Open Innovation Provides Energy Saving Solutions
Increasingly, open innovation methodologies are being applied to energy and fuel economy problems to help protect the planet and save us money.
IdeaConnection’s large library of open innovation case studies contains a number of success stories of where crowd ingenuity has been applied to energy challenges.
In today’s post we are highlighting some of the projects that have caught our attention:
The Apps for Energy Contest – run by the US Energy Department, this apps contest offered $100,000 prize money for the best new apps that help utility customers make the most of their Green Button electricity usage data.
The top prize of $30,000 went to an app called Leafully that helps people understand their domestic energy usage by converting the information into graphics of trees. The software program also lets users know the amount of trees needed to offset the pollution created by their energy consumption.
Philips Wins $10 Million Prize for Energy Efficient Light Bulb of the Future – the L-Prize is a search for an energy efficient replacement for the common light bulb. Philips’ solution was a bulb that runs on less than 10 watts but gives off the light of a 60-watt tungsten bulb, with the same even distribution. It went on general sale in 2012. The L-Prize continues with a competition for a high-efficiency alternative for the PAR38 lamp.
The GE Ecomagination Contest – a huge open innovation contest that awarded prize money to 12 teams to help them pursue their concepts for innovative smart grid technologies.
Apps for Vehicles – another US-based contest, this time for apps to boost fuel economy,
developed by using open vehicle data that had been released by the US government. The Grand Prize was for a concept called DASH, a smartphone app that connects to any car made after 1996, via a small piece of hardware.
DASH is able to quantify the person’s driving and the performance of the engine. It also collects data from car sensors and ambient data such as weather and traffic to provide real-time diagnostics and alerts.
Reader Comments
I agree that technology has really changed how energy is used and monitored. What concerns are there regarding these technologies? Does it save money for companies, government, or any other private entity on the development costs? Will it be difficult to replicate? Which group of people would fair of least by utilizing this technology?
Posted by M. Elliott on December 11, 2013
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