I was on my way to work and ran into a friend/mentor/former colleague on the street who had been reading my columns. I asked him what he thought I should write about next, and he said the Public Utilities Commission. When I asked Commissioner Lorraine Akiba about this interview, mentioning my recent interaction, she said, “It’s exciting to see a passionate commitment by all and see the next generation of energy leaders so involved.”
Question: You went from private practice to public service. Why?
Akiba: “Being commissioner of the PUC was my second stint in public service. I had served as the director of labor under Gov. Ben Cayetano’s administration. … I was a litigation partner at Cades Schutte when he called, and at first I thought he had dialed the wrong number. But he didn’t want someone that had been actively involved in the labor area. He wanted someone that didn’t have an existing agenda and that could address issues objectively. … Then in 2012, Gov. (Neil) Abercrombie called and asked me to join the commission. It was a very dynamic time. We (Hawaii) had just set the most aggressive renewable energy goals in the nation, which, at the time, was 70 percent clean energy in the electric sector by 2050.”
Q: Since you joined the commission, we’ve increased our goals to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045. What is the PUC’s role in helping the state reach its energy goals?
A: “The PUC is a quasi-judicial administrative agency that regulates public utilities in different sectors (energy, water, gas, motor carriers and telecommunications). We have dockets that come before us, both investigative and applications filed by the utilities, and contested case proceedings filed as formal complaints that involve the utilities; we help develop and shape policies; and we help implement policies for clean energy that have been put into place by the Legislature.”
Q: What decisions that have been made in the past 12 to 24 months should we know about?
A: “The first is the DER (distributed energy resources) docket, which allows customers to still have a choice while making sure customers who may not have distributed energy resources now are bearing a fair allocation of costs. And the second is time-of-use rates, which gives customers the option to shift their energy usage to when it is a cheaper rate during the day.”
More on each decision below:
Distributed energy resources: In October 2015 the PUC issued an order to support the growth of distributed energy resources in Hawaii. Phase 1 of this decision has three key elements: establishing new standards for technologies that support the grid; ending the current net energy metering program; and establishing new customer options for DERs, such as solar and storage. The decisions were made, in part, to ensure that customers who do not currently have solar are not bearing an unfair allocation of costs to maintain the grid. Read more about these new customer options in the PUC’s docket summary.
Time-of-use: With the new, two-year time-of-use program, customers have the option to enroll in a rate structure that changes based on the time of day. This encourages people to do two things: reduce electricity use when rates are high (at night) and take advantage of lower, daytime electricity rates. Additional details can be found in the PUC’s news release.
Q: People often think about innovation in terms of technology, but business models and policy can also be innovative. How do you think about innovation?
A: “Innovation is synergy of people that are doing creative problem solving.”
And with that, we both left the interview to creatively solve problems from different angles.
Lauren Tonokawa is head of the communications team at the Energy Excelerator. She’s a graduate of the University of Hawaii. Reach her at laurentonokawa@gmail.com.
