Welectricity wins GE Ecomagination Consumer Innovation Award

Welectricity, an innovative, award-winning social network that helps users track and reduce their electricity consumption at home, has been named by GE as one of the 10 award-winners of their global Ecomagination Smart Grid Challenge.{{more}}

In an awards ceremony on Tuesday, November 16, in New York City, which was streamed live at www.ecomagination.com, GE named five US$100,000 innovation award winners, an additional five US$10,000 consumer innovation award winners and announced 12 business partnerships that will attract a total venture capital investment of $55 million. Other venture partnerships, up to a total investment of US$200 million, are planned to be announced by GE over the next year and a half.

Welectricity, the brainchild of Vincentian energy consultant Herbert A (Haz) Samuel, won a consumer innovation award for “Best Idea for the Millennial”.

The Ecomagination Challenge, a global competition to find and fund the world’s best ideas to power the 21st century smart grid, was launched by GE on July 13 and attracted almost 4,000 ideas from more than 150 countries. The challenge is GE’s commitment to developing an innovative, global clean energy future and is backed by a US$200 million fund, in collaboration with leading venture capital firms RockPort Capital, KPCB, Foundation Capital, and Emerald Technology Ventures.