Alan Oshima

On Wednesday, Alan Oshima will move into the Hawaiian Electric Co. president and CEO’s office — but he’s already been a presence at its core for several years.

He was senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Hawaiian Telcom from 2005-2008 when he joined the HECO board of directors; he’s been on the utility’s executive team.

At 67, Oshima’s at the point at which most executives contemplate retirement. His wife, JoAnn, shows a similar stick-to-it-iveness, still working as a part-time English Language Learner teacher at Lanakila Elementary School; the couple has two grown children.

But Oshima is taking the top job at a pivotal time for the electric company. A close encounter with the state Public Utilities Commission is in the offing over the HECO’s Distributed Generation Interconnection Plan, in which it proposes tripling the amount of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy on the grid.

He defends that plan’s proposals for an expansion into liquefied natural gas — "thermal" power of some kind will be needed for the foreseeable future, he said, adding that saving money on LNG over oil will enable more investment in the grid to boost its accommodation of renewable energy.

Oshima’s career also included practicing law with a concentration on utilities, assisting with the conversion of the Kauai electric company to a cooperative, and work on the launch of Honolulu Cellular.

"It was like 50 cents a minute," Oshima said, remembering that inaugural cell call placed by then-Gov. Ben Cayetano."It was like making a long-distance call just to call across town.

"But that’s a good example of how technology changes the whole way you think about things," he added. "We’re in the same situation (now). Technology is changing the whole electrical industry."

QUESTION: How do you respond to critics who say HECO’s not doing enough to accommodate renewable energy, especially photovoltaic solar, on its grid?

ANSWER: Hawaiian Electric is way ahead of many utilities in implementing renewables. We’re at 18 percent renewables. That’s above the 15 percent that we were supposed to reach by 2015.

So, we’re ahead. That comes with challenges, because the grid was not meant for as much intermittent renewables.

Q: Wouldn’t someone say, yes, you’re ahead but maybe you’ve topped out?

A: Not topped out, no. We’re not at all topped out. Our plan that we filed end of August shows us in 2030 being above 65 percent renewables. And that’s consolidated statewide, for our companies.

Q: But under that plan, new adopters would have to underwrite the improvements needed on the grid to get there, right?

A: Let’s put it this way. Solar is not the only renewable resource. In fact, wind is a good resource in Hawaii. 

Siting wind becomes an issue because of people not wanting those big windmills.

But there are places that have good wind regimes in Hawaii, so our plans look at statewide, the three counties that we have, and find available resources — not by our studies, but by the state and university and others — and saying, "What are the potentials for different kinds of resources?"

We still have a big solar input in our plans moving forward, triple the amount of solar that we currently have. We’d add more wind, some geothermal. … One of our independent power producers is having some technical problems at their plant.

Q: Which one?

A: Kalaeloa Partners. … Even though during a day with a lot of solar we don’t need a lot of our other plants’ power, the evening peaks still comes about when people come home and cook and take showers and turn on the TV, turn on the air conditioner. … And the sun’s not shining then, right? But we can make it up; the wind is normally higher in the evening hours.

But in this hot period, the wind’s stopped blowing. … What we call our reserve margins are thin, and that’s why we’ve had to go out and say, hey, if you can conserve during the 5 to 9 p.m. period, that would help everybody. And people have, so it’s worked out.

But it kind of shows you the fragility and the challenges that we have integrating different kinds of — if we were all power plants, no issue, because we could start ’em up, turn ’em down, notwithstanding sunlight, wind conditions. Now we’re relying on intermittent renewable resources, so we have to kind of make up for those, the intermittency, based upon what we call "thermal units" — that’s power right now.

But we hope to move to LNG, which is cleaner, cheaper, so we can do all of these things. And then make our grid smarter so we can control how solar rides through different variations, et cetera … so we can manage the whole grid effectively for everyone.

Q: What is HECO’s commitment to wind, specifically?

A: You need a diverse portfolio. You can’t put all of your eggs in one basket, because of what we were just saying. … You can’t count on any of these intermittent resources to constantly produce because you don’t control it. That’s why you have to have the plants you do control able to make up for the difference. 

Because people’s usage, you can modify usage a bit, but not to the extent where it makes up for the total difference. … You’ll see even during this period, where we have the Energy Scout program — where people have signed up to say you can turn my water heater on or off if you need it, if you want to conserve electricity — and for that you get a $3 per month bill reduction. We can control that remotely. …

It’s things like that we’re going to start doing more. It’s not all about generating electricity but how do we use it, how do we save it, how do we manage it.

Q: So, you would say Hawaiian Electric is transitioning away from generating power primarily?

A: Yes. We’re going to be a service provider. And we’ve been in this process for a while now. I think people don’t realize that we have. …

On the mainland, there’s no other state that is as far advanced as we are. We want to get farther. We want to move faster. We have the ideal condition to do that, but it’s also a challenge.

Q: About those challenges: How do you see the technical barriers that are delaying many solar approvals?

A: We’re as frustrated as those people waiting. They may have signed contracts but they’re not able to install. … They may not have even paid the money yet. They’re just waiting for the opportunity. So we feel their frustration.

The reason it’s not that easy is because we’ve been so successful in getting people rooftop PV. … In 2008, we had only 850 rooftop PV systems … See, people think that it’s been a complete stop — in lightly loaded circuits we’ve approved about 5,000 this year already. It’s people in areas where there’s a lot of PV, we can’t just continue to add.

Q: Where are those areas?

A: I’m not sure where all the areas are, but some more affluent areas are able to afford it. …

So it would be irresponsible for us and the solar industry to jeopardize circuits, the other customers. Ten percent of our customers have rooftop PV; without some additional controls and better equipment, it stands to jeopardize the 90 percent who rely on service from us, including businesses, hotels, condominiums.

So we have to balance everyone’s interest and do it responsibly. And frankly, I think even the solar industry understands that because otherwise it’s not sustainable, right? …

We’re working with the solar industry and the manufacturers to find ways to start getting ways, start getting homes, even in the high-penetration areas, to be connected, so they can install, work with their contractors, get it done.

Q: Is there a simple way of describing the technical hurdles to overcome with the manufacturers?

A: The connecting point is called an inverter. And it gives at what frequency levels the home systems will continue to operate or shut down. … So for example, right now it’s getting sunny again, but it got cloudy for a while. If we were to have a sudden fluctuation coming out of our power plants, that every home system picked up that fluctuation — they can sense it — these inverters would automatically shut down to protect the home system, sympathetically, automatically.

When we have 250 megawatts of solar in homes, and we did have this fluctuation, and they’re feeding their excess to our system so we can provide it to other users, we’re buying that, and all of a sudden they all shut off, that’s more than our single largest power generator. …

What we’re trying to do … is to have the bandwidth of what we call "ride through," that they’ll stay on for larger fluctuations.

Q: So the systems would be more tolerant of fluctuations.

A: Right. I’m a lawyer, I’m not an engineer. That’s just one of the technical issues. There are other technical issues that require equipment that’s not even manufactured to those standards yet, to allow it to protect the system as a whole. But we understand everyone’s frustration. 

It just happened so quickly that we haven’t really kept up, and the manufacturers haven’t been able to … 

Q: Couldn’t you have anticipated the growth better?

A: I think hindsight, absolutely. I think that when you’re in the moment, probably not. There was a confluence of things that made it move faster. Our energy prices are higher than the rest of the nation’s, so your payback period for investment probably works out better here than on the mainland. That, alone.

Then you have really good tax credits here, state and federal. So that moves it along. And then our bills got even higher when Fukushima (the nuclear power plant meltdown) occurred, and the low-sulfur fuel oil that we relied upon skyrocketed because Japan needed to burn the same stuff we were burning. … That raised our bills even higher.

So you had a confluence of impacts that led more people going to rooftop solar. That’s not a bad thing. Overall that’s where the state wants to be. … It just creates technical issues to keep going at that pace.

And now we’re saying, "Let’s all work on it together." And we are: we’re working with the manufacturer, with the solar industry, to figure out what needs to be done to get  more people connected.

CORRECTION:  Alan Oshima’s wife is JoAnn. An earlier version of this story said his wife’s name is Frances.