Friday Collectives: Renewable Energy Plans for Red Hook

Join us for an information session and discussion about renewable energy plans for Red Hook. This event is part of a monthly series, Friday Collectives, exploring how our local communities can become more regenerative and self-sufficient. While we are focusing on one region, we welcome non-local attendees to participate in the session.

Presentations from:
--Gita Nandan who will be discussing the feasibility study for the Red Hook Microgrid and Resilient Red Hook's current plants for community solar
--Paige Medley from Autogrid on microgrids 101 and trends in successful community projects
--RE:GEN:CY on different models of organizing community solar
--and one more, TBD

Format
-presentations about community solar and microgrids
-guided q and a and collective brainstorm
-socializing

beer and light snacks will be served.

Ms. Nandan is an architect, designer, educator, and leader in community resilience planning and design. She is a cofounder and principal of the award winning design firm thread collective, co-chair of the Resilient Red Hook Committee, board member of the RETI Center, and visiting associate processor at Pratt Institute GCPE and the School for Visual Arts. Ms. Nandan believes in resiliency and sustainable design as an elastic and
supple approach, integrating social, cultural, and economic issues with high design principles to create innovative net-positive urban environments. Working in the field for over 20 years, Ms. Nandan has overseen design and construction on a wide range of project-types that span across many disciplines and scales, such as Concrete Waves, a skateboard storm water capture system for youth in Red Hook, to a net zero field station along the Gowanys Canal. Her work at the nexus of where design meets the ecology of place, and future proofing the city, driven by finding creative solutions. Sustainable architecture, and planning is not just a smart and necessary practice but economically advantageous. In addition to her current work, Ms. Nandan has lectured across the country, and been involved in sustainable design policy and code creation. In NYC she serves a member of the Homes Committee for Urban Green Codes Task Force; and the Building Resiliency Task Force. Ms. Nandan received her March from UP Berkeley and is a licensed practitioner in NY and NJ.

Paige Medley has spent eight years developing solutions that help decarbonize the electric grid and provide clean energy access to energy impoverished communities. She received both her B.A. and M.S. from New York University in Global Energy Policy, and Energy Finance. She is a Project Manager for AutoGrid, an advanced grid technology company, where she works with domestic and international clients to implement Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS) and Demand Response Management Systems (DRMS). She previously worked for Smarter Grid Solutions, EnterSolar, and for Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Her career has spanned policy development through to advanced grid technology implementation providing her a unique perspective on the challenges faced by the energy industry. Paige has installed PV solar + storage mini grids in rural unelectrified villages in Nicaragua and India and has seen the enormous impact that first-time access to electricity has on communities.