Overview

An enormous quantity of energy-related data is collected every day from energy meters and other systems installed within customers’ buildings. Energy invoices are also a source of information such as energy consumption and peaks with related cost impacts and history of payments, carbon footprint, energy tariffs, facility operations, and weather conditions. Enel already offers a range of solutions leveraging this data but is interested in gathering detailed ideas and descriptions for other offerings that utilize this data and possibly combine it with external data sources to provide unique products and/or services to industrial and commercial customers.

This Challenge provides contribution to the following SDGs:

• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities;
• SDG 12 : Responsible Consumption and Production;
• SDG 13: Climate Action

For questions about the challenge and your proposal you can contact EnelOpenInnovabilityChallenges@innocentive.com

For technical support about the submission you can contact OpenInnovability-support@enel.com

This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.

Description

BACKGROUND

An enormous quantity of energy-related data is collected every day from energy meters, sub-meters, and Building Automation Systems (BAS) installed within customers’ buildings. Energy invoices are also a source of information such as energy consumption and peaks with related cost impacts and history of payments, carbon footprint, energy tariffs, facility operations, and weather conditions. Enel already offers a range of solutions leveraging this data, including:

• Monitoring and verification of the data gathered from multi-sites meters and sub-meters to measure the energy performance trends, identifying anomalies vs customer consumption patterns:
  • generation of customizable automatic reports
  • display of the entire portfolio's energy consumption and comparison between the sites with performance indicators
  • immediate notifications via email/sms when consumption is higher or lower than a predefined threshold
  • automatic identification of recommended actions to implement in order to optimize and benefit from energy saving initiatives
  • digital services with an interactive dashboard that enables multi-point business clients to collect the electricity, gas, water and waste bills for their multiple sites and supply points, comparing them and identifying any errors

• Energy intelligence software isn’t a replacement for your building automation system (BAS), it’s a complementary tool that informs best practices for scheduling and optimizing a BAS for maximum cost savings.
  • enelx.com/en/smart-business/advisory-energy-intelligence-software
  • enernoc.com/products/software
  • youtube.com/watch?v=M01Q2Kgkvzo
• Circular economy assessment
  • Assessment of corporate circularity (e.g. production and non-production sites energy performance, corporate approach, supply chain), including annual reassessment versus targets
  • Assessment of sites circularity and sustainability
  • Sustainability reporting (CO2 emissions)
• Utility bill management
  • Bill collection, validation and payment process
  • Provides transparency and visibility into utility bill data
    • enelx.com/en/smart-business/smart-electrical-bill-management-business
    • enernoc.com/products/capabilities-businesses/overview/utility-bill-management
• Energy procurement solution
  • Streamlines the competitive bidding process and ensures maximum transparency into the energy sourcing process. Reverse auction platform to increase the number of suppliers competing (competitive online auctions & RFP management)

The platform also enables:

• Visibility into market prices and trends
  • Insight from previous transactions
  • Proactive market monitoring & automated triggers
  • Contract management and renewal opportunity tracking
    • enernoc.com/products/energy-procurement

THE CHALLENGE

Enel is seeking ideas and detailed descriptions for innovative services and/or products to offer industrial and commercial customers worldwide that leverage collected energy-related data as well as data from other sources. Ideas should be well-formulated and submissions should include details of the data utilized and how it is integrated to produce the new service or product. Solutions should utilize data collected directly from customers to address their specific needs but may also use benchmarking of different customers to offer them new services. Solvers are also encouraged to incorporate external data such as weather conditions to form a more complete solution than possible strictly using energy data. An example of energy-related data collected is provided as an attachment.

Proposed solutions should address address customers’ needs in relation to one or more of the following areas:

• Financials improvement (increase of customers’ revenue / cost reduction)
• Simplification of operations
• Risk and energy management
• Sustainability
• Transparency

PROJECT DELIVERABLES

The submitted proposal should include the following:

1. Detailed description of the proposed solution and explanation of how it addresses customers’ needs.
2. Description of the data utilized and how any external data utilized is obtained.
3. Sample materials, for example a detailed description of a dashboard and possible mock-ups of how the information would be displayed.
4. A description of tools/software/hardware needed to provide the proposed service or product.

The proposal should not include any personal identifying information (name, username, company, address, phone, email, personal website, resume, etc.) or any information the Solvers may consider as their Intellectual Property they do not want to share.

Challenge rules

This is an Ideation Challenge, which has the following unique features:

• There is a guaranteed award. The award(s) will be paid to the best submission(s) as solely determined by the Seeker. The total payout will be $15,000, with at least one award being no smaller than $5,000 and no award being smaller than $1,000.
• The Solvers are not required to transfer exclusive intellectual property rights to the Seeker. Rather, by submitting a proposal, the Solver grants to the Seeker a royalty-free, perpetual, and non-exclusive license to use any information included in this proposal, including for promotional purposes.

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (Central European Time) on 7 October 2018. 

Late submissions will not be considered.

What happens next?

After the Challenge deadline, the Seeker will complete the review process and make a decision with regards to the Winning Solution(s). All Solvers that submit a proposal will be notified on the status of their submissions; however, no detailed evaluation of individual submissions will be provided.

ABOUT INNOCENTIVE

InnoCentive collaborates with Enel to manage this challenge.

InnoCentive is the global innovation marketplace where creative minds solve some of the world's most important problems for cash awards up to $1 million. Commercial, governmental and humanitarian organizations engage with InnoCentive to solve problems that can impact humankind in areas ranging from the environment to medical advancements.