tell the viewers a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to know the ugly old general here. Aloha Stan. Thank you again for inviting me to be part of your show on Think Tech Hawaii and love the new studio as well. So everybody has to you know pay attention to the 2020 new year ahead with all the exciting program lineup but I came to know Stan as he said as part of my duties and network of industry stakeholders that Stan represented in the hydrogen area and the renewable transportation alternative transportation fuels. When I was at the Public Utilities Commission I was appointed by Governor Neal Abercrombie in July 2012 and served my full term for six years until June 30, 2018 so it hasn't been too long since I've been a commissioner and I continue to be very actively involved in the energy ecosystem not only in Hawaii but also nationally internationally representing clients through my new company LHA Ventures where I'm a senior policy advisor on energy and regulatory policy matters. So there is a lot happening in the hydrogen area and renewable hydrogen is a very important part of that. So Stan you've been leading on that and I'm really glad to be able to contribute today with my little bit of manao and experience here and add some new information from my travels and the work that I've been doing since I left the commission. I think the other area that's really important to is micro grids for resiliency and Hawaii of course is leading the way with that with you know the pending docket. So maybe I'll turn it over to you to let you tell me what you want me to address and talk more about for our listeners. Okay well first of all let's talk a little bit about the PUC and can I ask you frankly what you see the the role of the PUC what the most critical role of the PUC is going to be this year in terms of maybe guiding policy supporting legislation or at least you know what legislation you're kind of looking for out of the state government to kind of give the PUC direction on getting to 2045 and renewable energy goals that we have for the state. Yeah even though the PUC is a regulatory body and basically the you know as commissioners we function as administrative law judges and docket matters some of them are contested some are not some are information gathering dockets and that's really a critical aspect as well of what the public utilities commission does. People don't realize that because they think it's just the legislature that does the policy well their legislature sets up a framework for policy and a regulatory framework but it's really the PUC that's given the task of actually implementing that and getting the work done and helping the utilities as well as the industry stakeholders as well as our community and the customers involved in our energy ecosystem achieve the outcomes that we all want to to see and also move us forward to that 100% renewable energy future and 100% decarbonization which is not just the energy sector but transportation and other sectors water that we have ambitious goals for in Hawaii. I think a big challenge for the PUC has always been continued resources it's a small but mighty commission I've always been proud of that we have working commissioners when I was a commissioner worked hard on orders and you know getting up to speed on a lot of the information that comes before commissioners I think the challenge though is really dealing with some of the external drivers that sometimes can transformation but also can also be disruptive forces that need to be used for positive change the biggest thing that you PUC is really dealing with this next short term period is really the performance-based regulation getting that in place so that the utilities can begin to again transform their business models really become the utility of the future not so much focused on selling kilowatt hours of electricity there I mean for Hawaiian electric companies they're already decoupled and really seeing new new ways to help customers achieve energy savings and low-cost energy but also achieve the 100% renewable goal and that can be including larger customers and behind the meter resources so it takes a lot of collaboration a lot of coordination a lot of work in terms of grid modernization so there's many open dockets where these are like multiple balls being juggled in the air multiple things which I talked about micro grid tariff docket that's a very important docket in terms of not only resiliency and providing micro grids as we see can be done in places like Puerto Rico and other island grids where we're facing the threats of climate change and climate impacts like hurricanes and tropical storms and you know rain bombs and just the severe wildfires even within our own state but also in terms of integrating new technology whether that's energy storage and that's where hydrogen plays a role you know in terms of a new technology for a long duration storage beyond the dmi and batteries so as far as so when electric goes do you get the feeling that they've really embraced the concept of distributed generation and micro grids and those concepts as they look towards 2045 or is that something where all of us have to really kind of kind of get them out of their comfort zone and push them away from their existing grid structure into something that's a little bit more supportive of sustainability and renewable energy yeah I think you know the the thing about Hawaii is we all want to get to the same place but you know devils in the details I think we all agree want to get to 100% renewable we want to be a fully decarbonized in ecosystem here but you know how do you get there and what's important what do you prioritize and that's where we have disagreements and and we have a lot of passionate dialogue in Hawaii but it does take everybody rowing in the canoe I've always used that analogy so we can't just rely on the utility customers I think have to play their role and whether that's larger customers that can help build micro grids own micro grids contribute with their resources so that the utility can spend its capital assets on the grid modernization that's required and the overall changes that need to be made to transform the transmission and distribution system so I think it is important then you know it's hard to embrace change I think people are always concerned about you know unintended consequences but if we don't take those steps and we don't go forward we'll never get there I think it's trying to inject into the utility culture that that Silicon Valley kind of DNA fail fast learn quick that's really hard because in the past utilities weren't rewarded for taking risks they weren't rewarded for you know experimenting and being a little bit outside of the box I mean there's 100 reliability and the old regulatory system didn't reward that so that's why performance based regulation is a key to that change where we're going to focus on outcomes not necessarily just the traditional cost of service reimbursements and regulatory framework yeah that's that's something I see happening now is that they my electric bill when it comes it just has a kilowatt hour charge but it doesn't charge separately for infrastructure and in reality if we start seeing a lot of people migrating away from the grid that puts a big infrastructure bill to the utility that then has to be shared with less and less customers and that drives the power the electric bill overall higher so I think kind of getting them to see new pictures and like you say it maybe we should try stuff try fast fail fast and and move on to the better models but I think it's really tough for an established monopoly utility to think out of the box to be risk takers and quite frankly going back to the PUC sometimes the PUC was actually a risk averse itself and and not really open to letting utility companies take a lot of risk especially if it would impact the customers yeah I think that's you know that was a definitely historically that's how you know quote unquote economic regulators view their jobs but I have to say I mean and maybe it was during my tenure you know when I was there with chair Mina Merida and fellow commissioner Mike Champley we were you know very proactive I think the current commission under chair Griffin still cites our white paper inclinations on what utilities of future would set forth a strategic roadmap and we actually gave that very gentle nudge if some people thought it was a gentle nudge other people may have thought it was kind of a kick in the pants I don't know but it basically laid out the changes that need to be made by the utility and it is really leaving some of that status quo that is a barrier behind and trying these things like perhaps trying these things like what you always talk about on your show stand let's look at renewable hydrogen let's look at hydrogen fuel cell technology paired with renewables so that we can have a really diverse portfolio of tools and the toolkit gets 100% it's not just going to be large scale solar wind or you know though we're blessed with abundant natural resources here whether it's geothermal wind we can do a pump hydro in places like kawaii we have to look at alternative technologies and and also the developments that are happening with renewable hydrogen especially as we have more excess renewables or curtailing solar and wind and instead of throwing that valuable renewable energy away we should be using that to make renewable hydrogen which can have many uses in other industries and the aviation industry so we can have you know reduced carbon of airline fuel and the sustainable aviation fuel hydrogen is a very important product of that and then byproducts that people use in industrial processes whether it's ammonia other products that can be used in industrial processes that are good byproducts in that and instead of throwing that away and it's renewable hydrogen so it doesn't have a carbon footprint and it can with hydrogen fuel cell technology developments provide the long duration storage that lithium ion batteries don't provide right now and can help us with resilient strategies you know it's really very frightening I think as we saw in the news today Puerto Rico suffered another there was an earthquake and there's severe damage to Puerto Rico their chests getting back on their feet after Hurricane Maria yeah island grids are so vulnerable and you know to its credit the city and county of Honolulu you know office of climate change system and being resiliency which I sit on their steering committee other strategic steering committee for that put together a very ambitious resilient strategy action plan and part of that is having community resilience hubs which are micro grids using renewable energy looking at renewables perhaps being harvested from methane and other you know greenhouse gas emission emitters from wastewater treatment plants and landfills that we now just let go into the air so it's you know it's it is a coordinated approach it's not just the energy sector but it's other sectors as well but it does take leadership and I know the PC has to play its role when the change is not fast enough or the movement is not fast enough it's up to the PUC to hold the utilities accountable and I'm confident that that they will do that well you know you mentioned the the fact that hydrogen energy storage is going to become critical you know I think people fail to realize how energy dense fossil fuels are and we take it for granted that not only are they inexpensive right now whether it's natural gas or oil they're relatively inexpensive but they also store a tremendous amount of energy and so Hawaiian electric right now counts on quite a bit of fossil fuel either unstored on island here or in the pipeline on ships coming to the island to guarantee us the service that we require which is uninterrupted high quality electrical power but how are we going to transition to that volume of energy storage we're certainly not going to do with just batteries so maybe we'll take a quick break here shortly and come back and talk a little bit like you said on microgrids and energy storage and how maybe Hawaiian electric needs to look at a little different change and how they distribute energy and how they take energy on the grid and store it and put it back on the grid at the point of manufacture as it were with solar energy we'll be back in 60 seconds and we'll talk to Lorraine more about that. Aloha y'all my name is Mitch Ewan I'm from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and I'm the host of Hawaii the state of clean energy we're on every Wednesday at four o'clock and we hope that we have interesting guests who talk to us about various energy things that are happening in Hawaii all the way from PV the windmills the hydrogen close to my heart electric buses and electric vehicles so please dial in every Wednesday at four o'clock on Hawaii the state of clean energy Aloha. Hi guys I'm your host Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World and I come to you live every second Friday from 3 p.m. and this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism so we go through recipes some upcoming events information about health regarding your health and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle eat healthier and have fun at the same time so do join me I look forward to seeing you and Aloha. Hey welcome back to Stand the Energy of Man. Stan Osserman here and I'm talking to Lorena Keeba former commissioner at the PUC and a longtime energy advocate here in the state of Hawaii for clean energy and we're just getting ready to talk about energy storage I mean I'm sitting here transferring you over to Mina Merida. Well I did start with Mina. We were talking about her during the break. I'm getting old and this is one of my pitfalls of getting old as I keep doing that but you know you and Mina both worked hard to advocate for clean energy and hydrogen I mean I look back at some of the think tech shows and some of the OC16 shows that Mina Merida was on where she was talking about hydrogen and I still talk to her and say how come we couldn't get it going you know like 10, 12, 15 years ago and she was pretty frustrated too but you seem to have gotten the hydrogen bug as well and what role do you really see hydrogen playing as we start to try and meet this 2045 goal? Well you know everything in life Stan is really timing and while that you know there was a lot of potential before for you know for hydrogen now with the the dynamics that exist now it's you know the push for a hundred percent renewable push for a hundred percent decarbonization not only in Hawaii but across the United States and and globally so you've got California which is leading we kind of you know take turns between who's going to be the leading state we led on a hundred percent renewable and you know decarbonization and now they're actually leading in terms of trying to realize those outcomes with a lot of large volume and they they led on energy storage which helped drive the crisis down for everybody but really that's what it is it's the factors that this that all these different factors are kind of aligning so that it's creating a very ideal market situation because you have to have a market you also have to have large-scale volume to drive the demand so prices can come down for the technology there's been improvements in the hydrogen technology whether that's on the electrolyzers or on the hydrogen fuel cell technology the battery you know the long duration energy storage it's it's like a battery basically when I think about it but you know the hydrogen fuel cell technology new advances that have made the cost come down as well so it's all these different changes and transformations that are coming together to drive the ideal market situation and then as different key players in that who are interested in hydrogen and there are international players whether that Australia that really sees renewable hydrogen and hydrogen as an export product for their country South Korea that has need for hydrogen because of their growing you know economy and they they want to commit to their goals to abide by you know the Paris Climate Accords to reduce their carbon footprint Japan which has been constrained because of the nuclear plants that are not able to come back online and and they want to find replacements for both coal and more expensive natural gas or constrained supplies of natural gas so hydrogen is playing renewable hydrogen is playing into that now and especially as we have more renewables on the grid in various states and it's in the western states good wind resources good solar resources that are being wasted so what do you do with that excess energy so in fact there's a big project in California the Intermountain power project it's actually based in Utah but it's a project being done by LADWP which is a municipal utility a big huge municipal utility that serves the Los Angeles area and they are just electric utilities they're looking at this as a way to convert an oil coal plant into initially a renewable hydrogen and gas and then eventually totally able to run a renewable hydrogen and it's based in Utah where they have the salt dome where they can do a lot of hydrogen storage there so figuring out new solutions but everything's coming together because as I said the market forces are lining up as they didn't do before you know 10 20 years ago and we have a lot of good cheap excess renewable energy that can be utilized to make renewable hydrogen that is the big difference along with the technology improvements that have driven costs down yeah I think you've hit the nail on the head there Lorraine um the cost is coming down in fact I just reviewed a show that I did last year around a year ago with plug power Andy Marsh from plug power who's probably one of the few hydrogen focused companies that is in the black and he was in the red for years and years and he said the exact same thing he's in stand the it's the timing and the market is there the supply is here and the demand is coming up and things are just moving towards 2020 being the year of hydrogen and you know I can see that um right now Hawaiian Electric is actually unable to bring more solar on in certain parts of their structure because they can't accept it it destabilizes their grid too much and the answer is you could take more if you could take that excess solar and store it and storing it in hydrogen makes a whole lot of sense so when it comes to building these micro grids and maybe building communities that are more focused on dispatchable power from solar um how would Hawaiian Electric you know what what's your vision for Hawaiian Electric trying to structure themselves to take advantage of that yeah you know I think they're in the perfect place right now and I've always you know when I was a commissioner and now even as I've been off the commission I really I really encourage them you know to find new revenue opportunities it's not the sale of you know the widget of kilowatt hours of electricity really the new role for utility energy services manager for customers whether that's residential customers large customers but all their customers um that they serve in in in their service territory they should be the trusted advisors to help get the best low cost energy the best mix of resources to deliver energy to their customers and that means looking at new ways to do that and I think with the with the the retirement of fossil fuel baseload I think people don't realize I know you do stand because you know the science of it but you know thermal baseload is is is needed to balance out the system and so because of the nature intermittent nature of solar and wind it's important to have that baseload to be able to wrap up you know quickly and to be able to be there for backup should some of the other units on the system go down quickly so that's been the role of thermal baseload units and we don't have any natural gas there so we use those steam turbines which are very inefficient but if we had renewable hydrogen and we have plants that can use that and a new turbines that are in the electric plants of the future I think Siemens and General Electric are producing turbines that can run on renewable hydrogen fuel again because of the the market that's being driven in California by the utilities in California to get off of fossil fuel and yet have a renewable thermal baseload replacement these market developments are happening so I think with planned communities and where we have our growth areas whether that's on Maui or that's in you know Oahu West Oahu where the population still keeps growing we need reliable power there and a micro grid can help achieve that not only because of resilience concerns because of hurricanes coming through and if the whole island goes down at least you can island off certain pockets where key population centers are where we can have first responders or we can have food emergency things can stay running that was the problem in Puerto Rico right when the grid went down there was no place to even have you know store your insulin if you're a diabetic go for kidney dialysis and if we're getting off of a fossil fuel the hospitals need you know they still have diesel gen sets as backup so hydrogen fuel technology on the mainland again in California is being used and in the east coast because of the experience with hurricane or super storm sandy they have many places many hospitals that replace their diesel gen sets with you know hydrogen fuel cell technology and you know are those are long duration storage units that should the hospital power go down they can they can use that as backup power and they're not diesel gen set so they don't have to worry about you know pollution or concerns in terms of climate impacts so there's some real examples where in a micro grid a plant micro grid you can use all these different renewable energy resources as part of a toolkit and that's exactly what you know something something else that you mentioned earlier was with with the technology improvements you also mentioned byproducts one of the things that people don't appreciate is as we scale hydrogen production up on say a micro grid that has a lot of solar and their curtailing power you actually produce the three things with an electrolyzer you produce the hydrogen to store the energy but you also produce medical grade oxygen which on an island becomes critical in an emergency you also produce heat so there's a limited amount of heat that you that you actually can turn back into more electricity you don't get a real there's a big big kick on small scale hydrogen but when you get to larger scale hydrogen there's enough heat to do a combined heat and power application on a micro grid to actually make it even more a more economic model for a micro grid so and also sustainability as you mentioned during an emergency you know it's very rare that an entire like an entire island or an entire island chain would go down completely unless it was a really mega disaster you're always going to have pockets of residual surviving micro grids that could be providing the ice and the refrigeration and things that you need to get the rest of your society back up online so you know we've got about about a minute or two minutes left and if you'd like why don't you just wrap us up here and give us your thoughts in the last few minutes sure I think that I want to make sure people know that this is not just you know some pie in the sky dream these things are happening and I can rattle off in the next you know 60 seconds and talk real fast all the different examples of successful micro grids that have been installed across the country across the world I mean when we talk about a you know a micro grid in terms of a clean energy innovation hub in a city complex we we both know about Australia and the Australia Renewable Energy Agency where it worked with Atco which is western Australia's big gas company to put in a clean energy micro grid with hydrogen with renewable energy using the synergy of both we've got Kana that did the market's Garvey village micro grid which was to address resiliency as well as and avoid some expensive transmission upgrades for a low-income community to ensure reliable power not only for that for that community but also for the rest of the customers in Kana it started for and it actually benefited everybody because of avoiding expensive transmission costs and Puerto Rico as we know you know coming out of Hurricane Maria has was the first out to establish micro grid regulations so that their communities and cities especially the isolated communities could have micro grids and and rebuild on a micro grid and I know in Alaska they're they're doing more micro grids as well in partnership with with the Department of Energy so these are not you know finance projects they've actually implemented they're proving economic benefits and their solutions for the future so I think micro grids resiliency sustainability and renewable hydrogen in that mix is a reality that we're going to see more actions going for it in the in the new decade all right Lorraine and I appreciate you coming on the show today with a positive slant on hydrogen you know that makes me feel good but I want to add to your list the Hcat just broke ground on their micro grid at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam while we're on our break here at Think Tech and that grid should be up and running within within this year so that'll be a local example of a micro grid that we can both go look at and I'm sure I can get you out there to take a tour of it we'll do that so thanks again for being on the show and until next week we're all I'm going to try and do a show next week on micro grids and why we should be moving to them and give you some examples of of the logic of moving to micro grids so until next week this is Stan Ennerby J. Mann signing off and thanks again to Lorraine Akiva for being my guest aloha