People Power: Green Design Analysis & Strategy
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In winter of 2010, I teamed up with a multi-disciplinary team of mechanical engineering, environmental science, and MBA students in Stanford's Green Design class to evaluate a product line under development by the small startup company People Power. |
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People Power was working on their system of "GreenX Home" energy monitoring products and asked us to investigate the environmental impact of manufacturing these devices and suggest potential strategies for improvement. Our team conducted a life cycle analysis which indicated that the environmental impact of manufacturing just one of the five components in their home system was enough to dwarf the energy savings which they hoped to achieve through change home owner behavior via awareness. |
Ultimately we recommended that People Power partner with high energy consuming appliance manufacturers to directly embed their open source "SuRF" module, which they'd created to control each GreenX device, in order to allow these appliances to be directly monitored and controlled remotely from any web browser or smart phone.
This strategy eliminated the unnecessary material costs and environmental impact of their dedicated consumer devices. It would allow People Power to form strategic partnerships with established market players, and differentiate their product by allowing it to provide actual remote energy management instead of just remote monitoring.
This strategy eliminated the unnecessary material costs and environmental impact of their dedicated consumer devices. It would allow People Power to form strategic partnerships with established market players, and differentiate their product by allowing it to provide actual remote energy management instead of just remote monitoring.
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Since then, People Power has repositioned itself as the provider of an "Energy Services Platform" (ESP) via their embedded chips and prominently display new partnership opportunities on their website. The company currently enjoys growing buzz in the press and an accelerated time to market for their new embedded platform. |