Advisory firm to country's utilities becomes affiliate at Purdue Research Park

November 9, 2009

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - An advisory firm that helps its clients transition to the smart grid, an efficient and environmentally friendly electricity distribution system, has become an affiliate of the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette.

The Intelligent Project LLC assists clients - utilities, government organizations and third-party solution vendors - by providing research, analysis and advisory services to help them create strategies to inform and engage consumers about how the smart grid operates and saves energy.

"By engaging customers, energy providers will be able to successfully deliver on the promise that the smart grid represents for transforming the energy industry to become greener and more efficient," said Peter Shaw, managing director of The Intelligent Project.

Shaw said the smart grid is a modernization of the electric grid currently used in the United States.

"In the past, utilities have been asked to safely provide electricity to drive the economy at the lowest possible cost with the highest possible reliability. Now the industry is being asked to add a key goal: doing it cleanly," Shaw said. "The smart grid enables the electricity industry to significantly expand renewable energy generation, energy conservation and efficiency, small-scale photovoltaic and micro-wind energy, and plug-in electric vehicle proliferation."

Transitioning to the more environmentally friendly smart grid also will impact U.S. foreign policy.

"The Obama administration goes into Copenhagen Climate Change talks in December. It's important that the administration be able to show that the U.S. is demonstrating leadership on climate change policy," Shaw said. "The administration also sees establishing leadership on the climate change issue as critical to its broader foreign policy doctrine around engagement with countries like China and India."

Shaw said The Intelligent Project's focus on customer engagement sets it apart from other research and advisory firms. Another differentiator is that The Intelligent Project has created a business model that involves academia.

"We have a strategic relationship with Richard Feinberg, Purdue professor of consumer sciences and retailing," Shaw said. "The Intelligent Project and professor Feinberg recently conducted 17 focus groups with energy consumers in the Washington, D.C., area to understand consumer awareness and comprehension of environmental and smart grid issues. We also began the process of designing education and engagement programs and software tools that will bring consumers on board the evolving portfolio of the smart grid customer programs."

Feinberg said the firm may be able to help utilities aid customers in cutting back on 5 percent of their home energy use.

"If that happens, utilities will not have to build a new coal-burning generation plant over the next 20 years," he said. "The promise of the smart grid is that consumers will easily save that 5 percent, but that will not be achieved unless we help utilities understand how consumers think and make decisions about their home energy use. Consumers will not change because their utility tells them to, they change because they feel they should."

The Intelligent Project has the opportunity to grow not only in selling additional subscriptions for its services, but also in developing its tools.

"There are opportunities to develop software applications for Web sites, in-home devices and smartphones that will enable customer engagement with their energy usage. We plan to pursue opportunities in this space," Shaw said.

He described why he and his colleagues became part of the Purdue Research Park network.

"As a small startup with a virtual model, we needed to establish an effective corporate presence, including key infrastructure like a corporate address, IT hosting and support, and highly professional office space," he said. "We feel that Purdue Research Park provides all of these assets and more. To date, the support we've received has been exemplary. The fact that we can identify our corporate headquarters in the Purdue Research Park is an added value given that academic affiliation is a key component of our business model."

About The Intelligent Project LLC

The Intelligent Project LLC strives to be a different kind of knowledge services firm at a time when the energy services industry is facing unprecedented pressure to change "business as usual." The Intelligent Project provides clients with a set of research services, learning venues and customer engagement tools designed to help industry executives access thought leadership, air out ideas with experts in related fields, and demonstrate to stakeholders their commitment to achieving smart grid customer leadership.

About Purdue Research Park

The 725-acre Purdue Research Park has the largest university-affiliated business incubation complex in the country. The park is home to more than 160 companies. About 100 of these firms are technology-related and another 39 are incubator businesses. The park is owned and managed by the Purdue Research Foundation, a private, nonprofit foundation created to assist Purdue University in the area of economic development. In addition to the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, the foundation has established technology parks in other locations around Indiana including Indianapolis, Merrillville and New Albany.

To the Purdue Research Park, https://www.purdueresearchpark.com

Purdue Research Park contact:
Steve Martin, (765) 588-3342, sgmartin@prf.org

Source:
Peter Shaw, (215) 913-1961, pshaw@theintelligentproject.org