Inside the Wendy House: E.ON Innovation

Wednesday 15 February 2012

E.ON Innovation

E.ON Innovation is an nationwide online innovation community for ideas creation encouraging the UK public to come together to help generate fresh innovative ideas; find the next generation of energy products and services; and design the next big energy idea. E.ON have co-funded the new Channel 4 series Home of the Future. The series shows the transformation in the life of a Sheffield family, as their home is filled from top-to-bottom with futuristic technology and gadgets. Over the weeks, new innovation challenges will be introduced on the themes of rest, work, play, food and wellbeing. The first innovation challenge is on the theme of rest and asks participants to come up with an answer to how the home could ‘learn’ about energy use in order to create a more restful environment?

For example, your home could help you to relax using controls for lighting, temperature and air quality such as humidity, temperature, filtration, fragrancing and ventilation. You could customise energy use in the home to suit you and lower the bills too. The home could even have different energy zones.

E.ON is looking for new energy ideas that will be popular and profitable, but also practical, making a real difference to the future of energy.

Taking part is quick and easy and there are three ways in which you can get involved:

Submit ideas: If you have an idea, big or small, see it transformed into a reality and get rewarded for it too.
Comment: Help others develop their ideas by commenting on their submissions and co-creating to develop even better ideas.
Vote: Have your say on which ideas you like the most and which ones you think should be delivered with E.ON.

There will also be live online events for community members to get to know each other, and to encourage collaborations.

An expert panel will be assessing the best submissions and the winning ideas will be announced on 25th June 2012.

If you submit an idea that is chosen as the winning idea for one of the five challenges, you'll win a home energy makeover worth up to £2,000. This could include some really exciting gadgets featured on the Channel 4 series, 'Home of the Future with E.ON' to help make your home energy fit for the future.

The judges will choose one of these five challenge winners to receive the overall 'shining star' prize of a home energy makeover worth up to £10,000 and this could also include some of the gadgets featured in the show.

All five winning ideas will be developed by E.ON, with the intention of starting to make the products and services a reality in 2012 - it is truly a 'money can't buy' prize.

In addition, there will be two runners-up rewards of £100 worth of Homebase vouchers per challenge. This is an incredible opportunity for us all to get involved and have our say. We can help shape the future of energy products and think of the things which would make our lives easier or greener or more efficient. This is a competition that could help change lives...imagine knowing that your idea was being used in millions of homes. How about running water pipes through the back of your oven to heat the water for your washing up? Or designing a motion sensitive radiator? Or lights that automatically switch off when you leave the room? Anyone looking for inspiration for their ideas should tune in to ‘Home of the Future’ on Sunday nights on Channel 4.