Vincent Boudreau
Have you ever heard of a virtual power plant? Learn about innovatively integrating energy resources to benefit a community of participants while also contributing sustainably to the electrical grid. Michael Bobker of The City College of New York (CCNY) and its CUNY Building Performance Lab joins Clayton Banks, CEO and cofounder of Silicon Harlem, in conversation with CCNY President Vincent Boudreau, host of From City to the World. In this episode dedicated to Climate Change Awareness Month, these Harlem-based experts discuss the roles of education, innovation and community engagement in meeting essential needs such as infrastructure and resilient, healthier and more equitable cityscapes.
Host: CCNY President Vincent Boudreau
Guests: Michael Bobker, CCNY Earth System Science and Environmental Engineering, CUNY Building Performance Lab; Clayton Banks, CEO and Cofounder, Silicon Harlem
Episode Transcript
Vince Boudreau
Okay. Well, welcome to From City to the World. I'm your host, Vince Boudreau, the president of The City College of New York. From City to the World is a show about how the work that we're doing at City College matters to people across the city and throughout the world. So on this show, we'll discuss the practical application of our research in solving real world issues like poverty and homelessness, mental health challenges, affordable housing, and other issues that matter both to researchers and faculty on this campus and members of our community.
So the month of April is widely known as climate change awareness month. Earth Day fell just a little while ago, April 22nd. And it's a time to raise awareness around the issues affecting the very world we live in, day to day. Climate change awareness month really takes the celebration of Earth Day and ties it to some of the critical issues around a climate that's changing and the dangers that it imposes. So it's a time across the month to encourage climate action, promote sustainable solutions. And promoting sustainable solutions is exactly what we plan to talk about today but with an innovative caveat.
Climate change is forcing adjustments in our buildings and our energy supply with major investments required to reach some of the goals that we need to reach. Some of our community's properties are facing legal mandates to refit or retrofit their buildings for low energy or low carbon. How can the necessary investments be guided and accelerated to our community's benefit? And the faster we do this, the more secure we can make our community. So we're going to talk about one of those efforts to use the resources of people on this campus and some of the things we've built to work with community members to hit some of those goals. And so with steady leadership from the CUNY Institute for Urban Systems, which you'll hear me refer to as CIUS, Professor Michael Bobker founded the Building Performance Lab, which I'll call BPL, as a one-man operation in 2006.
And his conception of the Building Performance Lab and its mission now is to advance high performance building operations and practices in existing and public buildings. The BPL, the Building Performance Lab focuses on improving efficiency and optimizing building operations through continuing education programs for facilities managers, for building operators and energy professionals. It also provides internships for CUNY students and building systems research and development. Since its inception, CUNY's BPL has grown to over 500 full-time senior and ... sorry, I said 500, and I said at the beginning of this that I was going to take a zero off because that's a typo. 50 full-time senior and junior staff members, and between 10 and 25 extraordinary interns from our college campuses.
The approach at CCNY to address climate change through the BPL has been to engage applied research with students through a new entity called the Harlem Retrofit Lab to build up the local capacity for this work. Our core unifying concept has been a community-governed virtual power plant. So put it all together. We've got the Building Performance Lab at City College. And the applied research in the Building Performance Lab takes place through the Harlem Retrofit Lab. And one of the big projects, signature project is the virtual power plant. We talked about all three of those different entities as the show comes on. And to discuss the work of the Building Performance Lab and the virtual power plant and its impact. Having research students be hands-on with this project is Professor Michael Bobker with the City College of New York.
Professor Bobker, welcome to From City to the World.
Michael Bobker
Thank you, Vince. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Vince Boudreau
Really happy to have you. And I got to say, the first time I heard about the virtual power plant, I thought this is such an exciting idea. And so I'm really thrilled to have the opportunity to dig into it a little bit for our viewers because I think it's something that people throughout the listening area of this show need to know about and hopefully get involved in.
So let's start at the beginning. What inspired you to launch not the virtual power plant, but the Building Performance Lab back in 2006? And how has the mission evolved over time?
Michael Bobker
Yeah, so Vince, I've been in an energy engineer and energy manager in New York City buildings since the early 1980s and in various capacities. And in the early two thousands, late 1990s, I became increasingly aware that the industry, even before we had an emphasis on carbon reduction, even before that became a major global issue. Our industry was needing a good supply of steady supply, of incoming new entrants, new talent.
And there simply were not a lot of academic programs in the region to supply. So we set out with funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to develop a training program, first focusing on incumbent workers, but giving students as new entrants opportunities through internships.
Vince Boudreau
You say incumbent workers, you mean all the way from superintendents up? Or what was your target then?
Michael Bobker
We trained both apartment building superintendents. In particular, those who didn't have access to union benefits, about half of the market of apartment building superintendents, and also commercial building operators who needed more sophisticated skills. And we partnered with the local IUOE, International Union of Operating Engineers and their Local 94 in that training. So we did a lot of training that brought the skills for those operators around energy efficiency, really up to a higher standard.
Vince Boudreau
And so over time, how did the mission evolve?
Michael Bobker
I guess the biggest evolution of the mission has been, well first the addition of more technical services is we started to work, we do a lot of work with city government and we work with monitoring and measurement of their energy efficiency projects.
And they have a large budget. We work with the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services. And they have been phenomenal in supporting our growth. So that's a major evolution. And then more recently we began working with the New York State Housing and Community Renewal Department, Division of Housing and Homes and Community Renewal, DHCR, that runs the Weatherization Assistance Program.
And they were interested in developing a supply of new entrants into the market. And so that encouraged us and provided financing for us to develop programming for college students and people who were not incumbent workers, who were coming into the industry either as students or as older people from various sources who wanted to enter the industry.
Vince Boudreau
That reminds me, we're going to be talking about, that we're talking about these various projects, the Retrofit Lab, the virtual power point, all throughout. I may ask you, but feel free at any moment to tell people listening to the show how they can get involved and at what level. And this is a program that really tries to reach out to members of the community and let them know how they can engage with the college.
So that's kind of a standing question that you can respond to at any time in the conversation. But let's now go from the Building Performance Lab to the Harlem Retrofit Lab. This is something that was designed to build local capacity. And so what makes this effort unique and how is it helping to build efforts in our fight against climate change?
Michael Bobker
So the Building Performance Lab is really focused on existing building operations and the skills to get those buildings performing better and monitoring the performance. And we realized that we did not have a specific focus on the, what I would call the deep energy retrofit of buildings.
Deep energy retrofit refers to a little more than the standard kind of retrofit that was being promoted through energy audits, standardized standard energy audits. We wanted to go deeper to get down to levels of 70 and 80% energy and carbon reduction.
Vince Boudreau
That all makes sense. But when you say sort of standard energy audits, are we talking about things like fixing drafts in windows and that kind of stuff? If I'm looking at the actual work that hands are being applied to, what distinguishes those two levels of work?
Michael Bobker
The standard retrofit package would be tightening windows, what we call air sealing. Maybe replacing windows if the owner wants to invest in that. Tuning up the boiler. Maybe replacing a boiler if it's on its way out. But the deep energy retrofit goes deeper. It goes into a high performance window, wall insulation, probably on the exterior. Heat recovery from ventilation air. And most significantly as we seek to electrify buildings, changing the heating plant from steam heating to first to hot water and then to heat pumps.
Vince Boudreau
I see, I see. Okay. All right.
Michael Bobker
Since you're giving me an opportunity to advertise.
Vince Boudreau
Yeah, take it.
Michael Bobker
I will say that people who want to find out more about our programs, want to become engaged or look for opportunities for training can go to our website. It is the cunybpl.org. And you can also google the CUNY Building Performance Lab and get to the same place.
Vince Boudreau
And I will say at the end of the program, we will tell you where you can find this episode on our website to stream it and we will post that information on the website in association with this episode. So write it down now, but if you weren't fast enough, check out our website and we'll get you the information.
In the introduction we touched briefly on the virtual power plant or the VPP. And I wonder if you could just, at a kind of conceptual level, tell us what that entails? How is it different from, for instance, a traditional power plant?
Michael Bobker
A traditional power plant, we have a location somewhere where we do something, we burn fuel or we manage hydro resources or wind resources and we produce electricity and we deliver it into the grid.
The virtual power plant is instead is a community-based or localized aggregation of distributed energy and energy efficiency or demand-side resources. So we are looking at how do we manage resources at a local level and coordinate that interactively with the grid.
Vince Boudreau
I see. I'm going to come back to this concept of distributed energy because I think that's a big one to unpack. So distributed energy, what is it, and what are the kind of technical problems that are associated with distributed energy that maybe we didn't have in traditional power plants?
Michael Bobker
Distributed energy resources are most generally thought of as, for example, photovoltaic systems on rooftops. Any kind of locally generated resources.
Vince Boudreau
Solar panels, wind, that kind of stuff.
Michael Bobker
Solar panels. Wind, a little different. Probably not on rooftops, maybe. Also, the storage of that energy in batteries. But importantly, and what people don't realize is that the buildings themselves can be a source of energy to the grid as a demand-side resource. So these are called demand-side response programs by the utilities. And what it refers to is the voluntary reduction of loads in a building or set of buildings when the utility requires that kind of resource.
So for example, turning off non-critical lights or turning down lights. Slowing down pumps or fans a little bit. Controlling the speed can have a very great impact on the energy consumption. These are things that can be aggregated between buildings. Very often a single building cannot participate effectively in the utility market. But when the resources are aggregated and brought together and controlled in a coordinated way, they can provide significant resource in particular in a local distribution network.
What I mean by a local distribution network is everything from the utilities, substation down, so at a large neighborhood and down through the various electrical feeders which may be congested at certain points in time, especially in the summer when we're at peak load. And so this is of concern for the utility.
And also of concern for the utility is that there, as we shift to a green economy with especially wind power, lots of remote wind power being fed into the grid, their supply of power is less stable. It varies more. You can imagine wind. The wind blows harder, the wind blows less, and that's reflected in voltage and frequency disturbances in the grid that the utility has to compensate for. They have to control that. And so the use of distributed energy resources can be a great boon to the utility once they are enabled to interactively control local resources.
Vince Boudreau
So it would work alongside the public utility. It's not a substitute for or it's not a community setting up its own kind of source of power that's not Con-Edison or something like that?
Michael Bobker
Well, it is the community setting up its own source of power, but in what we call an interconnected mode so that it works in coordination with the utility. And it can work in isolation. So we improve resilience. If the power system has difficulties in terms of storms or other eventualities that might cause power reductions, then a virtual power plant, the localized grid can work on its own. We have batteries, we have solar assets. We know how to reduce our demand so that we can stand alone. But we also know how to interact with the grid such that if the grid needs resources, we can interactively provide grid power.
So a big change in the utility industry is that until recently, the model of the utility industry was big centralized power plants, providing power out through the system one way. The only thing we as consumers had to do was pay our bills. Flick the switches and pay our bills. That's changed now. There's a much more interactive view, and this has started with distributed energy resources showing that we have a two-way interaction. And buildings can be an effective part of the utility scenario that helps us all in terms of resilience, helps the utility's economics. Can also help, the utility will pay for services like demand response and voltage and frequency supports, they will pay.
So the model is that the community governed virtual power plant actually contracts with the utility for certain services and provides those benefits which would not be available to individual buildings. Individual buildings can't participate effectively in the kind of markets we're talking about. But when we aggregate together we can and then we distribute those benefits back to the community.
Vince Boudreau
I mean you just used the phrase community governed, and I know this is really central to the virtual power point. So I have two questions about that. First is what decisions would community members have a role in? And second, it feels like this is pretty technical stuff, but I wonder if that's a misconception.
I wonder how deeply does a member of a community who's decided to participate in community governance have to get into this in order to be an effective participant, advocate member of a community governance board?
Michael Bobker
There's a level at which it is very technical. So my colleague Ahmed Mohamed in electrical engineering is much more technical than I am. He knows this material about microgrids at a different level than I do.
And I'm a good explainer. The concepts are very technical, but they can be understood in common sense language as well. And I think that's part of our challenge, part of what we want to do in terms of local education perhaps starting with leaders of major community institutions to bring them together, to become a board of directors and consider the issues around a virtual power plant.
Consider what kind of bylaws there should be, what kind of community benefits we might expect to return to the community. And so to go back to your question, it is technical, but it is comprehensible if it's explained well to regular people.
Vince Boudreau
If I'm one of those regular people and you're pitching me on why this makes sense, you talked about what are the community benefits. What are the greatest hits of the sales pitch?
Michael Bobker
Well, I will talk to you first about an important driver in the market, which will be important to you if you own an apartment building, which is an important segment of the Harlem community is our property owners. And they are faced with New York City's Local Law 97, which requires mandates, carbon reductions, incremental carbon reductions, going with steps at 2030, going out to 2050. Very deep carbon reductions with significant penalties if you don't meet the carbon reductions.
And so you will have to do some things to your building, including possibly electrifying your building, moving to heat pumps, you have some major investments facing you. As you make those major investments you may want to join with others who are faced with the same problem and come up with common solutions and come up with some solutions that join you together into this virtual power plant so that while you're doing what you have to do, which will lower your energy bills, but you're also have the potential to join together to realize further benefits in this relationship with the utility.
Vince Boudreau
Including some sustainability goals, right? Not to miss the point of where we are this month.
Michael Bobker
All sustainability goals and resilience goals. Yes.
Vince Boudreau
The community governance component also includes the research students that you've been working with. And so I wonder what role do CCNY students play in building out the virtual power plant? And how does hands-on research shape the outcomes of this project?
Michael Bobker
So our city college students in particular, students from our environmental systems engineering program, and even more so from our sustainability in the Urban Environment Master's program have been really critical to building out the program. So we've had an ongoing series of projects, capstone projects, part of the masters in sustainable urban systems that have really articulated what the virtual power plant is, what deep energy retrofits are. Have articulated it in levels of complexity and levels of more accessibility. And have written about it, have put together some introductory manuals. And so they've really been critical in both putting the concepts together, but also making the concepts accessible.
Vince Boudreau
That's wonderful. I wonder, we've talked about the progress you've made and you've got the students in there doing work, but what about the, I mean there must still be obstacles, technological obstacles, financial obstacles, or even political obstacles to a project like this? What is it that you see slowing your momentum, if anything?
Michael Bobker
I guess there are two major obstacles. First of all, there is, we understand the technology that's necessary to get to deep energy and carbon reductions in buildings. We pretty much know the technologies, passive house technologies, heat recovery technologies, insulation technologies, heat pump technologies. It's the adoption and the application.
And adoption and application has a couple of barriers in and of itself. The first adoption is understanding of the people who have to make the investments. And of course the second obstacle is actually getting the investments together, getting the finance together. So those are big hurdles. They're I guess societal level hurdles at this point. They're not hurdles that we could not overcome, although we've taken a big step backwards recently.
Vince Boudreau
Yeah, we sure have. How much of, as you said, the city has really promoted a move to reducing carbon. Do you get a sense that their momentum is slowing as well as things kind of change at the federal government? Or do we still have robust backing from more local partners?
Michael Bobker
You're asking me broadly political question.
Vince Boudreau
Broadly political.
Michael Bobker
I'm an engineer. But I think people are kind of evaluating what they should be doing now.
Vince Boudreau
I think that's right. As we look to the future of climate change and the work of the Building Performance Lab and the new virtual power plant, what do you find most exciting about the future of real climate forward building systems? Where do you think this whole thing is going?
Michael Bobker
To me, what's exciting, and my original background was in cultural anthropology.
Vince Boudreau
Oh, very nice.
Michael Bobker
So to me, what's exciting is the community engagement, the possibility of community engagement and people understanding their infrastructure better and being able to control and work with their infrastructure more effectively. That to me is a liberating thing.
And I think associated with that is that there are jobs and careers to be had. And the idea that we can create those locally and create economic development and career development at the same time locally is really a tremendously important goal and tremendously exciting opportunity.
Vince Boudreau
Yeah, I guess too, climate change feels like such a kind of inexorable, big distant process that we are subjected to rather than actors within. And to be able to put together something like this that gives local communities a set of decisions, a set of benefits, a way to direct their energy makes a lot of sense at this gesture.
Michael Bobker
Yeah. Thank you.
Vince Boudreau
Now, I will ask you now explicitly, if people are listening to this and they want to get involved, what's the best way?
Michael Bobker
Again, I think the best way is to contact us through our website. Again, googling CUNY Building Performance Lab, cunybpl.org. And yeah, I think that's the best way you will find links to our various programs. The best route for people into training, into our weatherization assistance program training, is through the energy and carbon management training program, which is on that website.
Vince Boudreau
Okay, great.
Michael Bobker
Okay. People can also contact us through the Rangel Infrastructure training program. We work closely with Rangel. And they run continuing education programs on a variety of topics, including ones that interface with us and utilize our training.
Vince Boudreau
That's great. That's terrific. Now in the studio for the second half of the show, we are joined by Mr. Clayton Banks.
Mr. Banks is the CEO and co-founder of Silicon Harlem, whose goal is to combine technology and innovation with affordable connectivity that can enable sustainable economic engine in emerging communities across the United States. But particularly, or at least initially here in Harlem. Under his leadership, Silicon Harlem has attracted over $50 million into Upper Manhattan for advanced infrastructure research and testbedding.
Clayton has positioned Upper Manhattan as a tech and innovation hub that is one of the fastest growing areas for tech startups, entrepreneurs, and companies. Mr. Banks has established critical programs based on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, abbreviated as STEM in public schools and several nonprofits in Upper Manhattan to prepare citizens for 21st century jobs, careers, and living.
Clayton Banks. Welcome to From City to the World.
Clayton Banks
Well, thank you very much, Mr. President. You gave me about 10% of me, so thank you so much.
Vince Boudreau
Well, that's all ... there is a lot of you and we've got time to explore some of that. But let's start out with Silicon Harlem.
It's a powerful force for tech innovation. So how has your work evolved and what's next for Silicon Harlem?
Clayton Banks
Well, it's currently what we're doing is making sure that those who are people in Harlem particularly who have struggled with things like education, with jobs and even with health. And my job in a lot of ways is to keep that as a way for us to give technology to basically on all three of those things, even though there's more. And it's great that I have a relationship here at City College because as many of the people that we work with have come out of this university. And that's been really helpful for us.
And you and your team has been really good working with us. So we can come out with all types of new ways that we can help people. And we're going to continue to do so. And from my perspective, it really downs to some of the things that you've talked about so many ways, whether it's from the, if you know about Upper Manhattan, there's issues with asthma like crazy. And so some of the energies that we are dealing with right now is how do we deal with weather, how we're dealing with the climate.
Everything is really bad right now, but we have some opportunities right now that we're trying to make that a little better. And we are getting more education for people that become basically ready for jobs for this position. So anyway, there's a lot going on, so I'm glad that you're talking to me about that.
Vince Boudreau
Before you got here, we were talking about the virtual power plant that Professor Bobker is working with out of the Building Performance Lab. And it's a distributed energy model. It depends on fast data-driven, wireless communication, and local coordination. So first of all, I want to ask, is there a cooperative relationship between the two of you? And if so, how is your tech infrastructure able to support this growing vision of a community that is networked together to provide energy?
Clayton Banks
Well, one of the most important things that you've said is it's called virtual power. That in and of itself is pretty nutty, right? But you need to have a tech person to help on this idea of virtual power, not like Con Ed or these others that are filled with all types of infrastructure. With virtual power we're finding new ways to get addressed with climate, with putting power out, a little bit more easier. There's a lot going on. So from the tech side, on my side, is to provide that type of technology, if you will. Michael is obviously the main guy of this particular issue, and he and I are working together.
We actually even had a meetup and the very first thing we did was meet up with a bunch of people. Come to my office. We had 40, 50 people talk about virtual power. And it's really important for us to look at the people that live in the area, right? It's nice to talk about it across the whole country certainly. But to have people right there talk about that Michael sort of brought some of your school kids come here, they actually helped with the whole project.
So I think it's just good to have a tech company part, or let's put it this way, connected with the university and what we're doing with virtual power together. Not only with the access with people will have it, but also the technology that's much more easy.
Vince Boudreau
The other thing about this is that it really requires a kind of governance relationship between community that's involved and higher order power authorities. What does that look like in practice and how can a tech organization like yours help to facilitate a kind of community governance structure?
Clayton Banks
We look at it as four or five things that are really critical. First of all, your voice sounds so much better than me. I should be like that. Nice, deep-
Vince Boudreau
Oh no, no.
Clayton Banks
... good sound like you have. It sounds so good, his voice.
Vince Boudreau
No, I went to school with Curtis and whatever he does, I try to do it.
Clayton Banks
Anyway, let's get back to the point. So there's four or five things that we think of. First of all is we look at the community boards in the community, really important. They actually give us a lot of information we give them, and that's really important. Second is we work with the electives in our community. So we really want to hear from them. They have different ways that they can be helpful.
We also go to what? The universities. We go to all of them. A lot of people don't realize this. Fourteen colleges in Harlem, that's crazy. And City College being one of our favorites. So we're actually able to have that kind of brain, if you will, from all of the colleges here. Number four is we actually work with nonprofits across the entire community. We want to hear the boys and girls clubs, all these different people because really at the end of the day, we're dealing with people.
And lastly, which is my favorite was is I'm a CEO and I walk the streets of Harlem. How many CEOs do you know walking around in Harlem? Does anybody know who Verizon is? I hate to be mad about that. So it's really important when a kid walks up to me and I say, "oh, you know?" "Where are you from Mr. Banks?" And I say, "Well, I'm a CEO at Silicon Harlem." "What's a CEO?"
And I like to talk about that because once they see that there's somebody like that in their own community, they can become that as well. So I say all that to say is that if I get all those voices together, to your point, it really sets us up correctly so that we don't have to go back and say, "Oh, well, we didn't do this right" or "We didn't do that." We get all of those voices together.
And what's really interesting of those five that I just mentioned, they all have different types of talking. The way they think about it, how they think of something. So I get to sit in the middle of that. I even being in for-profits, by the way, I should say the sixth one. There's for-profit companies that come in too. But we hear from each one. And ultimately when we put it all together, we get a real solid approach to anything that we're doing.
Vince Boudreau
When we first met years ago. It's not always the first thing you talk about these days because you talk about artificial intelligence, you talk about Li-Fi and all this other stuff because technology moves forward.
But the first conversations we had was about the digital divide. And so much of what we're talking about in terms of the capacity of a community to engage in governance in a project like this, or even to kind of understand the aggregation of energy in a virtual power plant depends on people having access to basic internet. And so where are we now eight years later on closing the digital divide in Harlem?
Clayton Banks
Well, that's ... I'm glad you used the word closing. A lot of people don't use that word, so I'm glad that we're talking about it.
Vince Boudreau
You got to have a goal, man.
Clayton Banks
Yeah, you got to have it. The reality is I'm not sure we've gotten that far. When you look at it, it's more than just the internet. If you really look at the data, housing is a problem still. Food security is still a problem. We talked about weather already. And the air is horrible in the Upper Manhattan because of the way the infrastructure works. The issues that we're dealing with, education jobs. So there's a lot of, people that are having to deal with money issues. So we have a big, big challenge still.
And I always say, we got to say to you what you said, close the divide. It's not simply with the internet, even though that's a very key one to do. And when there's, as much as people like in East Harlem that have 35-40% of people don't have internet every day, that's a problem.
Vince Boudreau
That's a huge problem, yeah.
Clayton Banks
And when you have that, that's an impact on everybody. So somebody wants to steal something, for example, maybe even kill you. So we want to close these divides. And certainly that's even from, and so it hits energy, it hits everything at traffic. It's all of this stuff.
So I've come to realize from that time we first talked to where we're going to talk today for the next 10 years, we're going to talk about infrastructure. That's the key. It's not people's problem, it's the infrastructure people. I'm sorry, it's infrastructure. That's the issue, not the people.
Vince Boudreau
So what does that look like? You talk about infrastructure. Is it access points, is it bandwidth? What are we talking about?
Clayton Banks
I think it's all of that when you think of it this way. If there's a big movement for let's say electric cars, you need to have infrastructure to make that work. You got to have the right streets right, made better. You have to have devices that you can energize your car or whatever. And if it's happening in one part of the neighborhood and it's one that's not the neighborhood, that's a problem, that's a divide. So we have more coming divides. And I think we have to make sure, stay on infrastructure that we make sure that, because the difference with the infrastructure isn't from people, not even if they're poor or rich.
It's just let's have the same infrastructure. We talked about we looked at transportation, right? We talked about, "Oh, the two train, when is it going to work? When is it going to happen?" It's there, but somehow or another we don't hear much about it. That's an infrastructure issue, problem. If you look at the infrastructure of somewhere downtown, you see buildings, beautiful skying, growing, big, beautiful businesses and things of this nature, real opportunities. And then there's people uptown who are still working for a candy shop.
I believe we are still dealing with divides, but there's people like you and me and Michael and everybody else, we want to get that done. It's not that hard. But what we do, we get messed up by thinking, "Well, what's the matter with these people? They don't have good education or they don't have any money." Why are we talking about people? Let's get the infrastructure. And when it's really equitable for everybody, that's a good win. That's a good win.
Michael Bobker
So I mentioned before earlier about how we have been traditionally passive with respect to our energy infrastructure, our electricity infrastructure.
Vince Boudreau
All you have to do is pay your bill is what they're saying.
Michael Bobker
Pay your bill and hit the switch. And I think that changing model provides us with an opportunity for empowerment of people where we have distributed energy resources, we understand better that we can control various aspects of the energy in our neighborhood, and we can point to a building and say, "Oh, that's the Harlem Virtual Power Plant that controls my community energy system. And there's my CEO of the Harlem Virtual Power Plant-
Vince Boudreau
Walking around.
Michael Bobker
... walking around. And I think that gives us a sense of much more local control. And that is a big part of closing the divide.
Clayton Banks
But then again, that is infrastructure.
Michael Bobker
It is infrastructure.
Clayton Banks
The design is important for everyone.
Michael Bobker
Exactly.
Clayton Banks
So I call it infrastructure for equity.
Vince Boudreau
Yeah. Clayton, you mentioned charging stations. I can't help myself from advertising. If you come to the corner of 135th Street and Convent Avenue on the campus of City College these days, you will find that our parking lot in the first phase of a project has now a solar roof over a part of it. And along the side of it, there are charging stations. There will be soon a big, big, big battery buried in that parking lot to save load and allocate it and distribute it.
But the vision for that is more of that on other parking lots we have on campus and charging stations down Convent Avenue, which is also a community amenity. So yes, infrastructure is important ...
Michael Bobker
And that that infrastructure becomes a training resource.
Vince Boudreau
Tell me about that, because it was ... I'm so glad you said that because when it started to get built, I said, this is really fantastic, da, da, da, da. And then they said yes, and it's also a training resource and nobody's told me yet what that training looks like.
So Michael, please, how does it work?
Michael Bobker
So first of all, there's training around just what are the components of this kind of local energy resource combined with storage and photovoltaics and electric vehicle charging. There's just the visual. There's the opportunity to take solar panels off, put them back on. There's an opportunity to measure certain things, but more importantly, that station and any other stations that are built down along Convent Avenue are being tied back to a simulated control room, which will be in a lab in the basement of our engineering building, Steinman Hall, that will enable students to train on controlling a local distribution, a local energy distribution resource.
Vince Boudreau
That's fantastic. You know what I love about that is ... So as I said, this is on the corner of 135th Street and Convent Avenue is where you'll see the panels and the charging stations. Across 135th Street from that is the building that Harlem Stage is at. And a lot of people know, a lot of people don't know, that used to be a pump house and the function of the pump house was both to pump water into the city. But when that infrastructure, Clayton, to use your word was brand new, it was a tourist attraction.
People would come and they would look at it and marvel at how new technology works. So we've got the same thing going on on both sides of 135th Street. Clayton, I want to talk to you a little bit about what feels like a connection in this conversation between the expansion of technological capacity and the increasing capacitation of a green economy and people working in a green economy. How do you see the link between technology and closing the digital divide and making some real progress in a green economy?
Clayton Banks
Well, let me take it from this perspective. I still think of, and so much what you do as well, and all of us, is people. And so when we start thinking about how do we make things much better, we should hear the voice from the people. And I'm glad you mentioned that earlier.
If we hear from the people tell us what they want, we can get things done. If I don't mind, I'm just going to go back a little bit about the fact that the new infrastructure you're doing on your campus with the cars. So the question becomes who's coming there? Is it people from the Harlem people that are getting some sort of from it, or is it only people coming from downtown coming, "Hey, it's cheaper to get it done over here," or something of that nature for their cars.
How many of us do we have in Harlem, for example? And that kind of thing. So this type, it needs to be here. And I'm so glad because I didn't know of any Harlem that was having that happen. So you are one of the first people to do that stuff here. And that's important because too many people will be here is another thing we don't get. You know what I mean? And so I'm going to be taking a look of who actually is going to take advantage of it. But I like what Michael talked about, which is you could have students on this campus become providers and people that will help and all that kind of stuff. It'll be a great opportunity for jobs and things of that nature just for that.
So I'll bring back the other question I had to get out of my head first. What was the other thing?
Vince Boudreau
So the other question was the relationship between the work that you've always been doing about closing the digital divide and making sure we are a more equitably tech-enabled society.
Clayton Banks
Thank you. Thank you. I like that, tech-enabled, that's right.
Vince Boudreau
Equitably tech-enabled society ...
Clayton Banks
That's right.
Vince Boudreau
... and the progress in a green economy.
Clayton Banks
Well, what we've done in a lot of ways, not just us, but all of us is we've shared this very much information around the climate about that. We've had meetups at our office. We've talked about it with places. We've gone over to other buildings. We've talked about this, and we'll continue to talk about this because we still have the highest number of people with asthma in the country. And so it's really important for us to, even though it's not my job to try to deal with that from the perspective on a person by person, but it is very important for me to what kind of technologies can I put in to get the equitable that we need?
And so I think there's a few things like what Michael has done and what he's talking about, but also for us, we're looking with the mayors and some of the electives on what are we doing on some of the way the trucks, buses, ships, all stuff that's coming through Harlem. If you think about it, there's six bridges. Most of them are free. So where would you come? You would come right through Harlem and you're sucking up all of that stuff and it's crazy. So we're trying to do the most we can, which is to work with the electives to help with that. We're trying to work with some of those shipping that's going on here.
A lot of us are getting even Amazon and everybody going right through our neighborhood to get downtown and it's not been helping. So we're going to do our best we can to get, and not necessarily those type of some combustion, whatever that's called, but we get these electrical things. It's going to be a big difference. That's why I'm happy. I love the fact that you're doing this because that can make a big difference.
It can help with the trucks, with cars and all that kind of stuff to people all coming through. It's not so bad if they're not putting all that crap out into the air.
Vince Boudreau
Yeah. And the other thing about infrastructure, the way you talk about it, are there a lot of electric vehicles in Harlem? No, but what do you need first? The vehicles or the infrastructure to charge the vehicles? Because nobody wants a dead battery in Harlem.
Clayton Banks
In my opinion, is the infrastructure ...
Vince Boudreau
Absolutely.
Clayton Banks
... is first. And if right now a lot of people in Harlem do not have an electrical car or whatever, I'm not so upset about that. I'm much more upset of people who are driving right through Harlem with this stuff coming out of their car. So more of them get on some type of electrical car will be helpful by far. I mean a major difference.
Vince Boudreau
Yeah, a lot of what we've been talking about both in the technological side of things and the virtual power plant has to do with figuring out ways to bring the community in. And one of the ways, you just mentioned this, was working with social organizations, community organizations. So if you were tapping people on the shoulder and saying, "Hey, you got to pay attention to this," what doors would you be knocking on first in your community?
Clayton Banks
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Well listen, we have to quickly come to the end of our hour.
Clayton Banks
What?
Vince Boudreau
Yeah, just like that.
Clayton Banks
I haven't even got to my access and exposure piece.
Vince Boudreau
You got a minute on access and exposure?
Clayton Banks
I've got one minute for that. So this is for everybody who's listening, and I hope you all are enjoying this, but the number one thing we have to think about with our people is all people have to look at access and exposure. It's not an issue of how smart you are. Everyone's pretty smart. No, maybe not but most people are. And the key is you just sometimes don't have access and exposure. If there's one thing we will do and continue to do at this great podcast is talk about loving that people have access and exposure is make the world better.
Vince Boudreau
Yeah. We say talent is equitably and evenly distributed across the population. Opportunity is not.
Clayton Banks
You better believe it.
Vince Boudreau
So that's do what we can to bring opportunity to the people. You have been listening to From City to the World. I am Vince Boudreau, your host, and today we're discussing the world of tech and climate change. You have heard about two great areas of endeavor that all have opportunities for engagement. Professor Bobker has said a number of times the website to be involved in the virtual power plant. We also have it on the website.
Clayton Banks is all about bringing people into the myriad projects that he's been working on. Silicon Harlem is a local Harlem institution. And where can people find you, Clayton?
Clayton Banks
You can find me in Mars. No, I'm actually ... If you're looking up into the sky, you'll see me. But no, I'm right here in Harlem, right here on 148th Street and Frederick. And so please, you can catch me at siliconharlem.com.
Vince Boudreau
So special thanks to Clayton Banks, Silicon Harlem, and also to our first guest, Professor Michael Bobker, who is the founder of CCNY's Building Performance Lab. And then we have the CEO and co-founder of Silicon Harlem, Clayton Banks. The show was produced by yours truly, Vince Boudreau, Tiffanie Burt.
Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you to both of you.