Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

Tom DeVries, the chief engineer for distribution engineering at Consolidated Edison, candidly explored the failures of substations and other facilities that cut power to more than 1.1 million people in the region after Sandy swept through. He noted that five of the top 10 power failures in storms in Con Ed's history occurred in 2010, 2011 or 2012. DeVries pivoted to describing a host of changes in systems, ranging from floodwalls around substations to raising some vital equipment to "breakaway" overhead power lines that allow swifter repair when a tree fall occurs. Chris Levendos, vice president for national operations at Verizon (who now heads network deployment and operations at Google Fiber), described the impact of Sandy with a simple statistic—the $1 billion expense charge the company posted in the fourth quarter of 2012 to fix damage from the storm—"the largest single destructive incident in the 100-plus years of Verizon and its predecessor company's history." The response? "In six months' time we did 20 years' worth of work," he said. Why didn't that happen as a matter of course? Levendos described a complex mix of market and regulatory issues that, he said, were subsequently examined in depth, including with city officials. Tom Bourgeois, the deputy director of the Pace Energy and Climate Center, described ways to distribute power generation, whether from natural gas or renewable sources, and allow small microgrids to maintain power, as well as heating or cooling, even if a bigger power failure occurs. Such CHP (combined heat and power) systems can also cut energy losses and boost efficiency. Natural gas distribution, he said, is far less frequently interrupted than electrical grids, adding logic to increasing distributed power generation. Bourgeois described the early stages of New York State's ambitious effort to modernize power supply and distribution while lowering greenhouse gas emissions —known as Reforming the Energy Vision, or REV. The key question, Bourgeois said, is how to use incentives and regulatory reforms to spur investments that make it easier to incorporate distributed and renewable power sources into the grid. (For an update, explore a March 2015, Pace University forum on The Great New York Power Shift at this website: j.mp/pacepowershift.) That led the discussion to New York City's energy and infrastructure challenges and opportunities going forward. Ozgem Ornektekin, the deputy commissioner for Energy Management in New York City's Department of Citywide Administrative Services, laid out a host of initiatives, ranging from the installation of dozens of solar panels on city schools to an aggressive push to cut energy waste. 10

• Cover