Last week, the cat was let out of the bag – and what a beautiful cat it is.

Blueprint and our partners, NYSERDA and the LeFrak Organization, will kick off an ambitious and innovative project at LeFrak City in Queens.

The press release is excellent and full of further detail, but here is an even briefer summary of what we’ll be working on.

The project, as currently intended, will entail a rollout of DERs (including approximately 150 EV chargers) at the LeFrak City site. Blueprint’s technology will be used to turn these DERs into active power market participants, thereby providing the dual benefits of local grid flexibility and optimized asset monetization – a veritable “win-win” for the local community and the site. Perhaps most importantly, the project will also demonstrate that these sorts of installations and interconnections, through appropriate analysis, can be performed at a substantially lower cost than generally considered without DER and local optimization.

New York has been a national leader in climate change policy. In particular, Governor Cuomo’s 2019 Climate Act sets rigorous, aggressive targets for statewide decarbonization - including calls for 70% renewable energy by 2030 and an 85% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. If we want to hit these targets, a lot of work needs to get done quickly – and at a large scale. 

In our view, the support of this project by NYSERDA - and others like it - is a necessary step in the right direction. We firmly believe this project can, and will, serve as a replicable exemplar for economically viable, large scale urban electrification. 

We are deeply thankful to our partners for the opportunity to help New York (our home state!) achieve its climate goals and carry forward Blueprint’s mission of reshaping the grid. 

We can’t wait to get started.