 Well, aloha everyone. Here we are Wednesday over the hump day here in Hawaii. My name is Mitch Ewan. I'm your host today for Hawaii, the state of clean energy. This is hosted by the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum and also the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute where I am the Hydrogen Systems Program Manager. So today we're going to be talking about zero emission buses for the Big Island and my little byline is yes, can. There's a friend of mine on the Big Island, Richard Ha, who I'm sure many of you know. As two types of people there's the no cans. In other words, no can do. I can't do it. I'm not even going to try to do it. And then there's the other people like us that are called, we like to call ourselves yes cans, meaning yes there's problems and there's challenges but we can and we're going to do it. So that's why I'm going to talk to you today about zero emission buses for the Big Island. It's a concept that we're just working on and developing it and I want to give you the latest ideas we have and also at any time you want send us an email or whatever and let me know what your thoughts are. So can we have that first slide up please? So I'm focused on zero emission buses. These are buses that give off no pollutants. They can be either a battery electric bus or they can be a hydrogen fuel cell electric bus. There's two kinds of electric buses. So let's go to the next slide please. So what are the objectives? So obviously the first objective is to transport people to their jobs and to the services they need like going to the doctor, going to the grocery store and do that by operating a fleet of zero emission buses because you know they need, we all need access to the convenience and affordable mobility. In other words mobility means you can, it's convenient for you to go down the corner to the bus stop and there's going to be a bus that will actually arrive on time and pick you up and take you to where you need to go. We have a tremendous opportunity on the Big Island to leap frog technology to hydrogen fuel zero emission buses or battery electric buses. Why do I say we have that opportunity? It's because right now out of a fleet of 65 diesel buses on the Big Island we only have 13 or 14 maybe it's a little bit more now as they change out some engines but we only have 13 or 14 buses actually in the fleet that are operational. So we don't have a legacy system that we have to replicate and those buses actually are the ones that are still left. They're pretty old as well. I think the average age is about 12 years old which means they're almost at the end of their useful life. So how do they fill the gap right now? The MTA, the Helion bus is renting buses from various bus companies to fill in the gap. So the point is that I'm trying to make is that without a legacy system we can look at what's the best technology out there if we're going to buy a whole new fleet of buses and that in my opinion should be zero emission buses whether they be battery electric buses or fuel cell or hydrogen electric buses. So next slide please. So I'm going to talk a little bit about this concept. It's not novel necessarily but what I want to show you is the a projected or a concept bus system. I'm going to start off with the lowest common denominator that's the subdivisions. You'll see say for example the bottom of the slide the ones that are numbered one. Well the idea is to have circulator buses operating in the subdivision that can pick up people near their house and then take them to a main bus route which is like that big ellipse you see with the two way arrows. So right now for example in the Puna district and some of those big subdivisions you know they have to walk or get from their house to the main bus line and it's quite a long way it can be up to four or five miles I'm told and even the kids you know going to school have to walk miles and miles and miles unless they can get a ride with mom and dad to the school. So the idea is to have shuttle buses like you see at the airport either battery electric or fuel cell electric buses that just do a little circuit around the subdivision all day long and just pick up people and take them to the main bus stop. And then the second element in a larger place like Hilo or in Kailua Kona you'd have what we call city buses basically a 40 foot city bus that does its route in the city and you know a lot of stop and go and it's continually circulating as well. It's a bigger bus because there's more people so you can fill it up with 40 people. Also in Hilo is the main bus depot brand new facility really awesome I went to see it about a month ago and it is top line. Huge improvement over what they used to have which was really just a base yard I mean it was pretty bad but now they've got a very modern facility looks great they've got a wash station for the buses nice offices great facilities for the maintenance people and for the people that are running the system. And then the recent new bus strategy is to have a second depot or facility over in Kailua Kona. Right now there is none so all the buses generally have to go back to you know the home base which is in Hilo which is not very efficient. So the idea that was pulled out of this report well let's build another satellite a satellite depot over in Kailua Kona so that we can really improve the bus service on the west side of the island. So a lot of folks out there there is pretty sparse on the bus side but we need to do better for them. So these larger buses can either go you know just rotate around inside the actual town or they could go into town like from for example from Kailua Kona over to Waimea or some other small town which isn't too far but would be very convenient if you had a larger bus to take more people back and forth. Finally looking at the inner city bus you'll see the picture there a little cartoon of a double decker bus which currently runs between they don't actually have one I think that's on the road right now but driving from Hilo delivering people from Hilo over to Kailua Kona to the main hotels and then back again at night over the saddle road which for a battery electric bus is very challenging because of the long steep grades and that's where a fuel cell electric bus really comes into its own because it's not affected by those long grades that can handle that. So that's the overall concept and then also shown on there is where do we in the hydrogen case I mean where do we get the hydrogen from so there's many candidates for hydrogen so one is obviously the geothermal plant which is a nice form of energy because it produces electricity 24-7 24 hours seven days a week and steady state and then other hydrogen sources are from sun the wind and from waste treatment plants but my next slide will talk a little bit more about that in depth so I think I'm ready for the next slide so here's a concept of okay in the case of the hydrogen fuel cell electric bus so where did we get a hydrogen from so I already talked about Puna geothermal it's projected to be online by the end of this year and I've already personally done a study there and it's a very good source of energy and I've already gone through an EA not totally completed it yet but we're a long way along the line we're not starting from a clean sheet of paper and the idea there would be to truck the hydrogen from the geothermal plant through the Hilo main depot. Another one that's sprung up recently a candidate is the West Hawaii landfill which is just as fairly new landfill and has a variety of energy sources in it so if instead of looking at a landfill is just a place full of garbage really we need to be looking at it as a place or a capability that's full of energy and how do we extract the energy out of all that what we today call waste and make it an asset so for example the landfill produces methane biomethane and you capture that right now it's being captured and flared but instead of flaring it off just burning it off we can use that to make electricity and or directly make hydrogen out of it and then it has all the other solid waste that can be burned or gasified to make a hot gas which can also be used to make electricity and then that can run an electrolyzer which then you use to make your hydrogen so and that's located near Kailua Kona I even thought about at one some point maybe we could look at basing the buses there so that we don't have to transport hydrogen from the landfill wherever that satellite depot is we have it co-located with the buses so we don't have to incur the cost of and and both in terms of people and equipment to truck it five or six miles me that makes a lot of sense and then you see a trash truck call this is a Riley Sado's idea awesome idea never thought about it you know we can also truck hydrogen from the West Hawaii landfill over to the Helo side and one of the ideas is like right now they're running up to 15 large heavy-duty trucks a day from Helo delivering trash to the West Hawaii landfill why not hook up a hydrogen trailer to that truck on its way back and haul that over to the Helo side and while we're at it why don't we convert those trucks over to hydrogen electric vehicle zero-emission trucks my mind that makes a lot of sense and then other other sources a Lalamilo makes a lot of there's a lot of beautiful wind resource at Lalamilo we could add additional dedicated wind turbines once again to make hydrogen and you could you know put it in a trailer and take it to the West Hawaii landfill where we would conceptually have a fueling station there I show you know a the Sun PV array I just pointed out why may I but it could be anywhere same with the wind anywhere you have a good wind resource you could be making hydrogen and you put it into trailers and then you transport it to where you need it to go so next slide please oh hang on one thing is all these heavy-duty vehicles I'll talk about it more we'll have an export power unit what does that mean it means that in addition to being on the road and hauling things they can be used to provide power for critical loads and I have more to talk about that next slide I think we're coming up to a break but let me just go through this slide first and then we'll cut to a break so so this is the first Helion zero-emission bus in Hawaii this is currently on a wahoo brand new bus it's not a used bus that been converted it we bought a brand new bus El Dorado it's a 29 passenger bus and what we've done is we took out the gasoline engine that was in it and we've converted it over to a fuel cell electric bus that was done by US hybrid who've been in Hawaii for 20 years and they have a small operation here and currently the bus is at their facility on a wahoo and they're fitting a air conditioning system into it air conditioning system on a fuel cell electric or an electric bus does not run off an engine like it does on a regular bus so you have to put in an electric drive system to run the air conditioner these two but this bus is fully ADA compliant with wheelchair lift and two spots for wheelchairs the overall size of the drivetrain is 200 kilowatts it's got a 200 mile range we just upgraded the fuel cell from a 30 kilowatt through a 40 kilowatt fuel cell using the US hybrid fuel cell these are all electric vehicle fuel cell electric vehicles have a battery you want that to capture regenerative braking instead of using your brakes you use your electric motor as a generator and this bus carries about equivalent of about 40 gallons of gasoline if you were running a internal combustion engine give it the range of 200 miles so we're gonna cut to a break right now and we'll go on as soon as the break is over so you in a minute or so hi I'm Rusty Kamori host of beyond the lines on think tech Hawaii my show is based on my book also titled beyond the lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence leadership and finding greatness I interview guests who are successful in business sports and life which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness join me every Monday as we go beyond the lines at 11 a.m. Aloha Aloha and welcome to at the crossroads I'm your host Keisha King I'm live at five every Wednesday where we have entertaining and educational conversations that are real and relevant both here in Hawaii and across the globe I'll see you at the crossroads loha well we're back from a break and I'm going to carry on with my dialogue if we can bump up the next slide I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the export power system so what I did is what we did is we backfitted or installed a export power unit on this MTA or the helion bus and the reason we did that is we wanted to leverage the energy that we store on this bus to be able to provide a critical load or power to civil defense when there's an emergency if the grid goes down because of a hurricane a tsunami hits or whatever kind of you know event hits Hawaii that knocks out our electrical system we still have to keep critical loads power so what do I mean by a critical load well that could be like a communication system cell phone towers it can be like refrigerators at your local CVS or drug store which has medicines that will spoil unless they're kept cool so we can bring the bus in plug it in and keep that refrigerator going we can use it to clear trees because you can export the power to a electric chainsaw for example and you're saying clear the roads assuming that you may not be able to get gasoline because you know all most gas stations don't have a backup power system to keep their pumps going well this unit you can see in the diagram on the right there's a little hydrogen tank that's just part of the bus's storage of hydrogen and you can see there's a actual plugs this is not the finished product it's not doesn't look like that on the bus all you see is a panel where you can plug in these electric appliances so it can the key point is it can also provide that power for up to 32 hours I mean think about that there's enough power on that bus enough energy on that bus to provide 10 kilowatts for 32 hours 110 220 volt AC standalone operation overall efficiency is about 94% and here's a key point you can refill the bus in about 15 minutes and you get another 30 hours so instead of looking at your bus system as or the bus is just a bus it's not it's a portable power energy unit so that in a disaster you can take your whole fleet in the case of the big island 65 buses and and spread that around the island through those critical sources where you actually need to have standby power so my understanding is a civil defense really like this and then when you look at the cost of your bus there is a premium to be paid for a battery electric or a fuel cell electric bus or hydrogen electric bus but what's the value opposition what's the value of being able to power these critical loads in an emergency so it's more than just a bus and that's the point that's a key point I want to make this is an investment in resilience we're all talking about resilience and being able to keep going under really bad conditions so this is what this gives you that capability of doing that so it's a great it's an investment not only in just transportation but in keeping people safe and potentially even saving lives in these emergencies next slide please you'll be happy to know this is my final slide so when you have a in this case a hydrogen electric bus you have to find a source of hydrogen to fill it so we have built a hydrogen station at the Nell Hall facility beside the Kona Airport and this is a aerial view of it we're in the final stages of commissioning this so in the just to point out a few of the features so you see that or there's a 40-foot shipping container in the background at the edge with the green stripe along the bottom so that's where we generate hydrogen or produce hydrogen and compress it and then we deliver it what's missing is you'll see the two canopies on the left hand side of the picture those are bays where we have we have up to three hydrogen trailers that we've purchased the first one is actually delivered now and is sitting in the first bay and we're waiting to commission that we've got some spare parts that have to be procured and brought in from the the mainland and then on the upper right hand corner of the of the picture you see the little blue device and that's a dispenser it looks just like any dispenser at any gas station and it has a hose in the whole nine yards totally automated system we've taken the man out of the loop so the driver it's just like going to a 7-eleven your driver can drive in park the bus at the appropriate spot hook up the hose which looks exactly like a gasoline hose except it's got a gas tight connection and hit a button on the on the screen on a little computer screen and the computer takes over and fills the bus the first thing it does is it puts a little puff of pressure into the line and holds that for about 10 seconds to make sure that there's no hydrogen leak that the it's actually does have a gas tight fitting if it says if it's okay then it continues on filling up to another level of pressure stops and monitors the whole situation and then if it's still okay then it continues on and completes the fill and then shuts down automatically and all the driver has to do is disconnect it and hang it up so like I said we've totally automated the system we've made it really simple to use and the same experience for people as if they were filling their car at the at the corner gas station other features are the the canopies you see that keeps the the systems out of the weather so we have a canopy over the over the viewing the Spencer and we also have canopies over the connections we have interfaces between the between the trailer and where they actually are able to fill up with the hydrogen so what you see there is a nice simple patch of concrete a concrete pad but let me tell you that underneath that pad is a whole system of hydrogen lines going this way and that way a lot of grounding that's one of the things for safety if you go to your local gas station you see always park your car there may be asphalt out in the parking lot but there's always concrete where you actually put your car and that's all part of the safety of reducing static electricity and then you see the fence around there every single strand of wire is also grounded and that's not just because it's a hydrogen station I mean the airport airport fencing is I was assured by our electrical contractor is the same way so a couple of shout outs I just like to shout out to Nan Construction who did all the all the site work did an awesome job and I also like to shout out to our landlord which is Nelha which is part of D-bed they have been great very supportive in fact they managed the project for us on our behalf we just gave them a lot of money and then they did everything Alex Leonard super guy detail-oriented did a did a masterful job at it so I'm down to my final few minutes on this show so I'm just like to just encapsulate all this by saying you know the the station at Nelha is meant to it's not like a commercial station I mean you can't just come in and fill up your car or any bus you know it's a demonstration and a pilot project it's to show the residents of the big Island how this whole system works to show them that we do it in a safe way that it's and to demonstrate to the bus company we will actually be filling the helion bus there that that MTA bus or at least up to two years at which H&I is funding just to get everybody used to it ride and drives I mean once you ride it you'll love it so so that's the story of zero emission buses for the big Island so we will bring you updates as we go along I think the next big event will be when the bus is finally delivered to the big Island and we want to make sure everything's working before we roll it out as my boss said when I first took this job he says Mitch we don't tell people what we're going to do we tell them what we've done and I think that's a very good way to go so when we know it's working and we can prove it's working is when we're going to actually roll it out thank you everybody and I'll see you next Wednesday so Aloha