 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome to Stand the Energy Man, coming to you live and direct from Puvava on the Big Island. At least that's what's in the background. We're actually here in the downtown studios, but don't tell anybody. But we have a great show today. We're going to talk a little bit more with Ryan Woobins, my regular electrical engineer that comes in once a month from Burns and McDonald. And we just talk about the more technical side of, especially grids and grid-related topics, energy storage, things like that. Today we're going to kind of talk about the bridging of the grid to transportation, because most people I don't think have really internalized it yet, but as the state of Hawaii has already declared going 100% renewable on our electric grid by 2045, we also have in parallel an even bigger fossil fuel user, and that's the transportation sector that's going to also be more electrified as we move towards 2045. What that means is you're either going to have to put more stuff on your grid to make it work right, like more transformers, more substations to carry the extra load that we're going to be pushing out to charge vehicles and things like that. Or maybe what we should do is take a 100-year-old grid, look at it now, and say, what's it going to really look like in 15, 20 years, and redesign the grid and start building it piece by piece now to make it more resistant to hurricanes, more resilient to events like that, make it less vulnerable to cascading blackouts, so we don't have black starts where we're taking two or three days to bring our island-wide grid up. It'll pieces of it should stay up by itself, they could island themselves, and use more efficient storage, large-scale storage like hydrogen and pumped hydro and things like that, instead of just batteries, because I quite frankly think that everybody's underestimating the amount of energy storage we're going to need on the grid in 20 or 30 years. And so we're going to talk about some of those things. Before we get in with Ryan though, I wanted to also bring up that last week I had Rep Nakashima, the new Vice Speaker of the House of Representatives here in Hawaii. I had him on as a guest and I reviewed the show and it reminded me that about 12 years ago, the state legislature actually passed a law implementing a hydrogen economy in the state of Hawaii. And I would venture to say that there are probably less than 50 or 60 people that realize that's a fact, including legislators. So I'm trying to revive this interest in the law, because according to the law that was written 12 years ago, we should already be well into a hydrogen economy, especially on the big island. And quite frankly, we're woefully behind on that. So I'm going to send that one out, but I just want to give everybody a heads up with the legislature. I'm starting to try and put some more interest on this. Ryan, thanks for being with us today. We appreciate it. We had a little talk before we came on the air about what's going on in the future with the grid. In the last couple of weeks, we've talked about energy storage and we've talked about HECO's grid. And I've kind of got a picture now. I mean, I looked on HECO's website. They can generate roughly a gigawatt of power out of their system. I mean, not all of it's up at the same time. And they're between 800 megawatts and a gigawatt. So essentially, if you took a rough number around there and just called it maybe 18 to 20 gigawatt hours a day, it would be maybe a rough energy requirement for this island. Yeah. I think that was where we came out with about last week. Yeah. So somewhere around 18 to 20 gigawatt hours. And that's just one day. That's a day. Yeah. So we're also talking about right now, we store a lot of the energy that we would use in a week in fuel in tanks. So we not only need to store enough to get us through a sunny day and probably maybe eight or 10 gigawatts at least of some other kind of storage for nighttime, but we also have to cover the next day and the following day and the sunny days that aren't there and the rainy storms that come through and wipe out in most of the sunlight for a couple days in a row. And we need to have that much storage too. So now we're really talking 20, 30, 40 gigawatt hours of storage. And is our grid right now our 100-year-old grid? Because Honolulu actually has one of the older electric utility grids in the U.S. It was one of the first utilities to come online at Ilani Palace back in the late 1800s if I'm not mistaken. And it's old. And we just keep adding to it and building on it. But some of it's really frail. Some of it really, if it was designed today, would be done completely different. Should we be looking at just redesigning the whole grid and maybe starting to build it more resilient? And how would we do that? Yeah, so the short answer is yes. And we do that right now, but it's in smaller chunks, which it always comes back to money and being able to put the money into the system. So grid modernization is always actively happening strategically, let's say, throughout the island. If it were to all fall down and we started from scratch, then yeah, it would look different. If we then possibly even grid different than the grid modernization program is, because it is made to be an incremental process because of the funding limitations, right? But to start from scratch and to really build it just the way you want it, you got to be picky and choosing, maybe dollars don't matter, then yeah, we're looking to do something different than what we did a hundred years ago. Well, ultimately though, as we talked about, if you're going to include transportation and that electrification into the equation, and we're going to have to upgrade essentially the whole system over the next 20 years to accommodate plug-in electric vehicles, even hydrogen electric vehicles. We're going to use intermittent renewables to do that too. It's quite a bit of an improvement in the structure, but we also, I mean, we dodged a bullet with Hurricane Lane this year and we're overdue for a Cat 4 hurricane hitting downtown Honolulu. And it just strikes me as troubling that if we get hit by a hurricane like that, we're going to have a lot of physical damage to buildings and stuff, but the grid is just going to take a massive hit. And not that he goes incompetent, right? It's a good grid, but it's just the location and the sheer force of nature that you just can't stop it. It's just going to take things down. If we islanded parts of the island here, like North Shore, Mililani, and Hawaii Kai, Windwardside, Kailua, Kanuei, and made islandable microgrids that stood up on their own, would that be a big transition from the grid we have? We wouldn't have to show you all new wires and stuff. What would we have to do to say take Kailua and island it and Waimanalo and island it in sections like that to kind of get ready for a more resilient, more redundant grid and something that we could maybe plug hydrogen fuel cell energy storage and firm base load power into the grid for future renewable energy? Yeah, so it is possible to make that transition and in ways that happens right now. There could be an outage that is, let's just say, through the middle of the island but then the outsides are still, they still have their own power. This is done by switching. We'll just try and just say on a basic term that as long as we break open the circuit and we actually physically separate them from being connected, that's step one. We can't have everything connected and then choose that the electrons go in certain directions. Once we add in the physical ability to separate, which already exists in some areas, whether or not it's a smart device or it's connected is another story. Let's start with the physical separation from happening. That exists in some places, maybe we have to start adding it in other places. Then to maintain power within that island or within that section you need to look at your power generation and your load and you have to be able to control, generally we're looking at controlling generation and in a way we need to start looking at controlling loads when we start talking about larger, if plug in electric vehicles. That is a load that is not necessarily necessary at all times. If it was acting in some type of demand response, that's great that we have all these vehicles that are charging right now but let's slow it down. We're in an islanded operation and our generation may be limited. Maybe there's clouds coming over and we want the system to adjust the vehicles for that. When we get to the island scenario, the micro grid scenario, it is a matter of controlling generation and load. When you get to that point, natural disaster hits in one area. Each individual area is more likely to stay on for a longer amount of time. Let's define generation. Right now we have Kai power plant. We have several major power plants that provide all of the power one way except for what 15-20% renewable energy on rooftops and things like that. Most of your power generation is fossil fuel going from big power plants and then pushed through the system to the individual residences and businesses. But as we get more renewables on board, especially in a residential area where there's a lot of rooftop solar, would it make more sense to literally start in those communities where you can almost design a micro grid similar to what you're working on with the Air Force where you have the renewables that can pretty much cover the load unlike having to cover Campbell Industrial Park with rooftop solar where you have a lot of industrial heavy industrial with a lot of power requirements. But maybe residential areas could almost be islanded themselves with a little bit of some kind of their own generation, whether it's not just a solar or wind, but possibly fuel cell generation or flywheel generation, things like that. Would that be a huge undertaking? At this very moment it would, but if you're already making the leap into the separated microgrids, getting to that threshold is step one. The smaller ones, it's much less easier to get there. A community that has a high rooftop penetration, their challenge is today, it's much like the challenges of the 100-year-old grid incrementally getting changed. So if we're incrementally changing a high PV neighborhood to be a microgrid, we're going to be dealt with that incremental change. The PV is good. That's still capturing sun and converting the energy to the electricity we're consuming. But the incremental issue that we're going to battle is that the inverters on those houses are not always the type that's going to be what we want to be, more of a grid forming or power quality or control device. So we're closer because some of the infrastructure is already there. We're a little bit farther away because the microgrid control that we want to happen is it may change some of that hardware. Is it possible? Yes. And some of that is already happening right now. Your newer programs to install PV on the sound will have a much more advanced inverter. And these inverters now you're talking more of a firmware upgrade. That's a lot cheaper than hardware upgrades. So during these incremental processes, yes, we're going to get closer and closer. It is well within the realm of possibility that very soon your very high PV neighborhoods not only are providing critical power to their own household, which there are a few options out there right now. Solar plus. It's just less of the installations out there just because you're installing a battery doesn't mean your power is on when he goes out. That is not true. So do speak with your manufacturers when you're going through that. But now that these neighborhoods get these high PV of these very smart inverters and we start connecting them in very, I don't want to say smart, or advanced algorithms right now. Those neighborhoods can separate themselves off and support each other. Not that every house needs to have their own storage, but maximizing your rooftop PV would be a great step to getting your generation really high. And then everybody installing their own energy storage solutions, whether that's in their vehicle or at their own house, getting all those to communicate. You have whole on neighborhoods micro grading themselves, which would be very good for a place in Kailua where you're not going to have a large power plant that's going to be that generating source for the neighborhood in that time of natural disaster. But we're a co-hobba where we're really separated from everybody. You're like a ribbon on the road. Yeah, we're just hanging on there. But if we were able to provide that separation, then that community could isolate. But we're always getting closer, but it is incremental. If we were to come down right now, all at once, we'd just strip it out and we wanted to install a new, we would do it a little bit differently. Today's technology is available to do that. It's a little bit more expensive today than it will be tomorrow. It always will come down, but it's very achievable and we're working to get there. Time and money are always against us. Well, ultimately though, the rate pair is probably going to have to put the bill, or the customer is going to have to put the bill for a lot of these infrastructure improvements. So after the break, I think we're going to come back and talk a little bit about that. We'll be back in 60 seconds. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power, Hawaii. With Think Tech, Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhay, and aloha. Aloha, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktechawaii.com, 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons, and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. Hey, we're back here live with Ryan Williams from Burns & McDonald on my lunch hour and his lunch hour. So even his company won't be mad at him. He's out here on his own time. So we're talking about modernizing Honolulu's grid particularly. And, you know, Ryan, we talked about maybe taking some of the low-hanging fruit, like the smaller communities, Waimanalo, Kailua, Hawaii Kai, and starting to modernize those grids and make them more friendly to intermittent renewables and let HIKO learn and grow, building those until they get to the more complicated, well, Hawaii Kai would probably be pretty complicated, and moving towards town where you have a lot more high-rises or out in West Oahu where you have a lot of residential, but you also have some industry. You have some light industry out there that's probably a little more challenging to balance grid with them on, with big motors and stuff that are switchin' on and off all the time. So, you know, we talked about hydrogen before and using hydrogen energy storage in complement with battery storage to give you a pretty good microgrid makeup, but the hydrogen piece also gives you that transportation solution. You know, electric plug-in vehicles are going to be one way to charge your vehicle, but Toyota brought in the Marais, Surfco brought in some Toyota Marais, and they have their station up and running out, so we have hydrogen vehicles on island. If I'm not mistaken, they have at least nine of them that are already leased out and running and they plan to bring more in. How could we kind of synergize the grid application of hydrogen with the transportation side? Yeah, and so we'll speak to synergizing the transportation energy storage that it inherently has now in removing the combustion engine and then tie that into the low-hanging fruit of converting a, what would we call a lower load density area. So, load density being the amount of geographical footprint that exists and then the load that we place within there. When you get a very high load density or smaller areas, high rises, so a higher load without the area, some of the technical difficulties come into play. From a renewable perspective, it's much higher because solar is a great asset for Hawaii and if we can use solar, it's better. It is good low-cost energy. So, low-density areas are, they open themselves a little bit more towards that renewable peak. So, taking a lower load density area, if we consider a place like Kailua and then we add in the transportation factor and where these two meet, we look at the low density of Kailua, a good mix of commercial and pretty high-density residential. Contained area, we're not adding any power plants in there, right? That's not happening. Now, we already look at adding distributed generation primarily in the form of PV. That ups within our island now or within our microgrid. We keep clocking up that generation. To add to that stability, we would want to manage the load, but we also need the energy storage, which, I mean, when I say energy storage, I'm going to just talk in KWHs or hours of energy. Whether it's a diesel, a hydrogen or a lithium-ion, I don't really mind. I think the equation is always the same, but we'll start to see some different variables come into play and you'll say, oh, wow, yeah, we can't do that. It's just over time that's not going to add up. So, when you add in transportation and you remove the combustion engine, it either, if it was a hydrogen fuel cell, it's still going to operate much the same, if it was an electric vehicle. Now, you are at times and added load to the system. So, within our island or within our microgrid, we just upped the load, but our generation was still kind of capped with that load density. So, you can do that, especially because that load is still an energy storage device. Where that synergy comes in, we're kind of talking about where these two come together, while a vehicle may consume energy or pull load from the system to be able to transport you around. In times of natural disaster or a crisis, your vehicle could then be converted to what's called vehicle to grid and actually be producing energy back to the grid and supporting that generation factor, which is great. Now we're upping the generation within our load density area where hydrogen comes into play is a much more interesting play because your fueling stations that you have right now, when you convert that to a hydrogen fueling station, the amount of hydrogen you're storing there to dispense into vehicles from a KWH standpoint is very, very large. This is a very big high-energy battery that we installed. There are gas stations in Kailua. They're already there. Generation plants are not. Converting a hydrogen fueling station to be able to produce power back onto the grid is technically feasible right now. We just need to convert the plant and put in the right equipment. Now in times of emergency, now we have these power plants stationed around already. They're already there. Hydrogen as a fuel, as a medium, you can track that price over time, the hydrogen dropping. An electric vehicle is a very good temporary load. I'm going to just... We call it a plug-in electric vehicle, but hydrogen vehicles are also electric vehicles. I want to make sure everybody understands that. An electric plug-in vehicle has batteries storing the energy. A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is an electric vehicle but stores energy in hydrogen and uses a fuel cell, which I call just another kind of battery, a wet battery, that converts the hydrogen and oxygen into water and makes electricity and heat at the same time. So in the model that you're talking about, the other advantage is using the manufacture of hydrogen as a load, because if you have all these house rooftops with solar and if you look at the HECO duct curve, everybody's at work in the middle of the day, very few people are at home, and the sun is beating down on all these solar panels, making tons of electricity, but maybe you don't have the requirement for electricity, but rather than throwing it away or just shutting off the inverters and saying we don't need it on the grid, you start making hydrogen with that power and storing it in energy. So you basically don't waste any energy. It's a very efficient way of capturing all the energy that the sun's given you and storing it for future use at night or on the grid or on the transportation sector. That's exactly it. And using hydrogen as that really deep, long-term storage, it's not going to degrade over time. We can just start storing this and start storing it. We can also convert it and transport it back into vehicles as we overproduced on solar for a given time. It's a very good storage medium to use that for. Absolutely. In fact, it's kind of fortuitous. The background that you see, I mentioned, is Puvala on the Big Island. That's where Blue Planet Research has their research facility, and they have a microgrid setup, and this fits right into the discussion by coincidence. The way they're set up is they're in a kind of a unique climate zone where they only get about a half a day of real solid sunlight. The afternoons usually cloud over pretty good, but they have 10 or 12 houses and buildings on their microgrid, and what they do is they run, during the daytime, they run off the solar power, and at night they have some lithium ferrous phosphate or lithium-iron batteries that are different than your typical lithium cobalt batteries like you see in the cars and cell phones right now. That's a very, really, really stable, good technology. What they do is, whenever their batteries get drawn down at night from running things when it's dark, the sun comes up, the solar panels, the first thing they do besides providing power to the buildings is they start charging the batteries. But by 10 or 11 in the morning, the batteries are charged up, they're fully charged, and now if there's sunlight, and they're usually enough to at least make some electricity, they make hydrogen and they don't compress it to 5,000 or 10,000 PSI like we have in cars, they just store it at 250 PSI. They have lots of space, so they have big tanks and they just store it at low pressure. And then, if there's ever a week or whatever with a lot of rain and clouds, they need the hydrogen, they put it in a fuel cell, and they charge the batteries with the fuel cell. And so, they've been off the grid for, I think, almost five years now. And the system is very reliable and independent because they're not too far from the highway, but it probably costs several hundred thousand dollars to string wires over there and put them on the grid. But they're off the grid with a microgrid. With renewable. 100% renewable. All solar renewables, not even using wind or anything else, all solar renewables. Even better. That microgrid that you lay out is a great balance between just the higher round-trip efficiency of a lithium-type battery. It has a higher round-trip efficiency, so it has a great use in providing very short-term energy. So it's very good at that. But you're not going to give that cloudy day energy storage in a battery and you're not just wasting that money, but you're adding really a chemical makeup that you don't need. Go into hydrogen and add that really deep energy storage. Bringing those two technologies in that form, I think, is where long-term where I think everybody will end up. And it's 100% renewable. 100% of the time. Well, I hope that you and I can work with HECO and try to spark them into doing more strategic long-term planning for their grid and incorporating some of this stuff. Ryan, thanks for being with us again this week. Absolutely. And contributing to all of our education and expanding our knowledge on electrical engineering. And thanks for joining us. I'm Stan Energy Man, and we'll see you next week. Aloha.