NREL Announces Innovation Challenge Finalists for Crowdsourced Ideas for Energy-Efficiency in Residential Buildings

Sept. 30, 2016 | By Wayne Hicks | Contact media relations
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The Energy Department's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), along with industry partner CLEAResult, has selected five finalists for the JUMP Smart Phone Call for Innovation.

This innovation challenge will focus on ideas and topics related to residential buildings. The finalists are:

  • "Smartphones as Residential Energy Management Systems" by Justin Doh
  • "unVolt -- The Energy Saving App" by Shariq Ali
  • "An App to Create Infrared Street View" by Charles Xie
  • "Consumer Alerts From Local Water Utilities to Impact Energy Use" by Carter Wall
  • "EnergyABC Monster Game -- Awareness Behavior Commitment" by Yang Gao.

Selected by a panel of judges, the finalists will present their innovations to more than 200 utility executives at the CLEAResult Energy Forum in Austin, Texas, Oct. 4-6. Travel expenses will be paid by CLEAResult. The JUMP Final Round will take place on Oct. 5 at 4 p.m. and the grand prize winner will be announced during the dinner event that evening.

The winning innovation will be awarded a $3,000 cash prize from CLEAResult.

JUMP, launched by DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) last year, is an online crowdsourcing community that is co-hosted by NREL, ORNL and three other DOE national laboratories, as well as by top companies and organizations in the buildings industry. JUMP, which stands for Join in the discussion, Unveil innovation, Motivate transformation and Promote technology-to-market, now has six open technology challenges. This platform provides an opportunity for innovators, particularly small entrepreneurs, to present ideas for new energy-efficient buildings technologies to private- and public-sector leaders in research and development. 

"We received a lot of impressive submissions. Smart phones have become an integral part of our lifestyles, and these finalists have all come up with truly innovative ideas to tackle energy-efficiency challenges using smart phone technology," said Lieko Earle, NREL senior engineer.

For this innovation challenge, NREL has partnered with CLEAResult. CLEAResult, headquartered in Austin, is the largest provider of energy-efficiency programs and services in North America. CLEAResult designs and manages energy optimization services for utility companies, as well as residential, institutional, commercial and industrial organizations.

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