Tom Nyquist, Executive Director of Engineering and Campus Energy at Princeton University named 2024 Norm Taylor Person of the Year
At its 115th Annual Conference in Orlando, IDEA celebrated Tom Nyquist, Executive Director of Engineering and Campus Energy at Princeton University, by awarding him the Norm Taylor Person of the Year Award.
In 2024, Nyquist marked 37 years with Princeton, and this summer he will retire – leaving behind a legacy at Princeton that includes overseeing the transition of the university’s combined heat and power (CHP) plant to integrate a geo-exchange system that included the drilling of hundreds of boreholes on campus, while continuing operations to provide reliable heating, cooling and power to students, faculty and staff.
Nyquist’s tenure at Princeton also included the installation of a 15-megawatt microgrid on campus, which helped the university become a place of refuge during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Princeton only lost power for approximately 20 minutes, while much of the surrounding area was without power for three days, until the grid was back online, giving emergency services workers such as police, firefighters and paramedics a staging ground and charging station for phones and equipment. After the storm passed, Nyquist and Princeton were at the center of the national conversation about energy resiliency and reliability.