The 2-day event saw 14 potential solutions created to counter Accra’s most pressing energy efficiency challenge in public, commercial, and residential buildings.
14 teams participated in the competition and 4 teams emerged as winners. The winning teams were selected into a 3-weeks boot camp offering well tailored curriculum on business, design, technical and marketing aspects of product development.
At the later stage, two teams with the most viable solutions will enter into the acceleration phase which offers hands-on training, mentorship, peer-to-peer networking and the opportunity to compete against other winners from the Negawatt participating cities: Dar es salaam, Nairobi, and Rio de Janeiro.
“It’s a very interesting and educational program in a sense that it brings a number of stakeholders: private sector, public sector, and academia – for us to share ideas and see that responsibility for bringing energy efficiency is not one person’s job,” said Ms Lydia Sackey, Budget Director of Accra Metropolitan Assembly and a lead government counterpart for the Negawatt Challenge technical assistance activity in Ghana.
The winning teams include Asor, Flip, Sun Shade, and WI.
Asor offers a hardware and software solution allowing consumers to estimate power needs of home appliances and to track their electricity consumption in real time.
Flip introduced an energy-saving and time-controlled switch for street lighting and commercial lighting in buildings.
Sun Shade focuses on strengthening building insulation by offering an upgrade of a conventional shading system whereby it would absorb sun energy and reuse it to power lighting and, in the future, appliances.
WI focuses on strengthening building insulation by offering a turbines cool housing unit by a process known as ‘air exchange’.
The Negawatt Challenge is an international competition that aims to empower communities around the world and to birth new ideas in the urban energy sector.
