Microgrid Site Location Tool

We live in an increasingly decentralized world. From the internet to digital currency, decentralized systems are reimagining our future. Microgrids – decentralized energy grids – promise to bring similar transformations to America’s aging and centralized power grid. However, as promising a future as microgrids provide, their adoption remains cumbersome due to the substantial planning and analysis they demand, coupled with the complex group of stakeholders they support.

We recognize an opportunity to innovate the way microgrid projects are envisioned, researched, and proposed. By introducing data science, intelligent responsiveness, and optimization into a digital and easily-accessible platform, our goal is threefold:

• Decrease the overall time it takes to identify suitable microgrid locations
• Create a two-way street between microgrid developers & facility owners
• Provide predictive capabilities by diminishing the need to manually analyze different data sets

Understand the UVP – I think the market information (key players & categories) gathered this semester will position us to answer this question. What value do we provide? This will also come from the completion of our MVP

Attach $ value to the market segments – this will be difficult but I think we need to begin understanding just how large are the hardware and software segments of the microgrid industry. The overall market is valued at $61Bn so how does that breakdown

Develop a product offering – for how much can we sell our tool and services? what do others charge?
3-year financial forecast – build in assumptions, NPV, and IRR

Evaluation of second state – this semester we took a deep dive into NJ, should we examine one other state that is also hit hard by storms & power outages, such as Louisiana, NY, Mass, or California?
To help us in our efforts, we are currently looking for 5-6 student candidates to join our project and assist us with the following topics:

Understand the market dynamics in which we operate
Understand our unique value propositions (UVP)
Understand our go-to-market strategy
Round out our business model
Design technical structure of our tool

Ideally candidates will have the following skills and interests:

Market research
Financial projections
Business analytics
Strategic thinking
Basic understanding of the entrepreneurial journey
Ideally, 1-2 candidates will have the following technical skills and interests:
Basic understanding of programming languages (R, Python, SQL)
Basic understanding of AI/ML Data visualization, preparation, manipulation, and analysis
Wireframing & UI/UX design