Latest / Clean Power Hour / Solar Coaster in Hawaii with Josh Porter and Jason Verkaart | EP186

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Solar Coaster in Hawaii with Josh Porter and Jason Verkaart | EP186 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Josh Porter: If you're asking me why do utilities want to change net metering rules? I mean, I'm not I won't feign to be an expert in what their motivation is or exactly what the limits are in nm system, but I tend to view nem and Jay jump in here anytime I tend to view nem as an initial, initial program for catalyzing, like interest in renewables. That's the way it is out here. The industry Yeah.
• 1:18
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week, I want to go deeper into decarbonisation. We do two, we're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it.
• 1:38
  intro: Together, we can speed the energy transition.
• 1:46
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour, the Hawaiian solar market, my guest today is Josh Porter and Jason Verkaart, the CO hosts of the solar coaster, another podcast about the clean economy. And we're gonna geek out on what's going on in Hawaii, there's an upcoming event or he plus Hawaii is happening June, January 22. And, you know, I like to remind my listeners that if you want to see into the future, you just need to go to certain places on Earth, where solar is a thing for longer. And those places are Northern Europe, China, and Hawaii and California. So it's a real treat to have you guys on the show. Welcome. And please, for my listeners, just introduce yourselves and your show and how you guys got so into solar.
• 2:35
  Josh Porter: Awesome, thanks so much for having us on the Clean Power Hour. I've been following you over the years. And we love your show and love the seeing.
• 2:43
  Josh Porter: What's the commercial solar guy's name? I love this guy.
• 2:48
  Josh Porter: He's John Weaver, John Weaver on you know, he's a buddy from the early days. So hey, everybody on Clean Power Hour, my name is Josh Porter of the solar coaster. In an earlier life, I was a solar installer here in the on the island of Maui owned a small solar installation business. And one of my early clients was this guy, Jason Verkaart
• 3:11
  Jason Verkaart: Yeah, I played the client side. How did this start? We wanted a way to just reach more people, it was always the same conversations over the kitchen table every single time.
• 3:21
  Jason Verkaart: And so the idea was go once on radio, tell everybody. And then and that was my job is to play the client. We've since got a little deeper than that.
• 3:31
  Josh Porter: Yeah, we it's over the years. That was many years ago. And we actually, we started that, as an AMA the solar coaster. That is, as an an FM radio show here on the island of Maui. You could hear it in big island and Lanai and Molokai, you could you could you could tune in to about four different stations. And we did it every week for an hour, for about three and a half years, we started off with the idea of doing it for you know, like 13 shows or something, then it expanded very quickly. And it was it was a great experience.
• 4:02
  Josh Porter: And then from there, we were able to meet people in the clean energy industry across the country primarily at all the trade shows we were going to and bringing that content back to the an FM show. So that's kind of a brief intro about solar coaster here in Maui.
• 4:15
  Tim Montague: Cool. And give us a give us a high level overview of the Hawaiian solar market.
• 4:21
  Tim Montague: You know, most of us here in this in, in the continental US know that Hawaii has a lot of solar, and that batteries are a real thing. And that's about it.
• 4:36
  Tim Montague: Occasionally, someone will know that there's not injection rules, if you really want to get sort of technical, but what's going on in the solar market there and where is it going?
• 4:47
  Tim Montague: Gotcha.
• 4:48
  Josh Porter: Gotcha. Well, Jay, I mean, I may start off, you know, when we think about Hawaii, Hawaii is the first state to have a 100% clean energy mandate. Right. And if that came about quite a while ago, and that had a lot to do with Hank Rogers had a big hand and not and a lot of the local clean energy advocate politicians had a hand in that.
• 5:09
  Josh Porter: And so Hawaii kind of set the stage for putting that line in the sand and saying by this date, we're going to have 100% clean energy and and so that was quite a while ago. And since then we've seen a kind of brush fire so to speak of, of of other states following suit and creating clean energy mandates over the last decade. And so now that's kind of the thing to do.
• 5:31
  Josh Porter: And
• 5:32
  Jason Verkaart: it'll it only took one to say hey, we're gonna draw this line in the sand and then everybody else started to follow suit, but I think it's simpler than that for Hawaii.
• 5:40
  Jason Verkaart: When you think about it. We have a lot of sun. We also import the majority of our energy, oil bunker fuel. It's not cheap to do this thing in your car.
• 5:49
  Jason Verkaart: kilowatt hour price is about 4040 43. Three Yeah. 43 for
• 5:55
  Josh Porter: residential. So Gee, it's higher up in the high 40s. Yeah.
• 5:58
  Jason Verkaart: So those two things, we have a lot of abundant, solar, actual energy coming down. And we have super high energy rates. So those two things coupled together make it very, very easy to pencil out a system and make it pay for itself. It's absolutely worthwhile. So that's the reason why the market is the way it is.
• 6:15
  Jason Verkaart: Yeah,
• 6:18
  Josh Porter: I mean, the cost of energy was a real driver of it in the beginning, in the net energy metering days, and up through I want to say October of 2015, if I'm not mistaken, we were essentially selling that nem. Right. And those were, you know, relatively simple, elegant, elegant systems a lot of and phase and solar edge.
• 6:34
  Josh Porter: Remember when solar first came out here? And and you know, those systems were essentially, you would size your bill based on you would say, Okay, well, your bill is X amount of dollars, it's Y amount of kilowatt hours, we're going to put up, you know, this amount of panels, and inverter is going to be grid tied, and you're going to offset your bill, one to one ratio, that's what we had for years. And it was a slam dunk, you know, the simple payback periods were rocket, and I saw the costs come down from the early days, and we're talking about in the 2010 2011, period, when I started the business, all the way up through the 2018 19, when I ultimately sold my remaining interest in the business, and you know, that, that we saw the costs of install of those grid tied systems come down. But then of course, around 2015, and we're talking about residential right now, by the way, in 2015, I believe that was when we started to have the battery requirement, right or the the so at that point, we started just prior to the Tesla Powerwall coming out, they made this kind of rules where okay, you can put in a self supplies, supplies, all these different tariffs came out Nan Nam tariffs, essentially. And from that point forward, it grew. And now we're at a place where, you know, on the residential side, at least, you're looking at 80 90%, battery attachment rates. And so it's very common to have a battery system here.
• 7:57
  Josh Porter: And of course, that affords us the ability to handle our own power during outages. But also you're starting to look at grid, interactive systems, so incentives to provide grid services, virtual power planting. There's all kinds of neat stuff going on in smart systems here in Hawaii, and I'm sure we'll dig into some of that.
• 8:19
  Tim Montague: Cool. And you mentioned, Hank Rogers, blue planet, who's, you know, a well known figure in clean tech. You you kind of look like him to Josh, I don't know if anyone has ever said that. They
• 8:35
  Jason Verkaart: just because of the over the years the hair has grown out of it. Yeah.
• 8:41
  Josh Porter: I don't know. I don't know if Hank wants to hear that. But But Hanks cool guy and he's got an amazing ranch and Big Island. We've been there.
• 8:46
  Josh Porter: He's he was really a pioneering type of fellow out here.
• 8:50
  Josh Porter: Because, you know, he had had success with Tetris. He's out here, he's kind of got the Moxie to take on the utility. At one point, I remember, he was pretty adversarial at one point. But these days, you know, he really kind of created both Blue Planet Foundation, Blue Planet energy, and he's doing innovation on the technical side, and they're doing innovation policy, you know, then really awesome stuff.
• 9:15
  Josh Porter: It really kind of helping kind of point the way I'd say very early on. And I think that, you know, it's been great to have you have a lot of characters like that out here in Hawaii, people that kind of wants to take a shot and do something new. And it's it's a wonderful environment. You know, we're seeing, you know, at this stage of the game, Tim, we're seeing people with not just a solar and a battery system, they maybe they got solar 1015 years ago, and early nem. And now they're getting batteries added to that or they're adding additional solar panels and batteries.
• 10:38
  Josh Porter: They're adding Evie integration.
• 10:42
  Josh Porter: I myself live in a home where I have a solar a battery system. I have an Eevee integrated Evie charger, we are fortunate enough to buy our first Eevee this last year, a lot of model Y. And we're actually running that on sunshine most of the time and trying to gain that which is super interesting. load control panels, you know, all kinds of stuff out here. So that's kind of the world that Hawaii has, I think we're gonna see great innovation.
• 11:09
  Tim Montague: So why is it that utilities want to take away net metering as the penetration of solar increases? We see this. I mean, it's a big deal this in 2023 Right. Nem 3.0 hit California, it's pretty much been a wrecking ball for the rest of the solar industry.
• 11:26
  Tim Montague: installers are shedding staff.
• 11:31
  Tim Montague: They're pivoting into other things, which isn't a bad thing, right? Crisis is opportunity.
• 11:35
  Tim Montague: And you know, the drumbeat I think that we're going to hear a lot in 2018 20 Forward is electrification of everything.
• 11:43
  Tim Montague: If you're a solar installer, you're a solar battery, Evie, and heat pump installer. And that's how you're going to survive this, this disruption, so to speak. But why do utilities want to take away net metering? You
• 11:59
  Josh Porter: know, Jay, it's funny that he describes this.
• 12:02
  Josh Porter: But he says, you know, California is going through with what Hawaii went through, when Hawaii went through this. And I remember the, the trauma of that time period, when Hawaii went through this, Australia had already gone through it. And I was talking to friends that own solar businesses in Australia, and they were explaining to me, you know, what, what was coming?
• 12:23
  Josh Porter: Right? And so now we're explaining to California in a sense, a, this is what's coming.
• 12:26
  Josh Porter: If you're asking me, why do utilities want to change net metering rules? I mean, I'm not I won't feign to be an expert in what their motivation is, or exactly what the limits are in nm system. But I tend to view nem and J jumping here. Anytime I tend to view nem as an initial, initial program for catalyzing, like interest in renewable, that's the way it wanders out here, the industry.
• 12:54
  Josh Porter: Yeah. And so it's a favorable payback, and it gets an industry going right. And then at a certain point in time, you start to get more and more. Saturation is the type of language they use a lot of different synonyms for this. But you get to a certain point in time, where you've got a lot of subscribers that have NEM, now you've got a lot more and more energy available at a given time of day, but you still have those peak times the duck curve, we always hear about right, like in the evening, in the morning, overnight, different time periods where you need energy where solar is not providing it. And utility is responsible for delivering that energy and power. And so you know, the bottom line is the utility has sunk costs, they have lots of expensive, they have the transmission cost are amazingly high out here, especially, you know, we have a very antiquated grid, actually.
• 13:43
  Josh Porter: So the upkeep is very expensive.
• 13:47
  Josh Porter: So, you know, you have to start to consider the full cost per picture. And I'm sure that's where they're coming from, right. So that's kind of in my mind, the NAM reaches a certain point where you have so much subscription to it. And then the utility says we have to kind of move to a new model that's more equitable. And the problem in that is that there's going to be pushing for what's gonna push and pull. And sometimes like, the more recent the recent document, we just, we just got this is the new PUC docket that came out describing the end of net metering, not just the end of filth signing, you know, subscribers, like in 2015. But those grandfathered systems will go away completely, and everyone will be on a new schedule, and it doesn't look very enticing.
• 14:31
  Josh Porter: Right. So there's a lot of uproar about this a lot of controversy in the industry at the moment with the new POC docket. So utility is trying to find its place. And there's, there's it seems to me, it's a negotiation, right. That's a starting point for the conversation. It's
• 14:50
  Jason Verkaart: also a lot of I mean, capital investment that needs to happen. There's only so much that you can take from a circuit back feeding from disparate renewable energy systems before you need to do some major refurbishment of the grid coming back the other way.
• 15:03
  Jason Verkaart: Yeah, transmissions transmission, they just don't have that infrastructure. And so yeah, we'll take a few here and there, but once you reach a certain point, like this equipment can't handle it. And it would be a tremendous expense. They don't they don't want that or they needed, at least need to find a better way to fund it.
• 15:19
  Josh Porter: Right. Right.
• 15:19
  Josh Porter: Right. Right. So that gets that gets the conversation started, Tim, but there's a lot more to it.
• 15:24
  Tim Montague: And so when you when you don't get credit for something you back feed onto the grid or you're not allowed to back feed? I don't know Is it is it strictly forbidden to backfeed solar electrons onto the grid now? Well,
• 15:39
  Josh Porter: they kind of go through these processes where they change the rules, and they offer different programs over the years, right. And the most recent program types that were available, I can run you through. This one is brand new, and that isn't an hasn't been enacted yet. But it is considered a final order. And that's I think why it's very controversial. But the way that the system worked Presently, there are the existing nem account holder subscribers that are grandfathered in. That's the way it has been until now. There are one to one, and you couldn't sign those up from 2015 fall forward. And then you had like these types of programs that were, let's say reduced rate back feeding programs. One was called consumer grid supply. And another one was called consumer goods supply plus and they had slight variations in how it worked. But the bottom line is you would pay retail, and then you would sell back at some form of wholesale. And that might vary based on the in the case of Hawaii, the island you're on and you know you may or may not be able to get that comes Remember grid supply? I think the customer grids Flaxmere. CGS was the acronym. Now that's a let's say you have NEM, which is kind of the Holy Grail, we love nem.
• 16:49
  Josh Porter: Then you had CGS, which is kind of like a slightly less valuable version of nem with various contractual rules, and then you had what was called self supply.
• 17:00
  Josh Porter: And self supply is the, you don't get credit, technically, you can backfeed to a certain amount, because the systems will do that, right. But you're not going to get credited for that.
• 17:09
  Josh Porter: And I happen to be on a self supply system. J over here, Mr.
• 17:12
  Josh Porter: Lucky is on a nem system.
• 17:15
  Jason Verkaart: Until
• 17:19
  Josh Porter: so, he we get the full retail exchange one to one, right, I basically just try to mitigate what I buy from the grid, that 43 cents a kilowatt hour. I don't backfeed at all, I store. And what's interesting, this is the conversation that I've been having a lot lately, and people kind of usually give me a big question mark when they look at me, but I'm thinking about, my system is actually oversized. And so I'm looking for useful work to do during the daylight hours. So I'll schedule my small stuff, schedule my my washing machine schedule my dishwasher, this never made this, there wasn't a requirement in the NAMM world, right. But on a self supply world, it makes sense. Because those electrons are free, otherwise, we'll be curtailed. But the big things and this is the load stacking game that Josh was always talking about, is like the hot tub, I'll throw my hot tub on around 10. Because my batteries already charged up, right? My daily energy arbitrage batteries already charged up. And if my wife isn't home trying to charge the Tesla, I'll go out there and I really should have a timer or I should have it on the digital, you know, and that's where it'll go next. I get that hot tub going. I can I can throw all of my system into that for two or three hours to get it to the one before before I turn it off.
• 18:26
  Josh Porter: Once that's done, if I turn everything off, I'm curtailing again. So what does Josh do?
• 18:32
  Josh Porter: Josh walks out and turns on the sauna. He eats a bunch of thermal battery, yes, this is the game that I'm playing. But that should get more sophisticated in the future. And you should be able to basically do useful work. That's the way I look at it. But that's kind of the world we're living in, in self supply. It's about managing your own consumption supply Yourself. Yourself. Yeah, you try to mitigate what you buy from the grid, because it's pricey. Does that help answer that question?
• 18:58
  Tim Montague: Yeah, it does.
• 18:58
  Tim Montague: And, and I love batteries, right? Like, everybody wants a battery, it once they start to understand the value stack of batteries, right? It's resilience. It's potentially grid services, you can monetize batteries, you can do virtual power plants, all kinds of fancy things, right. And, but the capex is bigger. So you know, for a consumer, right, a a$25,000 solar system is now a$75,000, solar and battery system. And that's great if you can afford that. But it's also a heavy load if you're middle income. So I'm curious, like, how do how do Hawaiians perceive the solar industry? You know, writ large?
• 19:44
  Josh Porter: I mean, look, I think that when we think about the perception that the community has towards solar, it tends to be very favorable, it tends to be and that's, that's the way I see it. I've never really heard anyone say anything negative. No,
• 19:57
  Jason Verkaart: we have other issues with our utility.
• 19:59
  Josh Porter: Yeah, so the solar industry has seen as, as far as I can tell, my personal opinion on this is that this is an opportunity to create some freedom, for me, for my family to relieve some of the costs of electricity, which are one of the only, you know, you can only really manage, we live in a state that is generally considered to be the most expensive, expensive state in the country. And that there's a lot of reasons for that we have an affordable housing crisis, we have a whole series of issues related to the expensive living here,
• 20:30
  Jason Verkaart: the majority of everything is imported. It's important. Yeah.
• 20:33
  Josh Porter: So in the case of energy, that's something we can actually control. So so the renewable energy industry has been seen, I think, as a, as a as a welcome participants, as far as I can tell. Now, moving forward, though, I think that it is it's very interesting, because we could see that it creates a lot of resilience, it not only does it create, you know, even even at those more expensive levels, you know, I mean, we do have good tax credits, right? We have state side tax credits, we have federal tax credits, we have incentives that really drive those costs down, traditionally out here, depending on the type of system you're looking at, you could get about half of your system expenses covered between the combination of federal state, and so you had your net cost and that net cost, and we really use your example. You know, like maybe it used to be a$25,000 system, and then it became a $75,000 system or whatever, you might be at a$35,000 net. For that system, just as a rough you know, talking point it could be more or less but that seems to be consistent for what I've seen for the systems these days. And but that you know, now if you think about you've got both a payback period driven by that 43 cents a kilowatt hour, that actually helps to accelerate that, that payback period. And at the same time, now you have resilience and people really value that especially in light of not just of course, the Mau, wildfires, Maui wildfires is a very unique event. But storms around the country and Hawaii and you know, tsunami and hurricane and you name it, right?
• 22:08
  Jason Verkaart: It could be perfectly Sunny, gorgeous, Hawaii day, and the power will still go off at my place. Right?
• 22:14
  Jason Verkaart: Once or twice a month, power quality,
• 22:17
  Josh Porter: zillions, those those are exciting things for people out here this you know, you're you're in a place that's uh, you're out, you know, you're one of the most isolated landmasses in the entire world where you have a community, you're in the middle of the Pacific, and you and having that sense of resiliency and safety.
• 22:31
  Josh Porter: That's a really, it makes a big difference. When you when you see the power of that I just happen other day, it happens all the time. The other day, and I woke up and of course, I had missed set my my my SOC, I had it low, right. So I, you know, when the power went out, I had like 8%, or something in the battery I was bummed about but it got me through for a little while. And I was able to kind of manage a few things. And then of course, the power came back on it was fine. But so yeah, that's kind of how it is.
• 22:59
  Tim Montague: So I'm curious, like, yeah, resiliency and reliable grid power, like I live in a place where we have very reliable grid power. So I don't, I don't worry about resiliency, too much, at least in the current state of affairs. It does happen. Like I've heard stories of major ice storms that took out the grid for a week here in central Illinois, 10 years ago, or 15 years ago. But But anyway, you know, in light of in light of that disaster this this summer? has, has that changed people's perception? Do you think of, you know, resiliency or the yacht? I don't know, I'm just curious, like, Yeah, I'm very far away from that. Yeah.
• 23:46
  Josh Porter: So Jay, Jay will know, like, what the the the general consensus and of course, there's massive litigation going on. And everyone is, you know, we'll see how this shakes out at the end of the day, the utility itself is, is very fragile. You know, from an economic standpoint, I think the utility is actually the largest company, I could be wrong on the actual superlative there, but like largest company with the highest revenue in the state of Hawaii, so it's a big part of the, you know, the overall economy out here. And so that's fragile as a result of that, because of the litigation. The reason I bring that up is that, you know, it's generally considered, understood that the power lines sparked the fires, right? So so you got to think about this as the utility itself, the way the model works, the fact that they weren't underground at the fact that there wasn't a plan to d power them in advance of the unique weather events. The fact that we have changing weather events like this, Dora was, you know, this hurricane was far south of us and create these very high winds that were. So that are that older model of the utility we've seen. I my personal view, once again, just speaking for Josh here is that we've seen this, the consequences to that.
• 24:56
  Josh Porter: And they're, they're dire.
• 25:00
  Josh Porter: They're massive. And when I now if you ask me, Do people are people's opinions changing?
• 25:04
  Josh Porter: Actually, I would say they were further in bold and further supporting the industry of solar for a couple different reasons.
• 25:11
  Josh Porter: One is, I think there's some question about the culpability, the utility here that's really reasonable to is, we saw the emergency response being really championed by the industry. So there's an organization called the footprint project, and a lot of the local installers and the local suppliers got together manufacturers. And in that window of time, before the, let's say, FEMA, the feds and the state and the county could get their kind of act together to really provide the support necessary. The renewable energy industry was right there with sleds of, you know, just carbon monoxide free power, with Tesla power walls right there on site helping, it was a really remarkable thing to see their response to that. Right. So I think you had that happening.
• 25:57
  Josh Porter: Another thing che, if I may, just as a unique thing to think about. This is really the first I read this is not my words, this is the first time that a fire like this has happened where we've had so many electric vehicles in that fire and batteries, solar batteries in that fire. So no one suggested that that contributed to the problems, but it's something we're thinking about. This is the first time that we actually have that case study of because there's, you know, a lot of people had solar battery systems, a lot of people had electric vehicles, and that was part of this, this this, this tragedy, right. So I think though, that the bottom line here is that people are rethinking the the role of the grid little bit, maybe not in a very, you know, less super crazy, super technical way, but they're saying, is this the best way for us to get power? Right?
• 26:51
  Josh Porter: And then because what happened and then at the same time, I think they're saying, Wow, the the renewable energy industry get a great job of helping you know, the disaster and then how can we do better forward, I think is really the big question. So when we start thinking about rebuilding, yeah,
• 27:08
  Jason Verkaart: there were no, there were no plans for those rollouts of charging stations and energy stations going out there. It was just what they were able to put together. And it was unbelievably fast if there were actually planned responses would have been, yeah.
• 27:23
  Josh Porter: And footprint project. And I've been talking with these guys a lot recently, they're going to be at the at the RV plus Hawaii event, January 22 23rd. in Waikiki and Leilani. Resort, the they have said that, hey, what we saw, because they're a national organization, a nonprofit that helps with, let's say, disaster response. And they've said what they saw here with the renewable energy industry and their capacity to fit into that. And that initial timeline, immediate response was something that blew their mind. And they see that as a model that will be brought to the rest of the country. When they said it to me, I was like, how about the world? This could be for everybody. So
• 28:03
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• 28:37
  Tim Montague: Cool, well, let's talk about already plus Hawaii. You know, RT plus has started this whole host of regional events. And now they're coming to Hawaii. Why are they coming to Hawaii of all places.
• 28:55
  Jason Verkaart: Of all places, I'm a little puffed up. This is something solar coaster has been working for, literally years, trying to get trying to get one of the regional shows to finally be here. We've had the white Energy Conference for many years in the cloud. Yeah, running, running that event. And it's always been fantastic. But this is just one more step in getting national recognition. It's
• 29:19
  Josh Porter: great. It's great.
• 29:19
  Josh Porter: All right, plus, you know, they've done grown amazingly over the last couple of years, you know, especially considering the the the kind of hiccup periods of the pandemic and trade shows trying to survive during that period. And then this last show in where that where we Vegas, and next year shows in Anaheim talking about the big three pluses. And you know, they transition that name from SBI to ra plus, because there's so many components to the clean energy revolution now, right? It's not just solar. And when you when you think about Hawaii, Hawaii is kind of an environment where there's a lot that can be garnered and learned. Right. So you touched on it right away, Tim, in the beginning of the show, this isn't you This is an environment where a lot has happened that's probably going to find its way to your your doorstep at one point or another wherever you live, you know, the the removal of let's say the fully sub full, fully subscribed now.
• 30:15
  Jason Verkaart: I think it's gonna happen sooner than later.
• 30:16
  Jason Verkaart: Because as again, as Hawaii does most, the rest of the states kind of tend to follow. Yeah, but it's going to be pretty fast. Yeah,
• 30:23
  Josh Porter: yeah. So you know, the adoption, the removal of Nam ultimately, and now the actual deletion potentially of nem. The grandfathered accounts, you know, that's the kind of thing that Whoa, how do we survive that as an industry? What's happening here in terms of high penetration, solar high penetration of renewables. This is fascinating, because we're talking about, see out here you've got each island is separate is a separate grid.
• 30:49
  Josh Porter: They're not connected, just to be clear about that. There's no cables connecting them. So each individual Island is in a sense, a microarray. We are Island or Island. You've got big island in the East you've got Maui which is Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Colaba is an uninhabited island.
• 31:07
  Josh Porter: You've got a wahoo as you head west, which everyone thinks that's the main island everyone thinks about where Waikiki is.
• 31:14
  Josh Porter: You got coli, and that's over on the farthest west and a little one called Niihau at the end, and each one of those has its own energy grid, its own generation its own renewable energy systems, its own cars consumer patterns its size, they're all Island did. And with the exception
• 31:33
  Jason Verkaart: of Hawaii, they are all managed under the Hawaii electric company right banner and
• 31:38
  Josh Porter: kawaii a decade or so ago. Created acai you seek ye Island, totally cooperative, which is a community owned, or let's say, you know, it's a co op Qualcomm. And so that's the landscape, you know. But the thing that I think is really interesting is when you think about let's take a given one like Maui, where we live right now you've got the residential space, which we've seen huge adoption rates over, we talked about that, right? And I don't know what the numbers are, right now. I'm out of the game, but I'm gonna say 30% territory, somewhere like that, right?
• 32:11
  Josh Porter: Maybe more. And then you have the CNI space, which is really just kind of like less industrial, more commercial, like hotels, for example. And there's a lot of opportunity in that space. That's very interesting, because those those organizations are planning are paying a lot. It's a relatively large part of their p&l. Yeah.
• 32:35
  Jason Verkaart: And they keep pools yeah, there's a lot of demand for energy. Oh,
• 32:39
  Josh Porter: absolutely.
• 32:39
  Josh Porter: There's, there's opportunities there to do some really interesting things with the technology that's being brought to bear today. And then but when you look at the utility side, we're talking about solar plus battery systems at the large scale anywhere from, let's say, 15. Meg's up to like 150 200 Mags. And plus storage for that, right generally, is
• 32:58
  Jason Verkaart: that a four total Florida one, we're
• 33:00
  Josh Porter: in that territory.
• 33:00
  Josh Porter: And recently, we've seen the award ease, we've had RFPs request for proposals from the utility on all our islands except require, which doesn't separately, and we've seen us go from RFP phase one to just this last couple of months, the awardees were announced on phase three. And you know, those are big systems that are meant to take big chunks out of the fossil fuel based energy generation. But this is the kicker here, all the challenges of what it took for those to get approved, let's say, get ready to be built. Very few of them actually survived the RFP phase two process. So we thought we were well up like in the 50 plus percent offset zone. And then a lot of those projects, I mean, like, in Maui, I think there's like maybe six and like five of the six fellow
• 33:51
  Jason Verkaart: is actually going to go forward. Yeah. So
• 33:53
  Josh Porter: we're on RFP, phase three, they're going to take another crack at it. But what does it take on the utility scale side for these things to be successful? And we're talking about siting of systems, we're talking about, you know, the costs of the systems, the length of time it takes for these huge organizations to put these things together. That capital, the cost, impact study, environmental, wildfires, the discussion on everyone's lips, so etc, etc. Yeah. So
• 34:20
  Tim Montague: what are you most looking forward to about? Are you plus Hawaii,
• 34:24
  Jason Verkaart: but GJ, just continuing the conversation, and I'm getting everybody together is always the best way to move to move forward. You know, we're all kind of operating in our own little bubble. But when we get everybody in one space, the conversation can move very rapidly. And you can garner a lot of information quickly.
• 34:39
  Jason Verkaart: That's the what I always look forward to.
• 34:43
  Josh Porter: Yeah, I mean, I think that so we were really privileged to be a partner in the development of the show solar coaster has been three years ago, we met with the executive team has sat and sat down and said, Hey, let's do a show here in Hawaii. And over the course of the last year, we've worked on the agenda. And selecting that agenda was kind of interesting. And selecting the speakers were kind of interesting. I'm, so within those sessions. I'm particularly excited about a couple of them.
• 35:10
  Josh Porter: I'll try to get it up here. But I'm excited to see if we can get the second tab going, Jay. But I'm excited about the electrification of transportation. And the reason I'm excited about that, it's I forget which session it is. But that's you can see the agenda here. If folks want to go to RT plus Hawaii, you can go online and see the agenda that's been pretty much firmed up at this stage of the game. But I feel like electrification of transportation, and bidirectionality on the residential side, and then the impact on the virtual power plant thing, the potential of virtual power planting. With that in Joe. I think that's unbelievable, because you just talked about it. Tim earlier, the cost of installing a battery can be significant. You need a smarter system, it's a more sophisticated system, you might need a load control panel, like you know, a span or, or a lumen or a pan tag, right, you're one of those guys, in order to, you know, manage your loads you might need. But then with if you can get if your car or some pasta you already have, you can get an Eevee right, and then you can charge it on sunshine rather than go down to Costco and give them a C note every time for your truck right. Then now you're in a position where you've got a massive amount of battery of storage as an ancillary benefit of having a car you would
• 36:28
  Jason Verkaart: always always remember that any home battery you can buy. The car is going to be like four to 10 times yeah, the size so it is a giant rolling energy storage.
• 36:37
  Josh Porter: It's awesome. It's awesome. So the potential of that is what gets me most excited, Tim, I think that If we if we consider the new bidirectional chargers that are coming out and of course, we did some show and we've been very excited about the DC bidirectional charger from solar edge, that's, you know, supposed to be market ready and but maybe at the tail end of this year, hopefully earlier, wall box has had equate, I think the quasar, maybe they have a bidirectional charger, of course, the lightning itself with ups and downs and the rollout of that particular system that has bidirectionality, or bi directional capabilities. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a bi directional like full system, they if you can imagine they have a nine something kilowatt power output in the back of that lightning, if my wife were to go drive to work, come back at the end of the day, rather than buying at peak rates in the evening. And once our battery is exhausted, I might just take the lightning and plug it into the house and charge your car, right. So it's a type of a type of arbitrage happen by directionality, right,
• 37:38
  Jason Verkaart: just moving energy from one place to the other. But I mean, the gonna say, I
• 37:44
  Josh Porter: think on the when you get why you feel that I think that the bidirectionality to me is one of the most exciting things because that unlocks the power of the solar plus battery load control system that really puts them to use the point I came out of my mouth at Vegas, that puts the homeowner in the driver's seat, right?
• 38:01
  Josh Porter: There's your pond, because now with the driver's seat in the language, in the relationship, I should say, between the utility and the homeowner, once they've got all that storage, we already have access electrons, it's PVS.
• 38:15
  Josh Porter: Pretty cheap to put up. Once we have abundant storage. Now we can kind of say, Hey, man, I can do it pretty much whatever I
• 38:22
  Jason Verkaart: want. Yeah, that's and that's something else that plays in I talked about, we talked about electric rates here being very high abundance of electrons coming down from the from the sun. The island is also 28 miles wide. So there's not a tremendous amount of range anxiety, we also have a lot of mortality. So that exists. But I mean, being able to dip into these batteries, the batteries get larger. I mean, if we see sulfur technology batteries pop up this year would be phenomenal. It's unlikely, but still got fingers crossed. All of a sudden everything gets dub range. You don't need that range. But you do want the storage. Yeah,
• 38:55
  Josh Porter: yeah, it's very excited. So bidirectionality is what I'm personally most excited about. Tim, I think though that we'll probably see a little bit of a discussion, we're on virtual power planting, which is very interesting, especially in light of how challenging it's been to get these utility scale systems successfully built. If we can aggregate, let's say the generation and then especially the storage, of of, of all the systems that are out there in the resi in the CNI space, then maybe we can get there, you know, further down the road with that in the virtual power power planning world. There's gonna be new stuff on community energy, we're starting to see some legs and community out here. We're actually behind the April, ironically, and community energy that's done more across the country than it has here. Like community solar community, solar, yes. Yeah, exactly.
• 39:43
  Tim Montague: Yeah. I mean, I'm very interested in bi directional charging as well.
• 39:46
  Tim Montague: And, and, and, frankly, grid defection and, you know, when you have when you have a 60 kilowatt hour battery and your model Y, or 120 kilowatt hour battery in your cybertruck or lightning, you know, that's a significant amount of power.
• 40:04
  Tim Montague: Right? You could you could power a house for several days or, or more than a week with 120 kilowatt hours. But but by directionality? I mean, on that point, it seems like for people in the know, the only question is, will the utility allow it like, technically, it's totally feasible? It's not rocket science, right. But will you know, is that is that going to be a thing? Do you think in the near future,
• 40:35
  Jason Verkaart: I've seen it less as a utility problem and more about the manual, the automobile manufacturers problem, right? They need to warranty those batteries. And so they don't want other people dipping into it. overstressing it, cycling it more than it's actually supposed to last earnings
• 40:49
  Josh Porter: call Tesla puts out with the cybertruck puts out a little little quip says, oh, yeah, we're gonna enable bidirectionality on old Tesla's in 2025. Yeah, I mean, so if they're leading the charge with that, right,
• 41:00
  Jason Verkaart: with a software update. Yeah. Firstly, it's technically possible. Now. Maybe
• 41:04
  Josh Porter: I'm optimistic. And I'm maybe a little naive. I'm sure you could make that argument. But I'm saying it's a foregone conclusion at this point. bidirectionality is inevitably going to be here. And what's when you talk about the utility? I think if it less in terms of what will the utility allow? I think if it more in terms of how does that create a different balance of power in the relationship between the homeowner, business owner, whatever, and the utility itself because it puts a lot of power and other fun into the hands of the individual which I think is great. So Now the utility has to say because I I'm not a big fan of grid defection, although I recognize the kind of the opportunity that that threat provides, in a sense. So, and the reason I'm not a fan of grid defection for your listeners, the term is a bit. We've been playing with that language for a while. Do you remember the ad we did have where we talked about Robin Williams, when he was in the US the Russian and he came to America, and he was I defect?
• 42:09
  Josh Porter: Oh, yeah. Right. So we use that talking about defection, right?
• 42:13
  Josh Porter: The I mean, the idea is that someone says, I'm not going to take electricity from the power grid, I'm gonna manage it myself. And that was a conversation we had many years ago, 10 years ago, it was possible, but it was possible for a guy that had unlimited pockets. Now, now, the difference now is that it could be and it is likely to be possible very soon. And by directionality, I think is literally the key to that, it can be possible for pretty much anyone, right? And with financing of these systems, financing of cars, financing, solar, plus battery systems incentives, and the robustness of this, it certainly in environments like Hawaii, where you've got a lot of sun, and you know, you can, I would say that, that grid defection becomes a very, very reasonable discussion. Now, the problem with grid defection, of course, is that you're not connected to the grid. And it's, I would say, My personal opinion is that it's a more efficient process for us to be connected with each other in this CO production storage consumption game, that will be the future grid, we're going to get much better efficiencies by us all working together than being a little island and properties all around the the state or the
• 43:25
  Jason Verkaart: county, I've always thought that like micro grid subdivisions would be the absolute epitome of all that, you know, I mean, we've 40 lots in my subdivision. If we were all connected, microgrid wise, for whatever reason, my system is down, okay, I've got a hardware failure. Some took a dump on my solar panel, I don't know what it is, this doesn't matter. I'm down for a day, I can always go to my neighbor and ask for a cup of sugar, can I go over there and ask for electrons, you know, you should be connected in such a way that you have resiliency, that's what a grid provides you in that in that respect, but it doesn't need even I mean, it should probably be connected to the larger grid, but it doesn't probably even need to. And even then even then, if it was managed by a company
• 44:08
  Josh Porter: grid, as backup grid
• 44:09
  Jason Verkaart: as be as great as backup.
• 44:11
  Josh Porter: Yeah, I think that there's there's a lot of opportunity in that in that space. And I would hate to see that, that opportunity last right Allah, we've done a handful of shows with Ragu, founder of end phase, and his partner, Martin, and I'm, we're gonna do another one up coming soon. We're just talking with him. And I'm so excited to talk with him, because he has a great grasp on kind of the vision of the future grid. And he talks about, and I'm specifically excited because of the advancements of AI. And that, that, and Jay, you can correct me because he got the second language on this. But I feel like a lot of what Raghu was talking about in past years, can be realized with the like, let's say the AI layer to be able to make these fast decisions of consumption and you know, purchase of like, you know, the he would say, don't have to pay regular here, because I can't think of another way to say it.
• 45:05
  Josh Porter: But he would say my washer is going to use energy. I'm going to put it out to bid. Where is the cheapest energy at this moment? Is it in my solar panel?
• 45:14
  Josh Porter: Is it my battery? Is it my car?
• 45:14
  Josh Porter: Is it my neighbor's solar panel?
• 45:17
  Josh Porter: The battery car? Right? Is it the grid, and then it can make those kinds of decisions. So for me the future with those ideas in mind, it's super exciting.
• 45:24
  Josh Porter: And the idea of grid defection is a bit of a bummer. Because you would not be you lose those opportunities. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:31
  Josh Porter: But But I think it's probably a tool to negotiate with the
• 45:35
  Jason Verkaart: utility 100%.
• 45:38
  Tim Montague: Well, let's wrap up our conversation by talking a little bit about the big picture in Hawaii. You know, you mentioned early on that you were the first state to put a stake in the ground with a goal of 100% clean power. Where are you on that journey? And when do you arrive at the promised land?
• 45:57
  Tim Montague: Yeah,
• 45:58
  Josh Porter: I gotta tell you, those numbers are not really top of not really salient in my mind at the moment. I think that we'll know those answers. Will we'll have a much better shot at answering that question. After already plus Hawaii, because it really is a meeting of the minds. We have all of the wonderful energy leadership in Hawaii scheduled. Every one that's part of this energy conversation in Hawaii and has been for a long time we'll be there. There'll be handling the different sessions and all the hot topics we just we just kind of touched on. But you know, I guess the question that you have for us is how optimistic are we that we'll hit our our mandates?
• 46:36
  Josh Porter: I personally am very optimistic.
• 46:36
  Josh Porter: I think that the technology the policy The community will outside of the NIMBY issues. I know it's controversial term NIMBY, I don't know another term to use. Outside of the siting issues. I think that all the tools are in place for us to, to hit those mandates early. Now.
• 46:56
  Josh Porter: The specifics are going to be on an island by island basis. K IUC, is I believe they're further along in the case of key IUCN khoy. They're doing some super innovative stuff, Tim, for example, pumped storage hydro, the largest pumped storage hydro system in the entire world is has been designed inspect and trying to get, you know, through the through the permitting, I suppose. And acceptance in Hawaii, if we're quite so we're talking about having excess power, basically, during the day using pumps to run water up to a higher elevation and then turning that through a turbine afterwards. So PSH that's an example of some of the innovation out here. I think we could have an offshore wind conversation for a while, who?
• 47:39
  Josh Porter: And then of course, all the solar battery and VPP stuff that we've been talking about.
• 47:44
  Jason Verkaart: And there are there are hours of the day.
• 47:46
  Jason Verkaart: We're Kawaii is 100%. Yeah, already. Yeah, yeah, right now.
• 47:51
  Josh Porter: Yeah. So I'm optimistic, Tim. And I think that we'll know more about the rate and the actual well, maybe we'll even be able to give you a year and say, hey, we'll probably be here, you know, at this time period in advance of our mandate required, you know, requirements, but um, yeah, I'd say I'm optimistic because of all the reasons we just said and then we should know more and plus, why and if if your listenership would like to do something really fun, come to Hawaii in January, and and learn about these, let's say technology, policy, also the community's perception of it all. kind of learn about the future, take a trip to the future, in a sense, come to Hawaii, January 22 23rd, Lolani resort Waikiki awesome resort.
• 48:30
  Josh Porter: There's also going to be a fundraiser the second day. So Tim, they wanted they built a wave pool. Right? And I haven't even been to this brand new wave pool, we're going to have a fundraiser will Geesey have, I believe inter Island and some other organizations, I can't remember the other ones he's a part of, but they're running a fundraiser. It's called a surf and solar or something like that. Second day of the event, we'll go over to the wave pool.
• 49:01
  Josh Porter: And he what he told me was that, oh, in Hawaii, every solar guy has a board in the back of his truck. Right? So and he does apparently they all serve, we want to see who actually physically Sir, it's a community fun event. But the the proceeds are gonna go to Maui wildfire victims in in some form and, and maybe the footprint project? I'm not sure exactly. It says it on the website. But um, it's gonna be a great event. So you should come out and check that out.
• 49:27
  Josh Porter: We'd love to have people from other places around the country.
• 49:29
  Josh Porter: Come and join us. Cool.
• 49:33
  Tim Montague: Well, I'll put links to the RT plus Hawaii event in the show notes and links to your podcast. How can our listeners find you guys?
• 49:45
  Josh Porter: So well, we're on all major platforms, and Spotify and all the rest of them pretty much. www.solar-coaster.com is our webpage. We haven't really changed a thing since we launched it seven years ago or so desperately
• 50:00
  Jason Verkaart: in need of an update. But all the links are there. They were they weren't for me, YouTube's I think YouTube's is the best,
• 50:05
  Josh Porter: best way to YouTube, of course. Yes. Thanks for bringing that up YouTube.
• 50:07
  Josh Porter: Solar coaster on YouTube. You gotta check that out. We got a lot of cool stuff there from shows all around the world from the inner solar Munich. We did shows in Cuttyhunk island in the inside
• 50:18
  Jason Verkaart: of the either a fusion reactor project. We've been around the team inside and we will be posting from our a plus. Yeah,
• 50:27
  Josh Porter: so check all that out. And then yeah, and please come and join us in Hawaii. Oh, and we have a discount code we can share with the listeners too.
• 50:33
  Tim Montague: Okay, cool. We'll put that in the notes. will check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. That is one of the best things you can do to help others find the show. And please tell a friend about the show. We love to get more listeners and reach out to me on LinkedIn or at cleanpowerhour.com. I want to thank Josh and Jay for coming on the show today and geeking out about Hawaiian solar. I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar and storage. Take care guys.
• 51:05
  Jason Verkaart: Very much appreciate it. Thanks, guys.
• 51:07
  Jason Verkaart: Aloha.
• 51:09
  Tim Montague: Hey, listeners.
• 51:09
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• 51:45
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• 52:18
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• 52:37
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• 52:37
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• 53:16
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