HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN AWESC 2017/08/15 (2016-2018)Committee on Agriculture, Water
and Energy Sustainability
6th Session
West Hawaii Civic Center
74-5044 Ane Keohokalole Highway, Building A
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
August 15, 2017
CALL TO
The regular meeting of the Committee on Agriculture, Water and Energy
ORDER:
Sustainability Committee was called to order at 10:42 a.m., in the Council
Chambers, Kailua-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 (via videoconference from Hilo)
Mr. Aaron S. Y. Chung, Member (came in later)
Ms. Maile Medeiros David, Member
Ms. Karen Eoff, Member
Mr. Dru Mamo Kanuha, Member
Ms. Susan. L. K. Lee Loy, Member (via videoconference from Hilo)
Ms. Valerie T. Poindexter, Member
Ms. Jennifer Ruggles, Member (via videoconference from Hilo)
STATEMENTS
FROM THE
PUBLIC ON
AGENDA ITEMS
The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business,
Statements from the Public on Agenda Items.
The following individual registered to speak to comment on Communication 390,
and came forward when called by the Chair:
Cory Harden.
COMMUNI- The Chair directed the Committee to proceed to the next order of business,
CATIONS: Communications.
Comm. 390: REQUESTS A PRESENTATION BY JAY IGNACIO, PRESIDENT OF
HAWAII ELECTRIC LIGHT COMPANY (HELLO), AND KEVIN WALTJEN
(HELCO's GENERAL MANAGER OF TRANSMISSION AND
DISTRIBUTION)
From Council Member Tim Richards, dated July 26, 2017, requesting a
presentation titled "Hawai`i's Energy Future."
Motion Close File: Mr. Kanuha moved to close file on Comm. 390. Seconded
by Ms. Eoff.
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CHR. RICHARDS: Just a quick note on this presentation. I was in
communication with HELCO (Hawai`i Electric Light Company) earlier this year
to have HELCO come and discuss with us HELLO, who they are, what they are
going to be doing with us, and more importantly, what we are going to do going
into the future. So with that, I'd like to thank Mr. Ignacio and Mr. Waltjen, come
before us. So please continue with your presentation and then I'm sure we're
going to have choke questions.
(Note: At this time, President of Hawaii Electric Light Company
Jay Ignacio and General Manager of Transmission and Distribution
Kevin Waltjen came forward and gave a PowerPoint presentation to the
members of the Council 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. 390.)
CHR. RICHARDS: Okay, thank you, Mr. Ignacio for that. And now I'm going
to turn this—open this up to Council Members for any questions. So Hilo, I
cannot—okay, I can see you. If you have something, either pipe up or wave and
we'll go ahead and get you on the agendas. Anybody here in the Kona?
Mr. Chung.
MR. CHUNG: I don't have a question, I just wanted to thank Jay and Kevin and
his staff for coming here. That was very informative for me and I really
appreciate how they integrated Ms. Harden's questions into the presentation, even
if it wasn't required of them. I thought that was really nice and I also appreciate
the candor about the rate increases and stuff It was just really nice all the way
around, but thank you guys for coming.
CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Mr. Chung. Anyone else? Ms. Poindexter.
MS. POINDEXTER: Like Council Member Chung, I don't have any questions,
but I just want to say thank you for all of the work that you all continue to do in
the communities, to get education out there and staying at our community
meetings, not just for your portion, but concerned about what's happening in
communities. And I see that you stay throughout the meetings, that's real
important and speaks loudly of your commitment to our local communities. So,
thank you so much, Jay.
MR. IGNACIO: Thank you.
CHR. RICHARDS: Okay, anyone else here in the Kona Chambers? In the Hilo
Chambers? Ms. Ruggles.
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MS. RUGGLES: Thank you. I have a question about what the difference of
how we're producing energy. We have solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. I was
wondering if you had any comments on the efficiency of each.
MR. IGNACIO: I'm not really sure how I can answer with respect to the
efficiency. There's certainly different pricing and there's, I guess, different
nature. When we look at, at least from the power system, from the utility grid
aspect, geothermal has a high value because it has a 24-hour availability and we
can actually dispatch it, so it's a little more predictable resource. We don't have
to combine it with other technologies, we can just use it as is. Pricing, we
probably have the most favorable pricing from geothermal than any other
resource.
Photovoltaic is a good resource in that it's quickly deployable. You can get a set
of panels, an inverter, deploy it, and you can quickly start generating energy. The
challenge with photovoltaic is that it's available during the day periods and then
the maximum output of photovoltaic is pretty much all coincident, it's all in that
mid-morning, I mean mid-day time period. So accommodating that type of
energy profile is challenging for the utility, but it's still a good resource and the
pricing has come down, and continues to go down. So we want to take advantage
of that kind of technology.
Wind is maybe in between photovoltaic and geothermal. Wind would be more
available 24 -hours a day, but you're going to have higher output periods and
lower output periods, kind of they have a pattern. But you have more of an
availability for the wind resource throughout the day, but it's still variable, so it's
not absolutely predictable like a geothermal resource. But we are getting better at
predicting the wind and also, one of our models in using wind is actually
overbuilding facilities, meaning building more wind facilities than we can use, but
then actually using controls and pitch the blades so that even if you're, what we
call spilling wind, you're using as much wind as possible. And you'd be able to
control up and down and make the wind resource closer to our firm dispatchable
type of resources, and it adds value to the utility. I hope I addressed your
question, Ms. Ruggles.
MS. RUGGLES: Yeah, thank you. That's all the questions I have. Thank you.
CHR. RICHARDS: Anyone else in the Hilo Chambers? Ms. O'Hara.
MS. O'HARA: Thank you, Chair. Thank you HELCO for being here and doing
the presentation. I do have some questions relating to the Energy Mix 2017-2045
chart. I can't refer to the colors because mine is black and white, but I think I can
still read the map, or the chart, so I'm just wanting to confirm something. In
2017, the quantity of geothermal contributing to the grid is somewhat static, up
until about year 2024. And then I see what appears to be about a 50 percent
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increase in the geothermal contribution, and another large increase in year 2030.
From that point on, it stays pretty static. Can you please describe what you're
expecting to happen there in terms of expansion of geothermal? Is this all going
to be at current locations on the east rift zone of lower Puna? Are we looking at
expanding locations? Yeah, just if you could explain that better. Thank you.
MR. IGNACIO: I touched on it briefly when I did the presentation. I anticipate
geothermal addition, I hope to have additional geothermal. With respect to going
back to east Hawaii, I'd see that as being a difficult challenge because of the
public acceptance. Ifcertainly the resource in east Hawaii is the most known,
it's proven it's available. The difficulty is actually getting the public acceptance
and to be frank, the night-time drilling requirement, where you cannot drill at
night, that essentially makes it difficult for any developer to drill for new
geothermal resources. It just creates, actually operational hazards but it also
creates very high costs.
So currently, it wouldn't be practical, but hopefully, we can work with Hawaii
state government, maybe even get some federal assistance to do exploration in
other areas. Some of the thoughts is not the direct extraction of steam, like we do
currently in Puna, but actually using hot water resources, so you're not actually
using direct steam, but you're actually using hot water. And then you run it
through a heat exchanger to create steam, and then you create the energy. That's
called low-temperature geothermal. So maybe there's potential for those kind of
resources in a remote area that might be more publically acceptable.
MS. O'HARA: Thank you for that response. And so we are looking at areas that
aren't necessarily close to the population being served? In other words, I think
we're short on generation on the west side of the island, given the demand there,
relative to the east side of the island. So you're talking about possible
development in more remote locations using newer technology. Sounds good.
Okay, thank you.
CHR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Ms. O'Hara. Ms. Lee Loy.
MS. LEE LOY: Thank you, Chair. Thank you Mr. Ignacio and Mr. Waltjen for
being here. I actually had more of a looking forward question. You mentioned
we're at about a 185 megawatts, and then at peak use—and then we also have our
energy efficiency goals of reaching renewable by 2045. But do you have a
number as far as what the total amount of energy we're going to need at this end
of 2045?
MR. IGNACIO: I do, it's not in my head right now. But in coming up with the
projections, we do a load forecast, that includes demand response and energy
efficiency as a combination. We did not anticipate a significant increase.
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Mr. Waltjen can assist me here in the amount. We did not anticipate the
significant increase from today out to 2045, I mean aside from, you know,
self -generation and energy efficiency, you would expect maybe the load to double
by the time you get to 2045, or even be higher than that. But our projections were
much lower than that. So in terms of the amount of resources needed to meet the
anticipated load, you don't have to add whole significant amount of resources.
And that reminds me of a question Ms. Harden had as to what the declining use,
you know, what is the utility's plan? Well part of our plan is we recognize that,
but we also want to acknowledge that customers want to generate their own
energy. So we want to figure out a way so that they can generate their own
energy but still make the utility viable. So some of the thoughts we have is
renewable energy, the electric utility actually has a head start on the rest of the
state because energy use, fossil fuel use, is not just electrical energy, it's also for
transportation. So we anticipate that we could convert the transportation
resources, so as we make the utility more of a renewable resource, you can
actually electrify the transportation sector. So you can actually bring in more
customers using electricity. And that way, you have more customers using and
paying for the infrastructure, you can actually manage the rates much better. So
that's part of our game plan going forward.
MS. LEE LOY: Thank you. And one follow-up question, you mentioned
overdesign of certain renewables. In order of priority, you mentioned wind, what
would be the next area that you folks are looking to overdesign in hopes to kind of
close the gap, and kind of help us reach that energy efficiency goal at 2045?
MR. IGNACIO: So, the quickest resource we see would probably be
photovoltaic, and then wind. We want to see if we can take advantage of the tax
credits associated with wind, that's why we put that in the resource, and that's
why we're very supportive of it, because we want to see if we can take advantage
of that tax credits.
We anticipate additional geothermal will probably take longer. It will be a longer
process of identifying the sites, actually doing assessments, actually doing pilot
tests, and going through the permitting process. So that was later in the plan.
And then further down in the plan, we actually show a biofuels component. So
we anticipate it will take longer for biofuels to develop and actually become
economical, so we show it way later in the plan, that's years out.
As you move further out in the plan, the uncertainty significantly increases. So as
we move further, we're sure that this plan is going to change, as technology
change, as the pricing change. We're pretty sure this plan is going to change.
What's coming on earlier and was not in our plan is the biomass that we're going
to get from Hu Honua. That's coming on in 2019, so it's not on this chart, but
you're going to see, if we were to redo this chart, then you're going to have a
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bigger component of the biomass earlier. So in terms of ease, I would say
photovoltaic, then wind, then maybe later geothermal, but we are getting the
biomass.
MS. LEE LOY: And one final question, because everyone across the State keeps
talking about our energy goal at 2045, and part of that is really having the space to
have some other renewables and from what I can see from the chart, we're at
about 54 percent. Is that accurate, to reaching 100 percent for Hawaii County?
MR. IGNACIO: We
MS. LEE LOY: Did I read that? It says 2016 42.2 percent renewable with a
goal of 100 percent by 2045.
MR. IGNACIO: Yes. You're asking me if we believe it's doable?
MS. LEE LOY: Yes.
MR. IGNACIO: I believe it's doable and I believe we can actually do it before
2045. With addition of Hu Honua, you're going to have a significant increase, so
you're going to be probably in the 65 percent range already, and then the
continued growth of photovoltaic, it's going to take you in the 70 percent range
quite quickly. And then if we can add the wind resource, you know, you're going
to be up in the 80's and 90's. So we can get there quickly. The concept that I've
been saying, and it's I think picking up some momentum, is that people just see
100 percent and they think you stop there. Actually, in order to run a utility
system, you actually have to go beyond 100 percent.
Currently, we have 185 megawatt peak, but we keep 270 megawatts of firm
capacity. That's, you know, the same philosophy that's going to have to happen
when you go forward, is you know, resources are not always going to be there
There's always overhaul schedules, there's always maintenance, there's
unplanned events, so you're going to have to build renewable resource even
beyond the 100 percent mark. So even if we get to 100 percent, the work doesn't
stop, you're going to have to continue keep on making investments. So there are
a lot of challenges and opportunities going forward.
MS. LEE LOY: Thank you so much. Everybody on this Council knows that I'm
extremely competitive and this is one area I want to win. I want to be the first
County to get to 100 percent before all the other counties. Thank you very much,
I yield.
MR. IGNACIO: Thank you. Can I add one more comment?
CHR. RICHARDS: By all means.
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MR. IGNACIO: And this is how I speak out there and people laugh at me maybe
sometimes, but you know, we are at 54 percent renewable. We're going to be
you know, continue to grow. I think Hawaii County should be proud of that fact
and we should market that fact. I mean everyone should be marketing, you come
to Hawaii Island, and you're actually using 54 percent renewable energy. Every
time you turn on the light switch, you're actually using 54 percent renewable
energy. I mean you cook your meal on an electric stove, you're using renewable
energy and I think we should be proud of that, and we actually should take
advantage and market that for Hawaii Island. Thank you.
MS. LEE LOY: Yes, Mr. Ignacio, we're the big and the best island.
MR. RICHARDS: Thank you, Ms. Lee Loy, anybody else in Hilo Chambers?
Anything further? Anything further in Kona Chambers? Okay, that means it's
my turn. Okay again, first of all, I want to echo what everyone else has said and
thank you for being here. Having a talk -story about this is very important to
move things forward. Couple of comments, energy is near and dear to me for a
variety of different reasons and I think I have to start the conversation for myself
with one of the things, and this is great, we're all going renewable and our
direction is that way, but cost. We have to pay attention to cost, and what I don't
want to be is the highest cost in the nation, which essentially we're just about are
and we can argue nuances. But that's one of the concerns.
If we look at our members, our constituents, the people of our community, and we
pay attention to our incomes, if we pay attention to our cost of living, this is very
concerning going forward, and I understand why. I get it. I understand with the
power grid here on the Big Island, it started from, I think some very small
companies, got a little bit bigger, and then started joining. And so we ended up
with what we have today. But things are changing and I do have to echo my pride
in the fact that we're heading in the renewable direction. Cheap oil, cheap energy
allowed us to do a lot of things over the years, which was for all the right reasons,
but now it's time to evolve on them.
Couple of things, couple questions that's been put before me. I know we talk
about the renewable sources, wind, photovoltaic, it doesn't really matter, but we
have curtailment of those when we don't need the power. And one of the
perceptions, and by the way, your presentation was great, but it's a 50,000 foot
overview of what we're talking about, getting down to the nuts and bolts. In
discussing the curtailment of renewables, one thing that was mentioned to me
previously was why do we curtail the renewables? Why don't we keep them
going first and then curtail the heart and firm generation? And I understand
having to balance the grid. I'm not an engineer but you understand that's a
challenge for you. I also understand that because we're an island, it's like a little
continent, you have to take care of everything here. We don't have the
redundancy to tap into another grid to help balance us out. I got that. But
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understanding that, and in the advancements of electrical engineering, aren't there
ways you can rely more on the renewable side and less on the firm side and
balance the renewable with the firm side? I pose that question.
Also, are there future plans to tie the grids together? Meaning Big Island, to
Maui, to Oahu. Again, I think there are some advantages but I'm sure there are
disadvantages to that as well going forward. And then as a question coming
forward, we talk about these smart grids. There's been health concerns raised and
I justI have to put that out because it came from a constituent, but I want to put
that out to you. So, let me stop there and let you respond to some of that.
MR. WALTJEN: Okay, so balancing the renewables with the new technology of
today
MR. RICHARDS: Excuse me, can you state your name, just for the record?
MR. WALTJEN: Kevin Waltjen, General Manager for Transmission and
Distribution. Balancing the renewables with the technology changes that we're
having going forward, to answer that question, I'll start with all these new
renewable changes that we're going through is different from what we've done in
the last 100 years. If you look at the advancement that we've done in just the last
10 years, it's pretty much light years in comparison to where we came from.
So to answer your question, yes, we believe we can move forward and balance it
more and use that kind of technology. It's just that it is cutting edge right now, so
you approach these things from a perspective of I'll put into play pieces that will
work and tested. Because if you throw things in that are not tested, you can result
in the opposite direction, which Jay had kind of eluded to in his presentation
earlier about getting into situations where your generation is not there for the
amount of load that's coming on. If your generation goes away for whatever
reason, say we put all our faith in the renewable, we put this technology out there
that's supposed to work and it doesn't, now your generation goes away, we go
back to the early 1990's, which was, we had to go without power to customers for
hours at a time every day until we could re-establish generation. That's the part
we kind of worry about. So we take it with some kind of caution, but yet we
know we progress forward.
So Jay had also mentioned in his presentation about smart inverters. Those are
some of the things that as a tri -company, you know, all the different corporations,
different companies across the islands, we're looking at using those smart
inverters to utilize more photovoltaic generation. Wind is another kind of
concept, right? When the wind blows, you have an abundance of wind, you'll
have generation, but when the wind stops, you have issues. So Jay had kind of
touched upon looking at the future wind renewables, which is we look at
overbuilding the wind farms such that when you have a lot of wind, you tilt the
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blades, spill the wind, and still be able to provide the energy that you need
without having too much. And the converse is true also. When you don't have
enough wind for the minimum amount of generation, you use a lot of wind
turbines to capture as much of that wind as possible so that way you can provide
for the load. So we're moving in that direction. That's the best that I can talk to
as far as utilizing the renewables.
As far as curtailment, the curtailment rules are in place so that way, you can
ensure when your customer turns on their lights, the generation is there. But it
has a curtailment list that says I will turn you off first, I'll turn you off second,
and so forth, based off the contracts that we signed with those different
companies. They're not the cheapest contracts, but it is still there so that we can
manage this grid. But we do believe we can move forward and we continue to.
MR. IGNACIO: Let me add to Kevin's explanation. So there's a concern about
curtailment of renewables, and I acknowledge that concern because we're making
this investment in new technology, and it's the kind of technology we want. Why
wouldn't we accept all of the energy? And early in the presentation, I said that's
where we get the biggest debate, in managing the reliability and moving to the
100 percent renewable. Currently on our system, we do deploy renewables first,
and we'll accept as much renewable energy as we can while managing the power
system. So we'll turn back our oil fossil fuel units as low as possible, we even
will take them off line if need be, or we'll cycle our fossil fuel so that we can
accept as much renewable energy as possible.
You always need to balance the amount used with the amount being generated,
and what happens in certain cases is you have sudden changes in the amount
that's generated with renewables. The wind may drop off suddenly, or the cloud
cover may come suddenly, so you have these variations. So we need to keep a
reserve of units that can respond in the opposite direction. So we keep a certain
set, we call that must -run units, and must -run units are our generally our fossil
fuel units.
And what we're doing is we're looking for ways so that we can replace must -run
units with renewable must -run units. So Hu Honua would be a particular case.
So the argument for Hu Honua, the pro -argument for Hu Honua is that you can
use a renewable resource, a biomass resource, and then you can remove one of
those must -run units, which is a fossil fuel steam plant. That is—you can do that
for so long and then you're going to have to move to different strategies, like
storage. So we have, up in North Kohala, installed a one megawatt battery
system, we've experimented with that. We've seen that it can respond and make
a difference on our system when you have sudden drop off, or sudden rise in
renewable energy. It'll counteract, it'll quickly charge or discharge. So we've
had successes with that one megawatt storage. So going forward, we're looking
at a larger unit to help us in managing the system using a different technology.
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Although battery prices are coming down, it's still expensive. It's still an
additional technology that we have to add, and spend money, and put in when we
wouldn't have to otherwise. So that's some of the tradeoffs that we have to
recognize.
Now going forward, you know, we've done all these techniques, we've sent our
engineers around the world. I mean they went to Spain, Germany, Japan,
Singapore, Philippines, looking for comparable situation, island utilities, where
you don't have an interconnection, or to Germany where they have high
penetration of photovoltaic. So we deployed our engineers looking for all of the
answers. We partnered with national organizations like National Renewable
Energy Laboratories, or Electric Power Research Institute, to learn and actually to
teach and share experiences.
But we're at 54, we're going to be at 70 percent soon. What people have to start
becoming accustomed to is that you're going to have to now have renewables
actually be very similar to the utility. They're going to have to help manage the
grid and they're going to be certain times when they're actually going to have to
back down their output, in order to accept another renewable energy resource.
Mr. Waltjen said we don't dispatch economically. Well currently, what we do is
we dispatch renewable first, even if they're more expensive than a fossil fuel
generation. So to accept as much renewables as possible, we may back down a
fossil fuel generator that is actually lowering cost, and that's our current practice.
What's going to happen in the future as you get closer to 100 percent, you're
going to have a lower cost renewable and another renewable, and you're going to
back down the higher -cost renewable and dispatch the lower cost renewable, and
that's going to be deemed curtailment. But that's kind of the reality in a very high
penetration renewable system. That change in mindset, people have not let go of
that yet.
We, with the modern inverters, we expect modern inverters to actually help
manage the voltage, not just utility devices to manage voltage. But if you're
going to generate, you actually manage the voltage yourself with your own
inverter. But that means you may not, at certain times, go to your maximum
output, right? You invest in your system, but you're not be able—you know, the
sun is shining and you want to maximize your output but you drive up the voltage,
so you may have to, at certain times, not go to your maximum output to manage
voltage. That's viewed negatively, that's viewed as curtailment. I see it a little
differently. I see it as that situation happening less frequently.
So if we have all of the installers behaving the same way and participating in
managing the voltage, you actually will be able to deploy more photovoltaic
systems and then in those certain times, yes, they're going to have to turn back
their output. But in other times, they're going to be able to generate and put out
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to the system, so there's got to be a change in the mindset with respect to
curtailment and how we manage the renewables.
With respect to smart—
MR. RICHARDS: Could I stop you? A quick question that if I'm hearing, if I'm
understanding what I'm hearing, it's essentially looking at your number where
we're talking about the 185 peak, but you have 270 basically about 50 percent
standby, just if by chance everybody flip the switch at the same time. And I
understand you have to be able to handle that. Is that what you're referring to
with the PV (Photovoltaic) in the same way, having a little bit of redundancy in
there?
MR. IGNACIO: We have generators on standby. We have fast -start diesels that
we don't run normally, but if you have a sudden disconnect of part of the power
system so you lose that generation, we can quickly start those standby diesels in a
matter of seconds. They're part of that 270. We always have units on overhaul,
so you may have 30 megawatts of generation on overhaul, you may have 60
megawatts of generation on overhaul, that's part of the 270. So we don't always
have that full amount of standby available, but it's a good way to manage, having
that ability. See, we don't have, like mainland utilities, you can interconnect, and
then you can say, "Well I'm going to take my generator off, can you have yours
available?" And you partner that way. We don't have that, we have to do all of it
on island.
With respect to photovoltaic, part of the challenge is managing right near your
neighborhood. So, when you have lots of generation in your neighborhood, it has
a tendency to drive the voltage up. So the newer inverters have the ability to
sense the voltage, sense what the output wants to go to, but also manage the
voltage. Currently, we just let the inverters maximize their output, and then we
have to put on devices out on the system. We have to make modifications to the
distribution system in the neighborhood to lower, drive down the voltage. Well
that adds cost. If everyone can manage their voltage they're generating and
they're managing their voltage, I think it's a more efficient way of managing the
power system. So you have to follow the rules, the physics in order to participate
and self -generate. And I see in doing it that way, you're actually opening it up
more opportunities for more people, even if on occasion, you're going to have to
turn down their output.
MR. RICHARDS: Okay, thank you. And then comment on the safety.
MR. IGNACIO: With respect to smart inverters, again, we're talking about a
program where it's voluntary participation. But if you're going to participate with
self -generation or you're going to participate with demand response, you're going
to need a smart meter. The concern people have with smart meters is this is going
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to need a way to communicate to the meter and the current technology, and the
leading model is wireless form of communication. So there is a certain sector of
customers that are concerned about that wireless, that radio frequency
communication. You know, these devices are tested, they're you know, checked
out for all of those concerns. We, as a utility, don't see it that way, but there's a
sector of customers that do have concerns because of the radio frequency.
That sector of customers would prefer a different type of communication, maybe
a fiber optic cable to the particular device. Maybe long term in the future, you
might have fiber to the home, of every home, but currently, no. The more
economical way of deploying is through radio frequency, RF, so that's the
concern that they have.
MR. RICHARDS: Okay, thank you, and I'm sensitive to your timeline here. One
other quick question, I'm sure you've done the math on this one. Question been
posed to me, using an electric car, recharging, when we're using fossil fuel to
generate electricity to recharge that car, what's our efficiency rate there and are
we actually doing a good job or is this token? And once we go to renewables, it'll
make more sense.
MR. IGNACIO: Well currently, like I said, on average it's 54 percent renewable.
When you charge a car, I think that's a big part of our attraction on our system
because people get frustrated, this is why electrify your vehicle, if you're using
nearly 100 percent fossil fuel. But on our system, it's 50 percent. So I think it's a
good situation to be in and we're going to move forward.
We've run economics, is it lower cost versus gas? And our economic shows it
does, but you also have other people that run a different set of economics and say
it doesn't. But from our calculations, we show that it does pan out.
MR. RICHARDS: Okay, well let's say we could probably keep you here all day,
but we're not going to do that. So if there's anything else from Hilo Chambers
seeing nothing, Kona Chambers, anything further? With that, I want to thank you
very much for coming before us. Very informative, very enlightening in some
aspects so with that, I'll call for the vote.
Vote on Comm. 390: The motion to close file on Comm. 390 was carried by the
Filed following voice vote:
Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff,
Kanuha, O'Hara, Poindexter, Ruggles,
and Chair Richards — 8.
Noes: None.
Absent: Committee Member Lee Loy — 1.
Excused: None.
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AWESC-6 August 15, 2017
MR. RICHARDS: With that, thank you. Clerk, is that everything we had to do?
ADJOURN There being no further business, at 11:52 a.m., Ms. Eoff moved to adjourn the
MENT: meeting. Seconded by Ms. David and carried by the following voice vote:
Ayes: Committee Members Chung, David, Eoff,
Kanuha, O'Hara, Poindexter, Ruggles,
and Chair Richards — 8.
Noes: None.
Absent: Committee Member Lee Loy — 1.
Excused: None.
CHR. RICHARDS: We stand adjourned. Thank you.
Approved:
AlkAUG 2 5 2017
Mr. Herbert M. "Tim" Richards, III, Chair (Date)
Agriculture, Water, and Energy Sustainability Committee
HR/j m
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