$1 Million Open Innovation Challenge for Shrinking a Box

August 4, 2014 By IdeaConnection

spanlsDo you have what it takes to change the future of energy and electricity? If so, The Little Box Challenge maybe just up your street.

A cool $1 million is up for grabs, courtesy of Google for the team that can create a smaller and cheaper power inverter.  An inverter is an electronic device that takes direct current from items such as solar panels and batteries and converts it into alternating current for use in cars, homes and offices for example.

According to Google, shrinking inverters will change the future of energy, enabling “more solar-powered homes, more efficient distributed electrical grids, and could help bring electricity to the most remote parts of the planet.“

That Shrinking Feeling

The problem at the moment is that the power inverters are too big, about the size of a picnic cooler.

Google is asking participants to create an inverter that is smaller than a laptop, representing a reduction of about > 10× in volume.  The winning solution also has to be smaller than everybody else’s.

Google has partnered with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for the challenge, and the application deadline is September 30.  Up to 18 teams will be chosen to put their inverter through its paces at a test facility in the United States by October 21, 2015.  The winner will be announced sometime in January 2016.

Intellectual Property

The winning team will own the intellectual property of their innovation, although Google has said that to promote further advances in the power electronics community, it may publish some or all of a winning team’s high-level technical approach documents.

For more details about the open innovation contest and to register to take part, click here.


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Reader Comments


This is actually a good imitative that could revolutionize the energy landscape.
Posted by EZEKIEL APIMA on August 7, 2014

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