In a quest to improve energy efficiency, the World Bank Negawatt Challenge initiative sets out to identify energy challenges and relevant ways to tackle them from city to city.
The Global competition which aims to transform cities into more sustainable and energy efficient places, now calls out to hackers, coders, business experts, and energy efficient specialist to register. Each participant will be allocated into teams and recruited to go from identified problems to creating solutions to solve them.
The four identified problems to be tackled in Nairobi are: how to provide the citizens with universal access to their energy related data such as billing, usage, and efficiency opportunity; how to design a cost-effective energy audit service with targeted and tailored energy savings recommendations; how to help customers measure and understand the energy usage in real-time and compare their utility bills to similar buildings, friends and neighbours; and how to help customers use the audits to achieve energy savings (this could range from providing access to information about how to save energy to more innovative measures).
“We are looking for startups to develop a hardware or software solution for Kenyan commercial building owners or SMEs to carry out energy audits in a cost-effective and convenient way. Since the energy audit is only the first step toward improved energy efficiency, the solution would benefit from also including recommendations to the building owner for what steps to take to reduce electricity consumption, including technological and/or behavioural changes,” said Negawatt on their site.
The inaugural challenge was held in Nairobi, Kenya on January 29, 2015, while the Negawatt weekend took place in Accra, Ghana March 14-15. Another Negawatt weekend will hold at Buni Hub on March 28-29 in Tanzania.
The Challenge is sponsored by The World Bank, Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), the Korean Green Growth Partnership.
The Negawatt Challenge will take place in Strathmore University’s tech incubator, @iBizAfrica, in Nairobi, Kenya, on March 21-22, 2015.
Click here to register.
