Endesa Energy Challenges incubates the future of energy

Technology and innovation are present in an ever increasing number of sectors: transportation, logistics, banking and, of course, the energy sector. The electric company Endesa, conscious of the needs created by modern times, has decided to bet on innovation and to this end Endesa has turned to us to help organize new challenges. The result is embodied by the collaborative, innovation platform Endesa Energy Challenges. Here´s the story of how we did it and what it consisted of:

The challenge

Technological innovation is not only knocking on the doors of new companies; it is increasingly present in traditional and consolidated companies, such as utilities. In Endesa´s case, the installation of smart thermostats, or smartmeters, has generated enormous, new data sets whose full potential is still untapped. The profiling of consumers and their needs is also evolving, along with other technological advances like energy storage and distribution and self-consumption solutions. All of these changes highlight unexplored territories for the sector.

In this context, Endesa was facing two important challenges: to develop new ideas and strategies to bring Endesa closer to their customers, and to help them to optimize their energy consumption. To achieve these goals, the company needed an agile tool, a solution that we helped to identify and develop during each stage of the project.

Strategy

At Opinno, we believe in open innovation and digital tools, the two main components of the Endesa Energy Challenges platform we created for Endesa. We know that the most brilliant idea does not always arise from our most immediate environment, thus we decided that the platform should aspire to "create an international network of people capable of generating interesting ideas," as our project leader Alessandro Ghetti explains.

Endesa Energy Challenges aims to serve as an innovation probe around the world. Ghetti highlights: "Opinno is open innovation, and we want to transmit this same philosophy to the companies we work with. We believe that a platform like this was the best way to create a unique bet that would encompass all of the proposals and needs."

To generate this convergence of talent and ideas, the platform will be bolstered through a series of Endesa Challenges, designed according to real life situations to identify the profiles that will be capable of optimizing a market as mature as the energy sector. Each person who collaborates on a solution to one of the challenges launched by Endesa will become a part of their international network.

Our solution

The Endesa Energy Challenges platform was unveiled last October, during a presentation at the South Summit 2015 celebrated in Madrid (Spain). The final result is an open and dynamic, international platform that aspires to gather the top talent amongst designers, developers, experts in big data and entrepreneurs interested in energy innovation.

Endesa Energy Challenges launched two challenges during its presentation ceremony. The first was a hackathon directed at creating solutions that improve energy efficiency. During the two day event, 40 finalists selected from over 200 candidatures, prototyped their innovative solutions in groups of 10. The teams heard talks from experts like the IE Business School professor Enrique Dans and the innovation evangelist Alberto Levy. Their keynotes and the dynamic activities we designed at Opinno served to train the participants on topics like design thinking and gamification.

The winning idea behind the first prize, a cash award of 6,000 euros, was an application capable of detecting energy inefficiencies and losses within a residence through the use of a sensor. The second prize (3,000 euros) went to a project that integrates energy generated by distributed energy producers with consumer energy demand. Finally, the third prize of 1,000 euros will serve to support an educational app for children about responsible energy use through entertaining games. [You can watch a video summary here].

The second challenge is a datathon that aims to "reflect on the present of the energy sector and to design its future". This challenge targets experts in big data and relies on a 100% digital environment based on crowdsourcing and the availability of anonymous data gathered by Endesa´s new smartmeters. This competition will run through June, 2016.

These are just a few of the first challenges that we have prepared for Endesa. "The objective is to create an open innovation ecosystem formed by international experts that participate in the resolution of the company´s challenges and the future of energy", as our project leader explains, and he adds: "This is an initiative with so much unexplored potential and one that, despite launching only recently, has already been highlighted by the economic newspaper Expansión as one of the top five open innovation projects in the digital environment in Spain."