Managing the New York City Power Grid | Breakthrough

I never thought that something as simple as like an LED light bulb could make such a big impact. There was one project that I worked on where the team that I was working with thought, "Well, what about if we just screwed a bunch of LED light bulbs all throughout the neighborhood, every business we could get access to? What if we just gave people LED light bulbs for free?"

And we did it. In about 6 months to a year, we were able to relieve almost 19 megawatt off the grid, which is a major feat. So, an alternative solution like screwing in a bunch of light bulbs could actually make a difference in New York.

My work has largely been around energy conservation, and I've done everything from the ground up, really helping supers in boiler rooms try to figure out how to run their heating systems more efficiently.

So this boiler room is clearly in disrepair and could use a complete overhaul. My work largely is around retrofitting around what is already in existence in New York.

So we have a lot of old buildings, and they have old heating systems that often run inefficiently. It's very common to walk through the streets of New York in the winter and see all the windows open, and in the summer everyone's cranking their ACs.

So we have like a lot of waste going on, and so my work is around trying to figure out why that waste is happening and what we can do to develop solutions to conserve the precious resources that we have. [Music]