Annual Meeting

PSEG Undergraduate Poster Awards

Taj-Jahnae Brailsford-Forde, Class of 2022 / “Geothermal Heat Exchangers for the Campus of the Future” —Advised by Forrest Meggers, associate professor of architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Diane Yang, Class of 2023 / “Modeling the Optical Properties of Top-emitting Perovskite LEDs” —Advised by Barry Rand

American Tower Graduate Student Poster Award

Wilson Ricks / “Enhanced Geothermal Systems for Grid-scale Energy Storage” —Advised by Jesse Jenkins, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Community Energy Graduate Student Poster Award

Galen Mandes /“Moisture Absorbent Temperature Controlled Hydrogels for Atmospheric Water Extraction” —Advised by Sujit Datta, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering

ExxonMobil Postdoctoral/ Researcher Poster Award

Yenan Chen / “Two-stage 48V-1V Hybrid Switched-capacitor Point-of-Load Converter with 24V Intermediate Bus” —Advised by Minjie Chen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

2020 Andlinger Center Annual Meeting: Securing a Sustainable Energy Future

Sponsored by Princeton E-ffiliates Partnership

Cities and states will play a key role in efforts to address climate change, but they will not be able to solve the challenge without strong leadership from the federal government, noted Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, former U.S. deputy energy secretary, at the Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment’s ninth Annual Meeting on October 30, 2020. Delivering her keynote address, Sherwood-Randall, who served in the Obama administration’s energy department, encouraged federal leaders to create an effort that fully integrates clean energy, climate, economic, and national security goals. Achieving that goal will require involving all stakeholders from industry, government, academia, and nonprofit organizations. She was one of several leaders who discussed expanding the role of sustainable and affordable electricity in the economy to power everything from buildings to transportation.

Diane Yang Taj-Jahnae Brailsford-Forde

Left to right: Jesse Jenkins; Ben Fowke, chairman and CEO of Xcel Energy; Ralph Izzo, president and chief executive officer of PSEG; and Gil Quiniones, president and CEO of the New York Power Authority.

Sherwood-Randall also emphasized the importance of implementing security measures related to energy sources, supplies, and infrastructure. Security experts discussed threats specific to the power grid and ways to protect against them. Experts asserted that protecting power assets and technologies will require an evolving set of solutions. The leaders discussed the benefits and risks of widely deploying microgrids, which can operate in “island mode,” disconnected from the central grid. They also acknowledged that microgrids could amplify the risk of attacks by increasing the points of entry to the power system and the complexity of the electric system as a whole.

In another panel, chief executives from electric utilities discussed the future of the industry and ways in which the government and private sector could cooperate to meet the challenge of cutting emissions while providing reliable, reasonably priced power. Three CEOs, of the New York Power Authority, Xcel Energy, and E-ffiliates member Public Service Energy Group (PSEG), also reiterated Sherwood-Randall’s sentiment on the need to keep electricity affordable to ensure that the energy transition does not further burden the country’s most financially constrained. The executives each spoke to the role of government, noting that carefully designed federal and state policies are needed so that carbon is accounted for, not only in the power sector, but in automobile manufacturing, shipping, and industrial processing too.