 Welcome to Hawaii the state of clean energy. I'm calling to you today from the Big Island at the Natural Energy Laboratory Authority, NELHA, and we're host our host is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum who looked for good policies and support them when they're good and when we have policies we don't like so much then maybe we don't support those. So the funding is provided by my parent organization HNEI and I'm very pleased to have Laurent Sombardier from NELHA. She's the deputy director here and she's gonna tell us she's gonna open us up. We have several guests here today so it's gonna be interesting to see how this works. So, Laurent. Alright, thank you Mitch. We're really pleased to be able to share some progress that we've made on a US DOE grant which is a desalination forward osmosis desalination project that we have ongoing and which is currently in full swing at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. This is on four acres concentrated solar panel array that is in existence and is being reactivated. We're really excited about the progress that is happening and I have the principal here which is Alex Linnard our chief operations excuse me our chief projects officer and he is the PI on this project and we'll be giving you some more information on what's been the exciting developments that have been happening here. But before we start with Alex first of all we have a public surface announcement from Shannon Tanganen from Hawaii Electric so Shannon what's new at Hawaii Electric today? Well we're super excited to announce that last year 2019 we had a 21% increase in solar generating capacity over 2018 so we really want to share you know that we're making a lot of progress. A lot of that came from two large scale grid scale projects three under Clearway and that's in like central Oahu and also our West Lux solar project. That's great so when are those coming online? Oh they came online I believe third and fourth quarter. Okay yeah so what other solar projects have you guys got going on? I think there's an RFP on the street or is that now? Yeah we have our first phase and those eight projects actually seven right now are going through the process. They have not gotten all the details worked out but those are going to be coming online hopefully soon and then we also have the second phase RFP and we're going through proposals right now along with our independent observer and we're looking through the proposals to see you know what kinds of projects are upcoming. So we just wanted to also highlight that for our residential solar we you know there was a big jump as well we had about nearly three thousand five hundred systems come online so now we're at about seventy eight thousand residential solar systems across our five island service territory. So that's that's quite a lot of solar and you guys are making great progress towards meeting our goals here in Hawaii so well done. Thank you you know we have a lot more that we have to do we know to get to a hundred percent but I think we're making good progress. Excellent so I'm going to switch over now to Alex who's going to talk to us about a great project I have here at Elhap. So Alex thanks man. Thanks to us about Fort Osmosis. Well I won't talk to you so much about Fort Osmosis yet I'm going to ask the question why water why is why is Elhap focusing on water. There's no question that as a as a as a as a humankind is facing a what global water shortage with two billion people without access to say drinking water about four and a half billion people living in water what are called water risk zones where they have no access inadequate access to clean water for sent for basic sanitation reasons and with increasing pressures on global water systems from global warming from or climate change from popular human population growth and environmental degradation the problems are only getting worse so there's there's an imperative for for us to address these these issues now how's doing what we can on this front with the help of the five million dollar grant from the US Department of Energy you ask why the US DOE would might be interested in in water well there's there's a very powerful strong nexus between energy and water their their production and and there is interdependent energy accounts for about 15% energy production accounts for about 15% of global water usage and so DOE have recognized this fact and and have decided to step in and and and advanced technologies that might help solve some of the crisis now on our side are a significant water user on the on the west side of the big island most of it for agricultural purposes and we recognize that if we are to do our part in maintaining resources natural resources for the greater good we should try to find better sources of water than what we're currently using right now which is total water which is for like I said is being used for agricultural uses so we're partnered with Trevi systems and I'm pleased to have with us here today Victor Victor evashin and evashkin and Sergei Choromko from Trevi systems there are engineers who are working on development of the next generation of desalination technology which relies not on reverse osmosis but forward osmosis which is a completely different process and I'm very able to turn it over to Sergei and he can tell us all how it works thank you forward osmosis is membrane based process where water stream you just see water introduced on one side and on the other side of the membrane we introduce draw solution which has high affinity to water and water from the seawater is transferred across the membrane into the draw solution hang on could I just ask for the fourth slide to be thrown up on the on the door so yeah so on the slide you see that is F for membrane that's where the water transfer from the seawater into the draw solution happens and dilute draw has to be regenerated and reused in the system infinitely so in our process draw solution loses high affinity to water when it's brought to elevated temperature so that weak draw solution comes through the set of the heat exchangers and goes into separation thing where the water is separated from the draw solution the concentrated draw solution comes back to a form membrane to repeat the process but the water generated goes through secondary cleaning and conditioning and it's available for consumption and our main component is that we are using heat for desalination unlike reverse osmosis which uses a lot of electrical power to create high pressure to force water through the membrane in our case draw solution biochemical attraction brings the water on the other side of the membrane and we use heat which is more available which is more economical to make fresh water out of the seawater so how what's the temperature of the heat that that will trigger this process like how hot does it have to be it still is below boiling temperatures so it's roughly about 195 200 Fahrenheit okay so it's relatively low it is exactly this is a low great heat which is available a lot of places and it doesn't come at high cost of let's say pve or high temperature steam so we are becoming a more economical and a simpler process for making fresh water so what kind of what kind of efficiencies do you get and how does that compare to what they call reverse osmosis which requires a lot of pressure to force the water through the membrane so why what's your secret sauce and why why you know what are the energy efficiencies that you get out of it the energy efficiency comes from the fact that instead of creating electricity for driving high pressure pumps we are using a raw heat which is basically more simple source of energy and on the mechanical side we don't use any pressure at all so electrical consumption is much lower than a reverse osmosis system but we do use heat for regenerating draw solution and that's the secret that you use heat instead of electrical power so where are you getting your heat from well in this case we are lucky to have a nelha to provide us with solar heat number one we throw up slide number one and slide number two so there you go yeah so this is the concentrated solar array which is providing enough heat to make 500 cubic meters of water per day right so typically what what's the heat level or what's the temperature of the solution or that that you're able to capture from this this array as far as I know it's 300 c but in our process we are diluting that heat to just below boiling temperature water and so we are using it at more economical way we are not pushing at the full temperature but we actually can use less of that heated oil in our process to make fresh water okay so um so about how many gallons of water can you process using your system and the and the array that we have up here at nelha well I'm not sure what is it in gallons it's 500 cubic meters per day but uh I really don't don't have it on my I'm unfortunately I'm very metric hundred thousand is it hundred thousand dollars per day it's 130 uh thousands gallons a day that's what I've been told right now so uh you know the sun only shines a few hours per day are you able to capture some of that heat and have thermal storage so that you can run your process can you run it for 24 hours you can't yeah absolutely yeah the heated oil can be stored in storage things and at night when there is no uh sun available that stored oil is still being used to produce hot water which we need to regenerate draw solution and make fresh water out of the sea water and what are you doing with all this water that you're producing here at nelha how's that being used slide now can we have a look at slide number three so I understand that cyanotech uses a lot of fresh water just because of evaporation I was astounded to see that the sun evaporates 450 000 gallons of fresh water per day so and fresh water is very valuable here in Hawaii so so providing 150 000 gallons a day is a big great help and so that's great stuff so so I'd like to bring in Victor and maybe talk about the systems engineering side I mean the the electrical and how do you control all this system so okay thank you I appreciate the comments our system uses an artificial intelligence and that artificial intelligence is state-of-the-art we use a programmable logic controller we accomplish what's called the ipso functions that's the input process storage and output functions on the input side in our water system we need to watch close to 160 points and that's for things such as pressure temperature ph conductivity resistivity silt density dissolved oxygen there are very technical things that we watch and then depending on what we see we then control them through controlling pressures controlling of pumps controlling of various parameters dosing things we try to get the systems be exact now it takes a very intelligent microprocessor set of systems to do that so we program these systems to do that based on parameters that we see during the day sometimes things change temperatures change the climate changes things these salinity of water changes so our artificial intelligence has got to monitor that and then control that that's the input function the process function follows from that and along with that comes something called the human machine interface we need to provide to the human operators here at nilha the ability to see what's happening on a real-time basis on a every second basis and then allow them to be alarmed if something is going wrong allow them to change parameters if they'd like because even though we more or less know what we're doing we need to allow the operator to make changes so they wish to perhaps do some maintenance maybe dose something a little bit different and so forth so that's part of the process and that's part of the the storage part of the system we then need to take the data and put it into a log file and that's so that here at nilha over the months and the weeks they can see how the system is operating based on the climatic changes the water changes and so forth so the third function of storage is important our processors state-of-the-art will store that and finally there's an output function the output function is where we take the information and we can shuffle it anywhere around the world we're going to provide nilha with the ability to use their even their cell phones to be able to monitor the system to understand how it's working to understand how effective it is and to be able to control it further we can in california where our company is be able to look at the system's operation change the parameters update any software that we need to do so so my team is focused on putting together that programming using the most latest technologies that are currently available as you know self-driving cars are hooked into the internet there's all the gps coordinates hooked into the internet and we likewise will be hooked into the internet that means anywhere on this island or anywhere in the state of hawaii or in california we can see the results that now that we're there being generated here so all in all that's what my team does it's an electronic artificial intelligence that completely controls the system 24-7 so victor do you actually need any people up there well i think do you mean do we need people to run the system yeah run the system well absolutely your system is like totally automated system is fully automated but there's always the maintenance parameters you know even so the time the filters and things sometimes need to be changed out sometimes something needs to be tweaked and even though we are not robots some of the valves and things may need to be maintained some of the time this is a well-established protocol we've built several systems around the world and we're very fortunate to be able to do it here at nilha so i'm really looking forward to this challenge and it's going to be very straightforward it's complex but it's going to work perfectly i think and i think you'll really enjoy the result okay so what other where else are you looking at or where else do you have these systems installed we have we started out in marine county in california we built a small system there that was our experimental system and then the next one was put up in kuey kuey needed water for their region and they actually are not only making water decilinating it but they're putting chemicals in the water to protect the health of their people they're actually adding chemicals to it and we were in a contest with the united arab emirates out of dubai it was called the mazdar project and there we were pitted against four other water decilinators and we won the top award for being the most effective and the most efficient way of doing water using forward osmosis so that's that system we've also got systems in india we have systems going towards china and malaysia that part of the world the problem there is that it's 12 hours different between there and us and so when they call us the two in the morning or four in the morning which is really their time two or four o'clock in the afternoon it's difficult the fortunate thing about here is that we're just two hours away from the mainland and the the suppliers that you might need for a filter or what not are local so we can get things here very quickly we're really looking forward to this system as being a showcase for us it's also the largest system that we've built and it's very scalable so once we get the system built we want to go 10 times this size it'd be very easy to do okay so this is a pretty corrosive environment we're at at nelha i i know i have a hydrogen system here and the salt air environment is pretty aggressive how are you finding that here and and i also understand most cities in the world are within either on a coastal plane or pretty close to the ocean so how is being able to help you engineer for this kind of environment well fortunately the systems that were here before also address that problem and the cabinetry that we put our system in is double walled it's ceramic coated and all the electronics have been environmentally produced so we choose only the type of elements that have got the credentials and certificates of compliance to be weather worthy we can work in the rain we can work in the mists we can work in the fog i'm not worried about that environmental the metals that we use are a forms of stainless steel that do not corrode we also use a lot of plastics that do not corrode in the sale in the salt environment we've thought that through we have experience with that and hawaii actually with this mild climate is going to be quite easy to work with we're very confident in hawaii so maybe i need to go out to your site and get trained upward it's educated on some of the materials you're using that would be a nice thing you're certainly welcome to come up so where are you in the project what's the status of the project right now well at this point the electrical specifications have been known the sensors the controls and serguei and his team have pulled together what's called the p&id which is the process instrumentation diagram that shows all the different components in the system and we've done this before so there's nothing really new here what is rather new is the choice of a microprocessor that is within today's technology today's technology is based on the internet it's called the internet of things the iot and to be able to control the system or talk to the cloud and back from the cloud requires up-to-date equipment which which we're now implementing in the past old vendors have given us rather archaic equipment and we have neglected that we don't want that we want for nilha the state of the art and i think you'll be very very happy to see what we have it's an extremely intelligent system the human machine interface which is the interface that allows people to look at what the system is doing will be existent in three spots it'll be at the system it'll be in the control offices here nilha and it can be worldwide in california all over the united states or anywhere on the islands so we're we're pretty well designed up but now we're just waiting for the approval to go ahead so what's the kind of timeline i mean that that triggers the other point it's okay you've done the engineering side so where are we in the total project wouldn't you expect to have an operational people always ask me about that my hydrogen project well it's it's my understanding that sometime through march we will get the approval to go into the second phase of the project right and that second phase is the actual building phase now we have people coming from the department of energy to look at the various engineering developments that we have that are new and once they approve it and the project gets approved we then start putting together the systems the electronic part for me is rather simplistic in that we already have the components and we've used them before some of the mechanical things have to be tuned to the site so we they have to be physically built and sir gay and his team have worked through the design so we're probably mid-year to end of the year as being getting pretty much the system together so was there a lot of work in like you know bringing the array back back online i mean it's been sitting there for many years so i'm sorry i can't i'm i'm i'm sorry i'm not the one to qualify to answer that question we've looked at the array and we do know that we're going to have to work with it we're going to electronically communicate with the array understand how it's working understand how it's phasing to the sun we're going to understand its performance but the array gives us the hot water that we need we do have a backup here and that there is a propane powered heater that we can use to supplement the array should the array still need some servicing and whatnot so we there's a backup on that but we're looking forward to that today we were out on the array and we saw tremendous work being done towards getting it back up again and it seems to be a pretty solid array and i think it'll work fine we don't as sir gay pointed out we don't need the full differential temperature that array produces much more heat than than actually we need right it's a wonderful array so we'll just use the heat from that we'll be fine yeah the anchors for the uh the uh solar collectors are pretty massive they are yeah i think regular standard pretty heavy hurricane just like my awning has got this massive footing for it i i'm not quite sure what should be so big so um at this stage of the interviews i always ask what have i not asked or what have we not um um told the audience is there anything any parting information that we need to cover that you'd like to cover well from my standpoint in the company there are some issues that we have to absolutely address one is the security issues as you know hacking and these kind of things happen anytime you have a link to a system that's that's run such as this we have to protect ourselves and put up firewalls so that so that people won't be able to get in there and toy at the system so that's uh what we're gonna look into that and that may that means getting the computer systems that are here at nilha communicating with our system and that we've done that before so that's not a problem where uh i'm a little concerned about the um the availability of some of the parts that we will need that are available in the united states so we're going to make to make sure that we have a spare parts inventory here and by that i mean the things that need to be swapped out some of the membranes that might be wearing out some of the unique little parts and pieces make make sure that's in place and then the training an important part of this system is the ability to train the people to understand and handle any situation so we need to set a class time and hopefully we can do that class time before the system is up so that the people that are going to be running the system can be friendly with it and treat it as a friend and not some technology thing that they can't handle so training is important and security is important so about how many people do you think will be required to run the system um between four and six perhaps okay you know and then they're just mostly overseeing it the system will tell you when it's doing something wrong or when it's alarming or if something's not happening so there will be alerts and those alerts can come all the way down to a cell phone alert so somebody might suddenly get a message on their text that the system needs a maintenance or it needs a tweet or something along that line so where ideally in some of our systems only a single operator is needed but that's in a smaller system here you're probably need someone to watch the solar arrays at some point in time someone to watch our car the system the water flows so i'd say three four five people would be fine right so just to be clear you're making taking advantage of the seawater supply that delha supplies absolutely absolutely well that's it i mean we're believe it or not we're out of time so thank you for allowing me to speak so much for being here and it sounds like a great project i'd love to go up and see it sometime and see how i like as i said leverage some of the lessons learned particularly on the material side so i enjoy doing that thank you congratulations look forward to seeing it so thank you that's it for today and we will be back next week at hawaii the state of clean energy so aloha everybody