"Outage Alert App"
Northwestern University
My idea has to do with a phone app that users can download off their utility company's website with a rewards program. For simply downloading the app, called Outage Alert, you get $10 off your next month's electric bill. Then, the way it works is this: If you experience an outage, go into your app and report the outage. If you are the first in your area to report an outage, you get $5 off your next electric bill. All others get 25 cents off their electric bill for either going into the app and selecting an outage, or simply clicking yes or no when the app, once prompted by the first reporter that an outage may be likely in the area, asks if you have experienced an outage. This makes for friendly competition that fuels people to want to report the outage right away - and hey, maybe I'll get $5 off my utility bill? Or, maybe 25 cents?
How many areas would a typical utility company have in one state? Perhaps a thousand? That costs the utility perhaps $5,000 per major storm. Then there is the cost of a 25 cent credit to the rest of the customers who respond. Let us say 20,000 people respond. That is another $5,000. Now, I guarantee that for $10,000 per occurrence to have a technology that once set up could simply feed into the utilities information system for dispatch logistics - that is way cheaper than smart-grid technology both to put up and maintain. And, if the response rates get to be too much expense-wise, the app could cherry-pick sending the question (i.e. "Is your electric out") to subsequent responders based on framing outages in an area.
As an owner of my own construction business for 12 years and being enrolled as a graduate school student at Northwestern University in Project Management with an emphasis in Sustainability, I watch with dismay as the utility companies scramble when outages happen and this scramble happens everywhere I have lived - Minneapolis, MN, Long Island, NY, Passaic, NJ, and Chicago, IL. That scrambling costs a lot of worker hours. My uncle is one of the world's foremost experts on smart-grid technology and he just returned from a year of consulting the Pentagon on smart grid technology. From what he has told me, smart grid technology is great, but very very expensive. Is it possible that at least a portion of the information infrastructure could actually come from a phone app tied to a relatively inexpensive rewards program for responding to an outage? My undergraduate major is in marketing - and I say, if rewards work in other areas, why wouldn't it work here?
How many areas would a typical utility company have in one state? Perhaps a thousand? That costs the utility perhaps $5,000 per major storm. Then there is the cost of a 25 cent credit to the rest of the customers who respond. Let us say 20,000 people respond. That is another $5,000. Now, I guarantee that for $10,000 per occurrence to have a technology that once set up could simply feed into the utilities information system for dispatch logistics - that is way cheaper than smart-grid technology both to put up and maintain. And, if the response rates get to be too much expense-wise, the app could cherry-pick sending the question (i.e. "Is your electric out") to subsequent responders based on framing outages in an area.
As an owner of my own construction business for 12 years and being enrolled as a graduate school student at Northwestern University in Project Management with an emphasis in Sustainability, I watch with dismay as the utility companies scramble when outages happen and this scramble happens everywhere I have lived - Minneapolis, MN, Long Island, NY, Passaic, NJ, and Chicago, IL. That scrambling costs a lot of worker hours. My uncle is one of the world's foremost experts on smart-grid technology and he just returned from a year of consulting the Pentagon on smart grid technology. From what he has told me, smart grid technology is great, but very very expensive. Is it possible that at least a portion of the information infrastructure could actually come from a phone app tied to a relatively inexpensive rewards program for responding to an outage? My undergraduate major is in marketing - and I say, if rewards work in other areas, why wouldn't it work here?
Ehron Nygard
Ehron Nygard graduated from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota with a double major in Marketing/Sales and Business Administration with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship. He has worked as the owner of a construction and real estate development business for over 12 years. He will be matriculating in June with a Masters of Project Management with an Emphasis in Sustainability from the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University.
Ehron Nygard graduated from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota with a double major in Marketing/Sales and Business Administration with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship. He has worked as the owner of a construction and real estate development business for over 12 years. He will be matriculating in June with a Masters of Project Management with an Emphasis in Sustainability from the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University.