Written by Shreya Indukuri, ACE Youth Advisory Board Member and incoming Senior at the Harker School in San Jose, CA.

Exactly a week ago, Daniela and I had the amazing opportunity to speak at the White House. I know, pretty unbelievable, right?
We were fortunate enough to have the amazing opportunity to speak at the White House Grid Modernization Event, and to meet with Secretary of Energy, Steve Chu, and the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack. We spoke about our SmartPowerEd.org work at various local high schools and how low-cost smart energy technology is transforming schools. We were even streamed live on the whitehouse.gov website! It was so incredible and we were pleasantly surprised to have such high-ranking officials applaud and support our efforts! One of the officials even told us that we practically “upstaged” two secretaries.

Aside from the incredible speaking opportunity, the rest of the Grid Modernization Event was pretty interesting in and of itself. The term “grid modernization” sounds complicated but the event basically created discussion among technology leaders, businessmen, and on government officials on how to revamp our country’s currently high-carbon-emission electric grid.

We attended a breakout group where government and tech leaders discussed scaling new energy efficiency models in the US. Neither Daniela nor I are experts on energy policy so we expected to get lost in all of the jargon but we actually found it engaging and practical. It was great to see how much people cared about implementing new solutions across the US and if you listened carefully, a lot of their ideas made sense and seemed feasible!

We were also really excited to learn about America’s Home Energy Challenge sponsored by the DOE. Just like SmartPowerEd hopes to educate students about the smart energy system in their school, this challenge will educate students about energy efficiency who will, in turn, educate their own families and communities.
All in all, it was a great event! We are really thankful to ACE and Aneesh Chopra’s office for providing us with this wonderful opportunity. Daniela and I are psyched to keep working on our smart energy project at new schools and hopefully see successful energy reduction.

In the meanwhile, keep turning off the switch and unplugging those appliances when not in use! It’s twice as rewarding to save money AND reduce your carbon footprint 🙂