2020-08-26 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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We looked at the capital improvement projects that were I guess approved and _____ budget. So within these different opportunities, where it has pumps and air and other things like that, there is a potential to have a third-party investor actually involved with that. We looked at other energy and cost savings across the country. These are just examples of—like a combined _____ power, 120 kilowatt solar system, _________ about 100,000 a year. So these are just examples of how this methodology of engagement by the county, by government agencies, can actually reduce the amount of capital investment and extend the relationship over several years and lower the actual operating costs of the entity. Regarding solid waste, this is a slide I had from over a year ago. But that flaring on the left is what we currently do at the landfill to be EPA-compliant. The methodology of disposal of methane gas produced by the biological breakdown that’s occurring at the landfill. So the gas is collected in a passive manner at one collection point, then it’s flared, because flaring of the methane reduces the carbon output by 28 times. So that is the acceptable method by the EPA to dispose of landfill gas. Now with that—and this is not a picture of the actual landfill, this is just an example. It actually burns clean. So all you see is a heat ______. But you can use that heat to actually run a steam generator and produce hydrogen through electrolysis, using an electrolyzer. So you can get the energy from heat or solar or wind, and it produces the actual hydrogen. You can transport this stored energy, because that’s what hydrogen actually is—it’s a form of stored energy, which then can be used for fuel cell generators to power vehicles, transportation, and it’s portable, so you can diversify the location of consumption. This is appealing compared to, say, battery, electric chargers, where the station is fixed and the recharge time is over several hours, unless you put a high-end investment in level 3 charging, where you can get down to half an hour. But really with the hydrogen, we have a hydrogen bus that’s going through getting approved for the county to receive and operate. This is an actual picture, it’s not a concept drawing, of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaiʻi. The station has been approved to actually operate. So this station will produce 64 kilograms of hydrogen a day. The bus we’re looking at gaining has a 200-mile range on 20 kilograms. So the tentative plan is to have the bus go from Kona to Waimea, run that trip, because you have the topography that’s challenging, and we can really test the performance of it. So per day the two round trips would be about 140, 160 miles. So we have the production from this facility to actually run three buses. With the landfill, from the actual analysis based on a BTU to energy basis using the conversion tables, the heat currently from the 270 standard cubic feet, 43% methane gas that’s there, would produce about a thousand kilograms per day. It’s capable of doing that. So that would result in about—the bus gets 10 miles per kilogram, so that would result in about 10,000 29-passenger vehicle bus miles per day, which we wouldn’t be able to consume. So the other thing to consider is transforming the hauling trucks that haul the trash to the landfill from 22 transfer stations, having those long haul, heavy load vehicles convert to fuel cell vehicles. That’s all I have, if you have any questions. 6