Tendril Powers Winning Energy Efficiency Apps In First-Of-Its-Kind Crowdsourcing Developer Challenge
Tendril announced that winners have been chosen in the first-ever crowdsourcing challenge giving developers access to real-time customer data and feedback. The contest, which was sponsored by Tendril and Essent N.V., the Netherlands' largest energy company serving more than 2 million customers, culminated after a three-month program in which two winning applications were selected.
This unique project used the Tendril Connect™ cloud platform to link 140 of Essent's smart meter-enabled residential customers with third-party (application) developers from around the world. The app developers used Tendril Connect APIs to access rich interval usage data from energy meters and create innovative consumer apps for the program participants. The participating developers brought forth an innovative and broad range of applications. Developers had two months to create and test their apps, which Essent made available to the participating households. Participants used the apps, provided feedback and interacted with the developers through a co-creation forum, and rated the applications.
The winners were:
Consumer Award Winner--the first award was selected by Essent's participating customers. It was given to snApp, which created an application for the iPhone with a dial that shows customers their real-time energy usage in a simple, graphical interface, similar to a thermostat.
Essent Award Winner--the second winner was chosen by Essent as having the most potential of all of the applications created. iWattMeter shows more granular energy usage data over time, thereby giving consumers more visibility into time-of-use trends, etc.
"We're proud to have provided the technology platform for this landmark project. For the first time developers, consumers and an innovative energy company came together in a crowdsourcing project using real-time data," said Adrian Tuck, CEO at Tendril. "With the unparalleled customer access provided by Essent, these developers have achieved true consumer engagement, making energy consumers actual participants in the development of applications they will use to make smarter energy decisions. Congratulations to the winners, snApp and iWattMeter, on creating powerful applications built on Tendril Connect."
Both winners were awarded 1250€ and the opportunity to meet with the Essent N.V. Smart Energy team about potentially rolling out the applications to a wider audience. During that process they will receive advice on bringing the applications to market to ensure that consumers get to take advantage of the capabilities they provide.
"This was a truly first-of-its-kind collaboration between developers, a utility and its customers to create powerful, yet simple applications that can help customers better understand their energy usage," said Jai Agaram, creator of iWattMeter. "With Essent providing direct access to customers and the Tendril Connect platform providing the toolset we required to build live, real-time access to customer data into our applications, we were able to build compelling applications that consumers want to use. I am honored to be chosen as one of the winners in the contest and thank Tendril and Essent for creating this unique opportunity."
The unique crowdsourcing project used the Tendril Connect cloud-based platform to link some 140 of Essent's smart meter-enabled residential customers with web and mobile application developers from around the world. The app developers used Tendril Connect APIs to access rich interval usage data (10 second intervals) from energy meters and create innovative consumer apps for the program participants.
"As a developer, it's rare to be able to receive the granularity of feedback we got from Essent customers as part of the development process," said Richard Jong of Frontwise, creator of snApp. "Normally, there are software or hardware barriers to getting access to live data during the development cycle and the Tendril Connect platform helped to alleviate those barriers. The co-creation process was really helpful in building a better app and we're honored to be chosen as a winner by Essent's participating electricity consumers."
"The co-creation project was a resounding success, with our customers genuinely engaged with the entire development process and the development teams valuing the direct customer feedback," said Arjan van der Eijk, director Smart Energy, Essent. "The Tendril Connect platform was instrumental in unlocking real-time customer data for use by the application developers and providing the necessary tools to deliver compelling apps by the end of the project. We're excited at the potential value the two winning apps can bring to our customers."
