Acer's Swift 3 lineup is probably one of the most populated series of the manufacturer. Ultimately, it has always been a thin and light notebook, aimed at a young user base, that needs something fast on the go. And to be honest, Acer has been pretty consistent with the good execution of their plans. But what is going to make the Swift 3 SF314-511, more appealing than its predecessors? Well, for starters, we are talking about Tiger Lake U chips, support for Intel's Evo platform, and a very compact form factor. Speaking of which, the laptop weighs only 1.2 kilograms and has a profile of 16 millimeters.  Although its construction is made out of metal, we can't say that the laptop is the toughest one out there. To add to that, the input devices are not the best either, with the keyboard having a slightly mushy feel and the touchpad taking some time to register your input. Thankfully, there is some stuff that makes the device better, like the fingerprint reader, and the addition of a Thunderbolt 4 connector. Not only that, but the laptop comes with two USB Type-S and HDMI 2.0 connector, and a dedicated power plug, which means you can use the Thunderbolt 4 connector, even when you are charging the device. Unfortunately, the memory here is soldered to the motherboard. On the bright side, the 16 gigabytes RAM we got works in quad channel mode. As for the storage, there is a single M.2 PCI EX4 slot that supports 4th generation drives. You can take a look at our teardown video to see how to open the device. The screen situation appears a lot better than the upgrade options, that's for sure. You get a 1080 PIPS panel with comfortable viewing angles, and an excellent contrast ratio of 2100-1. Thankfully, we've detected no PWM for brightness adjustment so the laptop is safe for your eyes in that aspect. It covers 98% of the sRGB color gamut, and thanks to our profile, its average Delta E is 0.8. Ultimately, this means the image is both vibrant and extremely color accurate. Only 2 per 100 people watching this video are subscribers. If you decide to just start following us, we'll be able to reinvest more in our laboratory thus making even more helpful videos for you. Thank you, you're awesome. This laptop comes with a 53 watt hours battery that delivers about 11 hours of web browsing, or 9 hours and 30 minutes of video playback on a single charge. Hopefully, this should be good enough for an entire workday without the need to plug it into the wall. Since it is built on an Intel architecture, the device can be equipped with up to the core i7-1165G7. Well, we chose the slightly less pretentious and more budget core i5-1135G7. Nevertheless, the scores it produced were more than decent, considering it is a quad-core CPU. In extreme workload scenarios, it is able to maintain a 25 watts power limit, which is great. The highest temperature on the surface of the keyboard is not very warm. We measured 38.8 degrees Celsius on the left side, while the right, where the fan is situated, is noticeably cooler to the touch. In terms of noise, the laptop is generally quiet. In light use, you may never hear it. However, when the performance preset is activated, the fan spins pretty fast. With the exception of its input devices, pretty much everything with this notebook is great. Its display is perfect for professional work, due to its vibrant and accurate color representation. Moreover, it boasts an excellent performance for its class, and will even allow you to play some light titles like CS go on reasonably high settings. If you want to see the rest of the tests and more details about the device, you can check out our in-depth review. The link is in the video description below.


Okay, we're back live here in Las Vegas for IBM's Information on Demand 2012, their premier conference around information management, high performance scale systems. Of course, big data, big data's hot. This is Silicon Angles theCUBE, our flagship telecast. We go out to the events. Do you want to see them from the noise? I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconAngle.com, and I'm joined by my co-host. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org, and we're here with Peter McCaffrey, who is director of marketing for pure systems. IBM's new line of systems as of last April in expert integrated systems, pure systems, pure data, a recent announcement. IBM's answer to the converged infrastructure play. Peter, welcome to theCUBE. Pleasure to be here. Good to have you here. So we're hearing a lot about expert integrated systems, pure, you guys had an announcement a couple of weeks ago. We did. All around pure data. Yep.  We did. We actually brought out the family in April this year. Now it's interesting, we've been late to the party. You could argue we've been doing integrated systems for 20, 30 years all the way back to the AS 400, but this was a little different. And when we announced the family back in April, there was a specific problem that we're setting out to solve and it's one that many of our data center clients face and if you think about it, a lot of CIOs today are in the manufacturing business. They run assembly lines of IT components where they're putting together the hardware and the software, takes time, takes skill, takes resource, never ending. And we said, well, we do that too. Why not put it all together and take a lot of that burden off of our clients? Now, I said we've been doing it for a number of years. We have, what we tried to do different here is for us, it started with the integration. If you look at a lot of the other offerings out there today, they start and stop with integration. That was necessary, it was an important fundamental for us, but we wanted to build on it. And we built on it in two ways. One is, we said, we really need to do a better job of capturing best practices, expertise, and find a way to build and automate that right into the system. So this notion of built-in expertise became an important characteristic of pure system family. And the second was, a lot of the offerings out there today, it's about speed of deployment. And that's nice, but once you're deployed, we'd like to continue to deliver value. So for us, it was also about how do we simplify each stage of the IT project lifecycle from upfront design and procurement, to ongoing management, to backend upgrade and support. And so we announced our first two systems, Pure Flex and Pure Application in April. And then, of course, a couple of weeks ago in Boston and Singapore, we announced three models, we announced pure data with three workload optimized models for data. So when you thought of doing expert integrated systems, I'm guessing it wasn't after some of your competitors announced theirs, you've been working on this for a while, presumably. But what was the conversation like inside of IBM? Because if you're going to embed expert knowledge into expert systems or integrated systems, it potentially means you're going to sell less services. Did that create attention? And how did that all get rationalized? It was, hey, we're going to just do a better job that's going to raise the tide for all boats? Was that the philosophy or talking about that a little bit? The idea there is the service mix will change over time. So today, where a client may be investing in our services around integration and setup, instead, those dollars could be used and more focused around application layer services or higher level services, maybe around an industry application. So it's allowing them to kind of get past the plumbing and onto the higher value thing. So it's really, it's a win-win in our services organizations. Well, it's not unusual for them to see the mix of services change with time. And it's kind of interesting, our ecosystem partners feel the same way, whether there are independent software vendors or some of our traditional resellers or distributors, they're in the process of transitioning their business models as well. And so in many cases, they're moving to higher value services. In some cases, they're moving their models to a cloud-based model. And they're seeing a lot of value in these types of systems, both in terms of speeding the deployment to their clients set, but also using it as an accelerator or a building block to evolve their business models. And we've got some great examples of managed service providers who are leveraging and purchased our PureSystems technology and are leveraging it to get their services out in a cloud-based model. So PureSystems is pretty robust. It's more than pretty robust. It's probably the most advanced or at least broadest portfolio of integrated systems in the industry that people could debate that. But so let's lay that out for people. So essentially you have the spectrum of single block of infrastructure that's a single SKU, you drop it in, any color you want as long as it's black. And then you've got the other end of the spectrum, which you see in the marketplace, a lot of reference architectures that can do any hypervisor and any server, et cetera. Now you probably don't have the any server version, but actually you probably do. We do, we actually do, you're right. We offer a sort of a blended approach. So you have pretty much the entire spectrum and you allow other people storage to attach in, if I understand it correctly. And you're the only company that can claim to have these expert patterns embedded. So I'm trying to sort of paint a picture of that portfolio and really understand those expert patterns, that expert knowledge, how much of that is real and how much of that is just really great marketing? Well, let me start with the concept of the pattern. Because you're right, it really is what separates us from the rest of the industry in many cases. Very simply, a pattern, you can think of it as a best practice or almost a recipe for success. Their patterns will come at different layers. You can have patterns around the infrastructure, the middleware or the application. I find that the application sometimes is the best way to provide an example. So if you have one of our partners in for, they have a robust ERP based solution, they're doing application patterns. But if you look at what it takes to deploy an ERP system today, there's quite an application topology. There are app servers, there's database servers, you have to be at certain levels of the middleware. You have to have certain, there's certain capacity requirements to run that configuration at optimal performance. So you're right, a lot of people today will go out and they'll build a blueprint or they'll build a reference architecture. What we've done is provided a way to capture that reference architecture and codify it into a pattern that is then read by the machine. So pure systems can, you know, a client can basically go out to a catalog, select an application pattern, and it's really pretty much a push button approach. They'll specify a few policy parameters. Do I need high availability? What are the performance boundaries of my ELA? So they'll set up a couple of, they'll answer a few policy-based questions. And then based on the answer, we'll go ahead and deploy that application based on that best practice and the system makes decisions relative to what kind of resources it needs to apply to that configuration. And so all of that is really taken out of the hands of the client. And what they're left with at the end is a best practice deployment without all the risk. Now that's the deployment process. I mentioned earlier that the value doesn't stop with deployment. Once that pattern is deployed, the management software continues to monitor performance of the application. And so if it falls outside a performance boundary, it will make decisions to spin up, let's say, additional app servers to get past that spike in demand. So we're constantly monitoring for versus policy and we'll make some decisions on behalf to address the spikes and valleys in demand. And then, and this is where I find a lot of customers get excited, is a lot of times what stands in the way of upgrading to that next release of the software is the risk and complexity associated with upgrading that application topology. You have to know what fix packs are running and what version of those fix packs, what levels of the middleware. Our clients spend a lot of time researching that with the vendors and frankly it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort and there's a lot of risk associated with it because if you make a mistake you could knock out that application. So with patterns, upgrades are now done at the pattern level. So a vendor will provide an upgrade for the entire application topology all at once. So instead of dealing with literally hundreds of separate points of maintenance, you have one. And that significantly streamlines that back end process. And that's a compelling value proposition. It really attacks the IT labor problem that you were talking about before, particularly the skill set side. You remember the original announcement of expert integrated systems, Mills talked about the IT labor problem, like two thirds of the cost and servers and storage and related infrastructure as people. And you're attacking that problem. What, Peter, my question is what kind of operational changes are your customers making to accommodate Pure? Because, well, it sounds good, sounds great actually. A lot of customers have different cycles and they get different lease, they got a three year lease and it's up this next year on storage, the year after on servers. So how are they rationalizing those discontinuities? Well, it's interesting that you bring up the organization dynamic, because it is interesting for many of our clients. If you think about it today, they've been in a model where they literally have separate technology silos. They build their skills around those silos, they're buying cycles around those silos, and then they have the job of integrating it all together and making it work. And they develop deep specialty skills in there as well. Now, when you introduce a system like this, where a lot of that integration is done, a lot of the technology is built in, it really is above those cuts across those silos, I should say. So it does create an interesting organizational dynamic. And in many cases, we find ourselves articulating this value proposition to the CIO who may be in the midst of trying to understand how to transform their organization. But what we also find is that those skill sets, they see the value in this. They don't want to spend all of their time tuning. They really don't. They much rather get onto that next application, providing that next level of function, exploiting that next application, whether it's a mobile-driven solution or trying to get their services. So they spend far too much time on the tuning and the integration themselves. So what we're actually finding is organizationally, a lot of times, different roles get together and rally around this type of technology. Now, there's typically an application or a use case that brings it in. So for example, in the case of our pure application system, we find that clients will start with their application dev test environment. So you'll have a piece of the organization that provides middleware services today. And so you can bring in an integrated solution like this. They can begin to get comfortable with this idea of patterns. By the way, IBM delivers patterns. Our partners deliver patterns, but clients can build their own patterns as well based on their own application portfolio and their own best practices. So that's exciting for them to get started on. And so there's typically certain application scenarios that are a good starting point for them. How do you recommend, Peter, given that there's some organizational issues, how do you recommend customers go from point A to point B to get to some of those siloed systems to this new, more streamlined environment? Well, in some cases, and I think I'm losing my microphone here. In some cases, again, it's that application starting point. In the case of- Pick a spot. Pure data, pick a spot. So pure data for analytics is an example, is that data warehouse environment, that high-speed, high-performance data warehousing environment.  In other cases, they may be experiencing a pain point with their existing environment. So there's an opportunity to consolidate, let's say, lots and lots of databases onto a pure data for transaction system. So there's a consolidation value proposition. They may be having application performance issues today. It actually kind of shows up two ways. Clients are typically either trying to reduce their operating expense. So that's one side of the coin. There, it's about consolidation or optimizing for performance. The other side of the coin is to accelerate deployment of that next application. Mobile's a big driver.  So that's the other side of the coin. So they're either cutting costs or optimizing or deploying that next application. And we have clients that are starting in your place. So I had, at the pure launch, I had the pleasure of having lunch with Steve Mills and I was having a nice conversation with him. I said, what's the premium that customers have to pay to get pure systems, expert integrated systems, relative to rolling your own? And he said, I do all the pricing. I review all the pricing for every one of these products. I was going to ask you what he said. So I know what I'm talking about. And he said, there is no premium. I said, I don't buy it. Why aren't you charging a premium? He goes, that's what we chose to do. We are trying to grow this market so we are not charging a premium. So then I followed up the obvious questions. Then why wouldn't anybody do it? Why wouldn't everybody do this? He said, because they're afraid of getting locked in. He was very candid about that. So I'm sure you hear that a lot. You know, a lot of people have said this is the mother of all lock-ins because it's very alluring. You think of these blocks of infrastructure. What do you tell customers to say, Peter, I'm afraid you're going to give me this great deal, this concierge service, all this wonderful infrastructure and application knowledge. And then I'm afraid you're going to jack the price down the road. What do you tell those guys? Well, first of all, IBM's had a long history of protecting our clients' investments. So when we invest in something, we're in it for the long haul. It's not like we're going to stop support of a particular application environment when we protect our customers' investments. In this case, what was very important to our clients was not so much the ingredients that we used to build the systems, but that we were still preserving their choice. And that choice just shows up in different ways. Could be the choice of the applications that they run in the environment. So for example, with our PureFlex system, PureFlex is very much an infrastructure system. So it's just a cloud infrastructure. Yeah, it's a cloud infrastructure, but you have a lot of flexibility, hence the name. You can run a Unix-based Power environment, an X86 environment, a combination thereof, all fully virtualized choice of virtualization, hypervisors. So we provide a lot of flexibility in terms of how you take that box, essentially. And you can then deploy any application or middleware you want on it, including our competitors. So the network is fixed, right? That's your own design. The network within the box, right? Yeah, sure, the external to the box, as you choose whatever you want. Exactly. But within the box, which is a good thing.  Okay, so I can attach virtually anybody's storage on to it, right? We can, in the case of the Pureflex environment, the answer's a little different depending on the machine. So with the Pureflex, you can come with the V7000, which by the way is a fully virtualized storage environment. And it allows you to not only virtualize the V7000 storage, but it'll allow you to virtualize other vendors' storage. Right, so I can hang pretty much anybody's off of it. I've got to have that core system. You do. But that's a prerequisite, but once I have that, I can hang anybody else's off of it. So we preserve choice where it's important to the client. And so, okay, and then, but it's IBM servers or? It's IBM Server Technology. So the network internal and the IBM servers are fixed. But in the storage base, but you can hang other storage off, which is unique. Right. I don't think anybody else does it. Maybe Hitachi does that, but nobody else does that. And maybe with some clue. You have a choice of virtualization. Virtualization technologies and the like. And then we have an integrated management approach. It allows you to manage all of the elements of the system, both physical and virtual. But then it plugs into the larger enterprise management software. So again, we're not imposing if you've made an investment in enterprise management software, this thing is not an island to itself. It slots into your design. So I want to finish this line of thought and then John's got some questions. So, but essentially, that gives you a general purpose infrastructure. It is pre-integrated. That's right. As well in your portfolio, you've got location specific infrastructure. And now data.  The applications for example. So we have a very broad spectrum of integrated systems. And really the difference is the degree of flexibility that you choose as a client. And so as you move from say an infrastructure solution like Pureflex to a more of an appliance based solution like Pure application of some of the Pure data systems, we're doing a lot of that optimization for you. We're selecting some of that underlying infrastructure because we know how to put it together to drive maximum performance and efficiency for that application. So where you know your application and you want us to optimize for that application, we'll make some of those decisions. Well to me, the bottom line is it expands your total available market as well, because you're playing in all those worlds versus an exadata, which is a very narrow value proposition and can't support the myriad applications across the portfolio, but go ahead, John. I was just saying we're getting the hook here from the producer, so I couldn't get a word in edgewise as Dave and I talk. Never give up the microphone. Dave, you got a good read on Pure, so good job. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Okay, we'll be back with more back to back coverage, wall to wall coverage here at IBM information on demands. theCUBE, we'll be right back with our next guest. Thank you.


Watch this amazing one-handed grab by Mitchell Santner for New Zealand in the World Cup. Boom. Got a beat on it, one-hand full extension, running backwards, diving grab for the out. Awesome play. And unlike baseball, where your pitchers don't field their position even while they're pitching. In cricket, the bowlers, they go from bowling to fielding, from fielding to bowling. So as soon as he was done celebrating that out, they go, you're up, and he's bowling the next over, diving for balls on the ground there. Kind of fun. You gotta be an athlete. You gotta play all the positions. It's not as specialized as baseball. Mitchell Santner looks like Steven Matz from the Mets. New Zealand, having a good World Cup.


here on a given Monday, exciting another week of ThinkTech, another week of great stuff. So welcome to Meena Marko and me on Energy on ThinkTech. I'm your host, Jay Fiedel. Our show today is called Lots of Energy News. We're going to talk about how the excitement is picking up. We're going to address the issue, whether we could be coming out finally, coming out of the post-next era daldrums. If you want to ask a question or participate in a discussion, you can tweet us at ThinkTech HI or call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Our guests for this show are, no surprise, Meena Morita and Marko Mangelsdorf. Some very newsworthy events this week, the swearing in of Jay Griffin at the PUC, the effect of Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord, how that affects Hawaii, Hiko's application for a triumvirate of 100 megawatts on Oahu, and is the community solar and are the community solar and gems programs DOA. Welcome to the show again, you guys. Meena Morita and Marko Mangelsdorf. Aloha this morning. Good afternoon, Jay. It was close. In the words of my dear friend, Mr. Rogers, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Thank you, too, for being my neighbors in Energy Matters, big and small. You sound just like him, Marko. You can sing the way he used to sing. Anyway, so let's talk first about Jay Griffin. Meena, you know Jay Griffin. You hired Jay Griffin way back when. Can you give us a short synopsis of his bio and where he's coming from and now that he's been sworn in this very day, this very morning? I think, you know, first of all, we have somebody that is highly qualified for the job. You know, he has multiple advanced degrees in economics, environmental policy and political science and I forget what he has a doctorate in, but you know. And then plus his experience at HNEI and, you know, this is somebody that really understands the electrical grid, the technology and the economics of getting there and understands policy. So, yeah, there's no doubt that he's highly qualified for the job. That's great. What kind of a person is he? I think very thoughtful, you know, really, he has this ability to take come issues and not only be able to translate it into layman's terms, yeah, so he brings a real wide depth, but you know, the ability to think through complex issues from a multiple perspective rather than, you know, just unfortunately what has been our downfall in the past is by taking just linear kinds of steps. Is he going to be an independent thinker? Is he going to be the kind of person who would say, no, I don't agree with the other guys. I'm going to write a dissent on this issue. I think that's the challenge right now. I believe, you know, the politicians are looking for the Senate in this position process is looking for somebody that is independent. And has good leadership skills. So how does this change the mix of the commission from the time when Mike Champley was there? Or for that matter, when Tom Gorak was there, although it was short lived. You know, how will this differ? How does he differ from Gorak and Champley? You know, I think that remains to be, he would have to prove himself that he can be independent. And I think, you know, it's a very difficult situation at the PUC right now. They have to regain a reputation or rebuild their reputation for being independent. But the interesting thing is come 2018, you will hopefully, I hope that the Senate can act as soon as possible on his nomination. Because I still think there's a problem with the process on the nomination process. Right. Right. And that needs to be cleared up as soon as possible. But, you know, basically you're looking at another nomination coming up in 2018. And whether Lorraine Akiva will be reappointed or not for another six-year term. Well, you know, it seems to me the governor would be well advised to put his name in for confirmation at the outset of the session. In the past session, he waited until the very last minute before he put Tom Gorak's name. And I didn't fully understand why he did that. But in the case of, in the case of Jay Griffin, he ought to put the name in right away, don't you think? Well, yeah, I mean, I personally feel that if there's going to be any type of special session or any type of convening of the Senate for judicial appointments, you know, this should piggyback on it. And so that there is no doubt that, you know, that the governor's nominee has received Senate advice and consent. And we can get off this whole issue of process. Yes. You know, somebody operating under a cloud, you know. So yeah, you know, my advice is to take it up as soon as possible. Yes. Well, Markle, how much of what Mina said do you agree with? Well, I strongly feel that Jay Griffin was a fantastic choice by the governor. He's someone who comes from, kind of put it a more pure energy background rather than the law or rather than from a political background. So I think from those perspectives and others, Jay was a fantastic choice by Governor E. Gaye. And I agree with Mina that the sooner the interim part of his title can be removed, the better. Some inside baseball stuff, as I understand it, as it has been explained to me, if there were to be a special session where the Senate were to be called back into session, his appointment could not be taken up. This is assuming the governor were to submit his name as a nominee to the Senate. But his appointment could not be taken up in a special session that was to deal with either possible veto overrides. And we don't have that list yet from the governor in terms of what bills he's thinking about vetoing or judicial nominations. In other words, it has to be a special session that is not a special session considering judicial nominations or potential veto overrides. I don't think that's correct. I mean, I think that the Constitution is pretty broad in the governor's authority to call back a special session. I don't think there's any limitation. Is it clear to both of you that there could be a special session only on one issue and it could be skinny down to one issue and, for example, the rail funding and exclude all other issues? I think that's more a political decision that you don't want to open up a session to renegotiate every single issue. So in the past, special sessions have been really narrowly tailored and that was by choice. But I think in the Constitution, you know, there's kind of pretty broad authority. Well, I mean, the only thing I can say is that this came in the form of an explanation which I requested from one of the attorneys in the legislature who was giving their analysis in response to this exact question in terms of under what conditions and can, let's say, a nomination to a board or commission under what conditions could be taken up in a special session. So, you know, I'm not a specialist. You served in legislature, of course, for years and years, but I'm just recounting what I've been told recently. Yeah, I should mention at this point that Mina was 13 years the chair of the Energy Committee in the House. She was also the chair of the PUC for four years. And also, Marco has been the CEO of Provision Solar in Hilo for something close to 300 years now. And he's really getting good at it. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Anyway, let's move on to our second topic. And our second topic is a big, you know, international news. It's Donald Trump's rejection or attempt at rejecting the Paris Accord, pulling the United States out of it. Something that doesn't actually take effect until just after the inauguration of the next president, whoever that may be. And the effect of it has been felt worldwide, even though, you know, it may or may not come true within that period. But what do you guys think about that? Does that affect Hawaii? Does that affect energy? I think in the larger scheme of things, and especially in the electricity sector, there's already a trajectory. And that trajectory is mainly economic issues, driving, you know, the move towards cleaner fuels, more stable fuels going forward, cheaper fuels going forward. So, yeah, I think in the larger scheme of things, you know, we're already on track, but diplomatically, in terms of our relationship with the rest of the world, I think it's damaged. I think he damaged America's position as a leader and our ability to, you know, participate in a global challenge and that needs global solutions. Yeah, taking together all the other things he's done, including his impolitical remarks that he made when he was traveling in Europe, especially. Marco, what do you think? Is it going to have an effect on Hawaii? Mind you now, he's also cutting expenses for energy, funding, and he's cutting, you know, funding for environmental issues as well. Is that taking all that together, including the Paris Accord and the reduction in funding? Is that going to have a long-term effect on Hawaii? Well, it's important to note, Jay, that the proposed budget from the Trump administration, of course, will be modified, more like changed rather dramatically. By the legislature of that, I have no doubt, but I think it's probably likely that, yes, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, and other such programs will suffer painful cuts. I mean, this decision was made, announced on Thursday, and I was teaching that afternoon at my course from wrapping up at University of California, Santa Cruz, and I thought, I had to address it to my class because, of course, it was so topical, and I told them that it's really pretty much difficult, if not impossible, to come up with any kind of positive spin on this particular decision. But that said, I gained some sense of solace and hope that Governor Jerry Brown here in California came out very forcefully against the decision, and made it clear that California was going to stay right on track in California, along with Hawaii, and places like Washington State and New York State. There's going to be a growing cooperation and pooling of resources, I hope, more and more states, I hope, and communities across the country that will be going full speed ahead and doing whatever they can in terms of energy efficiency, renewable energy, reducing greenhouse gases, and so forth. So if there's any silver lining, it's the fact that progressive states like Hawaii and California and others will be going, continue to go full speed ahead. And also, the fact that as per the Accords themselves, if a country seeks to pull out, as President Trump announced he's going to do for the United States, it's essentially a three plus year process before he can actually pull out. And a lot can happen in the next three years that may mitigate that painful, fateful, absolutely wrong decision that he made last week. I'd like to offer one thought, though. These things do have a long throw on them. They do damage, as Mina said. And the damage may or may not be completely reversible. I mean, we look like—we don't look so good. And that may stick with us for a long time, whatever happens in the rest of this administration or the next. It won't be that easy to recover our credibility and environmental things. And so even if we are later able to politically reverse that position, the position that he's taken, we are no longer a leader in this area. I'm not sure that we were before either. We never ratified the Kyoto protocol either. But bottom line is whatever happens now, and it won't happen right away, I think we've lost our primacy on this kind of issue, and other countries will step in, such as China. Whether they deserve it or not, they'll step into the vacuum. Well, I think what's really important, what we lost sight of, is giving businesses certainty. And so, especially with the Clean Power Plan, it gave businesses certainty on targets, emission reduction targets that they needed to hit. Now without that, you know, there's so much uncertainty on which way to go now. And what we're lacking here is, again, the ability for the United States to be innovative, work on the technology, and export that technology to other countries, especially developing countries, to leapfrog over, you know, the kinds of emissions levels that we had. They can do it. They can grow their economy much cleaner than what we've done in the past. Yeah. It's great to see these states getting together. They're not only on the West Coast, the states that are pushing back. It's really a number of states all over the country. On the other hand, you know, without a unifying leadership, without, you know, a clearly cohesive force, they may or may not be successful, and the devil really will be in the detail. But let's take a short break, you guys. That's me and Marina and Marco Mangelsdorf, and we'll come back in one minute and discuss the remaining two issues, namely about the 100 megawatts on Oahu and about, gee whiz, the community solar and gems they did on arrival will be right back. Hi. I'm Carol Cox. I'm the new host on Eyes on Hawaii. Make sure you stay in the know on Hawaii. Join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon. We will see you then. Aloha. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week, helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii. Okay, we're back. We're live here on a Monday at the 12 o'clock block, and we have Mina Morita, former chair of the PUC and former legislator and Marco Mangelsdorf, a businessman who has been running Provision Solar and it was also the chief executive of HIEC, the Hawaii Island Energy Co-op. So let's talk about the third issue on our little agenda and that is the 100 megawatts that was reported on Oahu. There are three, I guess there are RFP proposals that are being considered by the PUC in one docket and they together would yield 100 megawatts. What does this look like and what are the chances of success and how will it affect prices of energy in Oahu anyway? Thoughts? Well, Jay, just a small and quick correction. I'm not the chief executive of HIEC. I'm a director. I'm a lowly secretary, so I don't want to have a title that I'm not due to, but to address your question about 100 megawatts. Just to go back a little bit in time, this was in response to a request for proposals that the Hawaiian Electric Company did for Utility Scale Solar on Oahu. And a company by the name of Sun Edison won those particular bids to develop somewhere around 100 megawatts of utility scale portable take on Oahu in three separate projects. And Sun Edison, one of the biggest players in the PV game, went under last year, filed for bankruptcy and has been in the process of essentially being parted out and dissolved. And these three projects were essentially purchased more or less in bankruptcy court by NRG, which is a large mainland-based energy corporation based in Texas, to move forward with these three projects. And according and thanks to Henry Curtis' blog earlier today, it apparently there is some doubt just how smooth or possible it's going to be to get regulatory approval from the commission with Jay Griffin as a third member for these particular PPAs. And one of the things that caught my eye in Henry's blog is that apparently there's some type of non-transferability clause that it's not just a slam dunk, apparently, that even though it was Sun Edison that closed the deal under a non-competitive process to some extent and Mina can clear that up, but that simply having NRG step in and develop these projects is apparently not the slam dunk that NRG thought it might be or that HECO thought it might be. That's my understanding. My understanding is it's a matter of the waivers. Waivers are granted by the PUC on these projects. And the question is whether those waivers are transferable. By the terms of the waivers, they're not transferable. I think that's Henry's point. But at the same time, remember, these trans have remained in the context of a bankruptcy. And just as a general matter, I'm no expert in bankruptcy law, but as a general matter, if the bankruptcy court says we allow this transfer, consent may not be an obstacle because it's federal and it's exemption. And bankruptcy law in general allows for the transfer with or without consent. So, Mina, what do you think? Well, I think first of all, I think the biggest challenge here is prices are dropping significantly. And I didn't read Henry's article just what Marco sent, but Henry makes a good point about the Kauai contracts were negotiated with a storage component at a lesser price. And just last week, there was an announcement about Tucson Energy Power signing a power purchase agreement for solar power with an all-in cost of less than four and a half cents a kilowatt hour over 20 years. And the company developing that project is Nextera Energy. And so, granted, given the cost of business in Hawaii, the land cost is a little bit higher. But these solar plus storage contracts are significantly lower than what HIKO is negotiating right now. Oh, interesting. How does that play? How will that affect things? That's pretty low. I hadn't heard that, Mina. So you're saying the four cents or so a kilowatt hour over 20 years that includes dispatchable storage? Yeah, all in. It's a 100-megawatt solar array and a 30-megawatt battery. I think the battery is 120-megawatt hours. And, you know, the cost includes the tax credits and stuff. But, you know, that's... You know, it may be more money. It may be more money. But at the same time, there's a part of me that says, let's move ahead. Let's get this done. We get stuck, as you mentioned before, Mina. We get stuck in process. We find ourselves all hamstrung by process. And sometimes we should just steam ahead. You know what you think? Well, I think the larger issue is the first on, you know, how these contracts are set up in the first place. I mean, we're stuck until the PPAs run out buying, you know, expensive renewables as we see prices drop. That will always be the case, though. Because hopefully, as we go into the future, we'll find better technology and the prices will drop. That doesn't mean we have to wait for the future. We have to act now, don't we think? Energy partners in Honoka, I think it's indicative, perhaps, of a trend. And I'd be really interested to hear Mina's opinion on this. The Discommission starting, more or less, with the decision on last July 15th to turn down the proposed acquisition of HCI Ben-Extera, that there's a greater and greater emphasis on public benefit, which, of course, can be somewhat ambiguous, but to what extent is signing 100 megawatts worth of solar PPAs at a price of X when, like Mina said, the price has been dropping pretty significantly and dramatically over time. Does it make sense from a public benefit standpoint to approve deals in the 12, 13 cents, and I don't have the numbers right in front of me, per kilowatt hour range with no battery storage when the folks at KIUC on Kauai, this last one with AES, with battery storage, I believe, clocks in as somewhere around 11 cents a kilowatt hour? So, you know, the bar of approval for these PPAs and these deals or selling or buying power plants, the bar seems to be getting higher and higher. I think your point, Jay, about, you know, if the bar is always moving, especially in the upward direction, then that's almost kind of an invitation to the perfect being the enemy of the good. Yep. Okay. Well, that's, you know, it's good. I mean, it's bad. I think that the fact that the PUC consolidated all these into one docket is a good idea and whose time should be coming. Because, you know, for example, right now the PSIP is still out there. It hasn't, it's been sitting there since December. There's been no word about it from the PUC and maybe they were short, they were short-handed and all that. But don't you think we need to hear from the, about the PSIP before we run ahead and do all these big projects? Wouldn't it be good to get our plan straightened out? Isn't that the first order of business? The first order of business really is, you know, how do you be adaptive and flexible in these really tidy and certain times moving forward? You don't want to make, you don't want to battle the rate pair with these high costs when things are moving so quickly. And so what we really need to do is identify what are the no-regret projects out there we can move forward with. Yeah, well, don't you think it's a good time for a meeting in a room somewhere or a mediation without having formal process over it where somebody says, wait a minute, you guys, this period is too long. You don't need this period to advertise your investment or this price is too high. Let's talk about the numbers and let's see if we can come to something that gives us greater comfort that we're serving the public good. Why don't they just have a conversation? Isn't that possible? Well, I think, you know, yeah, that's what needs to take place right now.  Like I've been talking about for a long while is that we're only looking at one side of the equation, the generation side here. You know, there are a lot of other investments that need to be made for grid modernization. Yes. And there are two key investments that we need to make regarding the base load generation or just the kind of generation needed to balance out the system. Yeah, and new technologies are coming in every day. That's hard to track on that and we have to keep our eyes wide open. So, Marco, why don't you try to summarize and conclude for us today? And mind you, the good news is we've had a great conversation. The bad news is we're going to have to put off the discussion of community solar and gems. Are they DOA? Until next time. But Marco, can you kind of summarize where are we today? What are your feelings about all these issues? Well, to circle back to what you just mentioned a few moments ago about the power supply improvement plan, that's a key kind of a key foundational component here because power supply improvement and that deals with the smart grid, reliability, lower generation costs from more renewable sources, all of the above. And that's going to establish the blueprint for the Hawaiian Electric Company is moving forward from multiple super critical directions from their perspective as in how much money is going to cost? Where are they going to get the money? What's going to be the cost of that money? How is it all going to play out in terms of cost to the rate payers? And then add in of course the rate case that's pending right now for Oahu and for the big island. And I don't have a particular date but I would think that Maui can't be, for Miko can't be too far either in terms of a rate case docket being open. So my lord, there's so much, so much, so much in play right now. And it's so fun, fun to be with two of my best energy buddies and wish we had hours and hours but we don't so thanks again, Jay. Yeah, we have to follow all of these things and all the things that come up along the way. That's Marco Mangelsdorf, me and Marina. I love you guys. Thank you so much for coming on the show. See you in two weeks, huh? Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Jay. Thank you both. Aloha.


I have a holy, jolly Christmas It's the best time I'll be It's only Christmas And when you walk down the street Say hello