E.ON Innovation – and the winners are…

Following on from the community’s intense activity on the E.ON Innovation website, we’ve been hard at work reviewing all the ideas, to see which were most popular, and which could be turned into real new products and services. From over 1600 submitted ideas, we arrived at the final 5 concepts built by the E.ON Innovation team from the original ideas, comments and community discussion.

Last Tuesday, the E.ON Team walked into the E.ON Innovation Dragon’s Den and pitched the final ideas to the Leadership Team, explaining why customers would want them, how they would work, backed up with market size and financial forecasts to answer those challenging questions that we all know and love from the show.

Clockwise, from top left: The 5 Presenters, The Winning Pitch, Questions from the Dragons, the Dragons deliberating

The E.ON Team left the room, to let the judges deliberate, and pick a winner. Following a lengthy and impassioned debate, one idea was selected and unanimously agreed. But first, our runners up…

Runners up

We have 4 runners up, and each of them will receive £2,000 home energy makeovers. And they are:

Dick Taplin “Match electrical consumption to generation”

Dick’s idea was to make best use of domestic electricity generation sources (like solar panels) by timing the use of some appliances to peak periods of generation.

Pea Brain ”The self healing house”

Pea Brain (real name, Paul) suggested that our homes could diagnose developing problems based on historical data, and then take steps to do something about it, from sending us a notification, to calling the repair man.

Colin Moull “Don’t reinvent the wheel”

Colin had the simple but brilliant idea of using online gaming to get people engaged in saving energy, through popular games like Farmville.

Bex “Eco kitchen starter set”

Bex wanted E.ON to produce a range of co-ordinating kitchen appliances that would each make use of the best environmentally-friendly technology, from a toaster to a kettle, a washing machine to a composting bin.

Overall Grand Prize winner

We can only have one overall winner, who will receive our grand prize: a £10,000 home energy makeover

Steve McNair “Eon Care Sense – Technology Helps The Aged and Vulnerable”

Steve saw a role for E.ON in helping us all care for ageing or vulnerable people in their own homes. Smart sensors could detect unusual patterns of energy use, that might suggest a problem, and alert family members or care workers.

What happens next?

All the winning ideas will go on into research and development in E.ON, with the aim of bringing the products and services to market within 3 years.

The E.ON Innovation community website is now closed, but we’re still keen to work with the community, so watch this space for news of further challenges or opportunities to be involved in creating the next generation of energy-saving services.

It only remains for us to say congratulations to all our winners, and thank you once again, from everyone here on the team, for all the work and energy you’ve put into the community. We’ve met some fascinating people, had eye-opening conversations and seen some truly exciting glimpses of the future. Thank you.
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by Andrew
Originally posted at www.eon-innovation.com/blog/

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