I did absolutely nothing this week and this is the end of my post... APRIL FOOLS! Sorry, I couldn't resist!
Hello all and welcome back! I hope you all had a wonderful week! As I mentioned in the last blog, I focused on market research throughout this week. This involved looking at potential consumers and competitors in the market.
Let's start with the consumers; these are the companies that currently produce the basic solar inverters. Intel's job is to convince them (which should not be too difficult as they always want to improve their products) to employ microcontrollers and microprocessors produced by Intel within these solar inverters. Through my research, I have found specific models from each company (listed in my previous post) and which purpose they serve: resident, industry, or utility. Then, I downloaded the data sheets of each inverter in order to understand its composition. Sure enough, not a single inverter had any complicated or advanced parts integrated into them. Tomorrow morning, my adviser and I will be deciding which types of inverters can Intel help create (hopefully all of them)! This research, in a way, helped with the research on competitors as well: after studying a data sheet, I was able to see which microchip companies (for example, Texas Instruments) were involved.
Studying the competitors was really the most difficult part of the market analysis as their role is so minor as of now. Aside from knowing about their involvement, I was not able to find a shred of information on the specific types of chips the companies used or their prices. My adviser had predicted this would happen; luckily, he has a good idea of the companies' roles as he has worked at a good number of them. Although the marketing/business side of the project is a bit more bland than the engineering part, I love that I am learning how to conduct research in this field (although not 100% successful). Lastly, at our meeting tomorrow, we will be discussing the market size of inverters and microchips, so I should be able to give a thorough explanation of it once I understand it more.
That's it for this week! Thanks again for reading!
Fascinating to see how it is all coming together! Could you expand more on how your research is able to help competitors as well?
ReplyDeleteThanks Ms. Conner! I think you may have misread. It helped researching on other competitors, not the competitors themselves.
ReplyDeleteYou are totally right, I did misread that!
DeleteInteresting post! Its unfortunate you couldn't find any information on the types of chips the companies used.
ReplyDeleteEven if you haven't found everything you've been looking for, it sounds like you've found out a lot! Are the different brands of inverters similar, or are there big differences that might make creating a microchip for multiple difficult?
ReplyDeleteThe different brands are generally similar and differ based on their purpose. For example, some companies only make residential inverters while others make commercial and utility ones as well.
DeleteWow amazing job. I bet pouring through the data sheets was a blast, however it seems worth it. Nice tool to use for research the competitors.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post! Would implementing Intel's microcontrollers and microprocessors be costly or difficult?
ReplyDeleteThere is definitely a cost factor to it, but since Intel is mass producer of microchips, it wouldn't be terrible. Implementing them is the bigger problem as they have to be compatible with the inverter and perform each specific function perfectly.
DeleteVery interesting! I find it amazing the involvement between the business and the engineering side that you take part in.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! I find it amazing the involvement between the business and the engineering side that you take part in.
ReplyDelete