"My work as the utilities and rebates Intern was composed of two parts. The first was the collection of materials and processing of rebate applications for projects in current and expanding service territories. This was integral to the company’s operations as it carried out the government’s incentives for geothermal technology and allowed customers who otherwise might not have been able to afford installation access to geothermal. The second part was research with a focus on regions that the company could expand into. Here I worked on different projects which ranged from overview insights into currently unreached territories in New York to total addressable market calculations and mapping, which can also inform future warehouse locations. Expansion is a major goal of the rapidly scaling company, but it is still constrained by a variety of factors from rebates offered in certain territories to population density and home equipment specifics. Once all those factors are accounted for, potential target areas for new locations are substantially constrained, which I help to pinpoint.

An overarching skillset that I was able to apply to the internship was the ability to switch over or blend different approaches to a problem, which I gained from the interdisciplinary nature of the sustainable development major and concurrently taking more technical classes alongside the core curriculum. This was integral when I was doing my research project, as I had the technical component of compiling data and mapping, then had to draw insights from the data and government sentiment in the form of whether the government supported geothermal through rebates, loan programs, or other energy efficiency offerings. Another useful skillset was the ability to work with maps and go into the work with a surface understanding of the science and technology that goes into geothermal energy. Having this background knowledge and skill from the sustainable development major allowed me to go straight to work and made it easier to understand what criteria allowed or disqualified a home from installation, which guided expansion efforts.

A key challenge I faced was working on a project that required deliverables from other parties throughout the entire process. People worked in different positions or areas of the company, so apart from the surface difficulty of arranging schedules and everyone having different backgrounds, it was difficult to coordinate next steps as there was no clear starting point to begin with. People had access to different types of information, and therefore had expertise in different areas, which can be a very useful quality, but in this case it took longer than needed to find out what the main aim and approach would be. We had calls with others across the company to gain some understanding into their processes, which was very insightful, but it was difficult to piece together those insights with what we were working on. In hindsight, I realize that not all the pieces needed to fit together to be useful.

I will be continuing this role into the year, but so far my takeaway from the experience has been that when working in a startup environment, it's important to embrace the uncertainty and everchanging directions throughout your work. Not only does this approach open you up to taking more innovative approaches, it also decreases the stress that occurs when something you have worked on needs to be changed or even scrapped. For example, one of my goals was to concretely advance the expansion efforts of the company into new states. Therefore, it was frustrating when my research didn’t have much direction. However, it might have benefited me to lean into that lack of direction and look beyond what I was first suggested to research. Going forward, I will try to adopt that mindset in my work. Additionally, a more topical takeaway is that advancing and expanding a proven and useful technology like geothermal requires much more than proof of concept, as it is not sufficient to make something widespread. The government and its policies are still a large factor in incentivizing consumers towards adoption, and it is integral to nurture those relationships between the company, government, and other integral agents, such as utilities."