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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN AWESC 2017/03/21 (2016-2018)Committee on Agriculture, Water and Energy Sustainability 311 Session West Hawaii Civic Center 74-5044 Ane Keohokalole Highway, Building A Kailua-Kona, Hawaii March 21, 2017 CALL TO The regular meeting of the Committee on Agriculture, Water and Energy ORDER: Sustainability was called to order at 11:53 a.m., in the Council Chambers, Kona, by Mr. Herbert M. "Tim" Richards, III, Chair. ROLL CALL: Present: Mr. Herbert M. "Tim" Richards, III, Chair Ms. Eileen O'Hara, Vice Chair Mr. Aaron S. Y. Chung, Member Ms. Maile Medeiros David, Member Ms. Karen Eoff, Member Mr. Dru Mamo Kanuha, Member Ms. Susan L. K. Lee Loy, Member Ms. Valerie T. Poindexter, Member Ms. Jennifer Ruggles, Member STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS: COMMUNI- CATIONS: Change Order of Business: The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, Statements from the Public on Agenda Items. (There were none.) The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business, Communications. As directed by the Chair and with no objection from the Council Members, the following item was taken out of order: Comm. 159: NOMINATION OF BRONSTEN-GLEN KOSSOW TO THE HAWAII GAME MANAGEMENT ADVISORY COMMISSION From Mayor Harry Kim, dated February 22, 2017, submitting for the Council's review and confirmation the above nomination. Requires Council Confirmation by: April 16, 2017 (Section 13-4(1), Hawaii County Charter) AWESC-3 March 21, 2017 Vote on Comm. 159: Mr. Kanuha moved to recommend confirmation of (Approved) Bronsten-Glen Kossow to the Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission. Seconded by Ms. Eoff and carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kanuha, Lee Loy, O'Hara, Poindexter, and Chair Richards — 8. Noes: None. Absent: Committee Member Ruggles —1. Excused: None. Committee Members spoke in favor of the appointment. CHR. RICHARDS: So with that, thank you very much and congratulations. This will move on to Council. Mr. Kossow, you don't have to come back to Council. You were here and answered any questions and so, thank you very much. You're welcomed to come to Council, but you're not required to. Thank you. Alright, moving on to Communication 145, Clerk. Comm. 145: REQUESTS A PRESENTATION BY JOSE DIZON, GENERAL MANAGER OF PANIOLO POWER, LLC, ENTITLED "ALTERNATIVE THINKING ABOUT ENERGY FOR THE BIG ISLAND" From Council Member Tim Richards, dated February 21, 2017. Motion to Close File: Ms. O'Hara moved to close file on Comm. 145. Seconded by Ms. Poindexter. CHR. RICHARDS: Jose, you're on deck. We'll recess for four minutes. Recess: At 12:05 p.m., the Chair called for a recess. Reconvene: The meeting reconvened at 12:09 p.m. CHR. RICHARDS: We're back in session. Before us, we have Jose Dizon who's the General Manager of Paniolo Power. I've requested that Mr. Dizon come in and furthering the conversations and thereby the education for the committee on Ag, Water and Energy. I asked Mr. Dizon to come in and give us a perspective of energy within our County as it pertains to our County and our State. So with that, Jose. Page 2 AWESC-3 March 21, 2017 (Note: At this time, General Manager of Paniolo Power, LLC Jose Dizon came forward and gave a PowerPoint to the members of the Committee. For viewing of the subject presentation, see the DVD copy of the meeting proceedings on file in the Clerk's Office. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation is made a part of the record, see Comm. 145.) CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you very much, Mr. Dizon. I've known you too long not to call you Jose, so thank you very much, Jose. Council Members, men and women, again, going back to the reason for these sessions is an educational process. Though in and itself, I don't solely endorse Paniolo Power, I do endorse the thought process. And as Mr. Dizon pointed out, we spent about a quarter of a billion dollars last year in oil. If we look at that, that works out to be about $1200 to $1300, something like that per person in our County, spent on oil to generate electricity. Not for transportation, strictly for electricity. So if we can cut that down, if we want to look at the economic growth that might bring for us, if we even cut that down, just pick a number, 10 percent, that puts $130 per person, and do the math on that one. We're talking $25 million more than our constituency has to spend within our community. And that doesn't even begin to get into all the multipliers and multiplicity of a thought process like this. We have a direction to seek a more renewable source of energy. When I look at the Big Island, and I've been playing with wind for many, many years, but when I look at the Big Island, our portfolio of potential renewable resources is second to none as far as I'm concerned. So with that, my thought process in bringing in Mr. Dizon was to expose us to this thought process. I'm not saying HELCO (Hawaiian Electric Light Company) is wrong, there's very good reasons for them being here and they will be here in future committee meetings, but the idea is to expand our thought process. So with that, open up for questions from our Council for Mr. Dizon. Do I have some? Looks like pretty good, Jose. You answered you have one? Go ahead. MS. EOFF: This is more of a comment but maybe you can help us understand. When I looked at one of your maps, although the leeward side of our island is sunny almost all of the time, you don't see that much investment in solar to help us with this situation to generate more— MR. DIZON: Sure. I think, I'm speaking from prior experience, but I don't want to be not respectful to the utility. I know that they are having reluctance in building large utility -scaled solar projects, even though there's a lot of sun there on the Kona and Waimea side. And there are technical reasons for that, I think. And also I think they may also be trying to reserve some of that solar for the rooftop solar folks, the residents and the businesses. There are ways to deal with that though. I mean you could firm up that solar resource with energy storage whether it's pump storage or whether it's batteries. Page 3 AWESC-3 March 21, 2017 MS. EOFF: It seems especially now that battery storage is getting to be more reliable. MR. DIZON: Reliable and the prices are coming down. There's more demand for energy storage, for batteries, and you're going to see more of it and it's going to come better. On Kauai, two large projects there— MS. EOFF: Yeah, I saw that one. MR. DIZON: Yeah at 11 cents which is for energy storage and PV (Photovoltaic). That's tax break 80, that's about 13.9 cents without the tax break. But Kauai is doing something right over there. So now it has to translate to the Hawaii Electric Companies and try to do something over here. MS. EOFF: Okay. Thank you for your presentation. MR. DIZON: Thank you for your time, I appreciate it. CHR. RICHARDS: Any other questions? Councilwoman O'Hara. MS. O'HARA: Thank you, Chair and thank you for coming before us. The storage that you're talking about, the pump storage, which is very interesting and there are problems with battery storages, as we're all well aware. What would be capacity in this system that you're looking at Parker Ranch for storage? MR. DIZON: There's a couple in a formal study that we've done with Siemens, we were looking at a 20 megawatt storage. We could cover five hour duration. Right now, we are informally looking at a 40 megawatt storage with eight hour duration. So what that means is 40 megawatts per eight hours or 20 megawatts for 16 hours, 10 megawatts for 32 hours. It provides a lot more flexibility. The question is, can we do that competitively given the amount of the size of the reservoirs that you have to dig? And the answer is yes, we can do that. MS. O'HARA: Okay. And having that capacity, how far can we extend that capacity on the existing grid? Will it rollover to—let's say we have problems down south part of the island and you're able to trigger that and direct it there? MR. DIZON: So Parker Ranch and Paniolo Power right now, with our interest in providing benefit to all residents, that these projects would be connected to the electric grid. And so it'll be dispatched by the electric utility and it will be available to all corners of the island. MS. O'HARA: And it will still experience a little bit of loss in the transmission? MR. DIZON: But not as much as if it was all from Hilo. Page 4 AWESC-3 March 21, 2017 MS. O'HARA: Not as much? MR. DIZON: Not as much. MS. O'HARA: As if it were generated MR. DIZON: All from Hilo for example. MS. O'HARA: By Hilo? MR. DIZON: We think that, again, being in the electric center, that you would have a reduction in loss. There will always be losses, okay? I think you're going to save on losses by having it in the middle of the island. So I think at this point, the loss is not as big of an issue as it would have been, or currently is and you're providing the benefit of firming up renewable energy, and you have the benefit of not curtailing renewable energy because you're using that energy to pump water. MS. O'HARA: So that storage capacity would basically assign all of the power generated by wind and solar by your operation into stored capacity? Or will there still be some wind and solar directly connected to the grid? MR. DIZON: The wind and solar would be connected to the grid and by having it store energy that allows more wind and solar to be available on the grid, right? MS. O'HARA: I understand. MR. DIZON: So the answer is yes. MS. O'HARA: As I understand it also, with the active solar and especially wind integration into the utility grid, it can be somewhat problematic in the power quality fluctuations and things like that. MR. DIZON: Correct. They had some issues with one particular power plant, wind farm that's been giving problems. There's ways to fix that now. Technology is changed and utility has gotten smarter in negotiating contracts to minimize that type of effect from happening. MS. O'HARA: Good to hear. I yield. CHR. RICHARDS: Thanks. Councilwoman Lee Loy. MS. LEE LOY: Hi. Thank you for coming. You mentioned that HELCO had to submit their revised Power Supply Improvement Plan in December of 2016. Has that been already approved by the PUC (Public Utilities Commission)? Page 5 AWESC-3 March 21, 2017 MR. DIZON: Not yet. The plan was submitted or filed December 23 and the parties to that docket filed their statement of positions, I think it was in January or February. MS. LEE LOY: And are you folks some of those parties because I know the County also is a party. MR. DIZON: I've been working with the County closely. MS. LEE LOY: Okay. MR. DIZON: Yes. MS. LEE LOY: And then for your folks' micro, did you folks already receive your PUC approval? MR. DIZON: For microgrid? MS. LEE LOY: Yes MR. DIZON: We did not submit approval for a microgrid. We, at that point, chose not to because after the IRP (Integrated Resource Planning) was rejected and HELCO came up with their second plan, when we looked at it, we thought we could come up with benefits for all -rate payers. We focused on the all -rate payer piece and not just the Waimea and North Kohala piece. MS. LEE LOY: Okay. So your microgrid would service all customers, even HELCO customers, not just a small MR. DIZON: Correct. At that point, I wouldn't call it a microgrid anymore. MS. LEE LOY: Yeah, it would be—okay. Thank you. MR. DIZON: Let me just say that if things aren't working well, we can certainly go back to that. But I think our interests are the interests of the entire island. So it's not just electricity prices but how when electricity prices go down, how it benefits the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the Big Island and everyone in general. So we took the bigger tact there. MS. LEE LOY: So that's off the table and you guys are looking at the bigger picture? MR. DIZON: Correct. The Parker Ranch microgrid, it's on the back burner, it's not dead. I can bring it up again, if we're not getting where we need to go for this island. Page 6 AWESC-3 March 21, 2017 MS. LEE LOY: So if you guys did bring that back up, what's the timeline for the PUC approval for the microgrid? And ballpark, just your best guess from submittal of application. MR. DIZON: Okay. Just a guess, I'd have to file to be a utility and—well I don't have to, that's one thing I would probably do, and it would take typically a year for the Public Utilities Commission to approve a docket. Let's just double it, let's say two years, and then we can start construction and start the grid. Now I don't need to be a utility to do this, I can start doing it, work with the utility and start on that as well. But I think it'll be easier if we worked with the utility and if I can't, then maybe it'll be cleaner if I became a co-op or some other utility to do it. MS. LEE LOY: Thank you. CHR. RICHARDS: Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from the Council? I did want to touch on something that Jose had mentioned when you talked about the water energy nexus, and also the water energy food nexus. And this is something that—actually a concept that came up some years ago where not only is the water available for the pump storage hydro, but is also available for irrigation and he mentioned that. Which ismeaning it gets back to our agriculture, which means we can be more reliable with our agriculture production if we have water for that. Then we have the energy coming out of the system to do value added into our agriculture, whether it's cattle and slaughterhouses or whether it's row crops and further processing. So if you look at each one of those things individually, they may or may not make sense. But when you start putting them all together and you get that nexus where they start complimenting each other, we start saving money and we start increasing our economy. So this is the concept and this is something we discussed in the past. But like I said, we have to make some changes and we have a lot of opportunity ahead of us if we're smart about it. In doing things the same as we've done in the past, I don't think is the right direction to go so we got to make a difference. So with that, one other comment I'd like to make, Jose. You had some slides in your presentation that we don't have in our packet. Could you send those on to us so we could update our packets and finish that up? MR. DIZON: I'd be happy to. CHR. RICHARDS: Okay, I appreciate that. If there's nothing further, I will call for the vote. Page 7 AWESC-3 March 21, 2017 Vote on Comm. 145: The motion to close file on Comm. 145 was carried by Filed the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kanuha, Lee Loy, O'Hara, Poindexter, Ruggles, and Chair Richards — 9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. CHR. RICHARDS: Jose, thank you very much, we appreciate your time. MR. DIZON: Thank you very much. ADJOURN There being no further business, at 12:48 p.m., Ms. O'Hara moved to adjourn the MENT: meeting. Seconded by Ms. David and carried by the following voice vote: Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff, Kanuha, Lee Loy, O'Hara, Poindexter, Ruggles, and Chair Richards— 9. Noes: None. Absent: None. Excused: None. CHR. RICHARDS: We stand adjourned. Thank you. Approved: r. HerbertM. "Tim" Richards, III, hai Agriculture, Water, and Energy Sustainability Committee HR/jm (Date) Page 8