Challenge Expiration Date: April 1, 2018
Reward:
Collaboration and testing agreement
Abstract
New fuel for energy: Data! Looking for new strategies and ways Enel, on its path to become a Data Driven company, can exploit the huge amount of data it collects from customers, power plants, infrastructures, etc...
Description
Data to this century are what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and evolution. Flows of data have created new infrastructures, new services, new businesses, and new economics. Digital information is unlike any previous resource; it is extracted, refined, valued, bought and sold in different ways. It changes the rules for markets and it demands new approaches from regulators. In whatever industry, data are always getting more significant. Many companies will generate a tremendous volume of raw data that could be useful (manageable and sellable) by another company for another industry. Nowadays data are a certainty and they have a huge value both strategic and economic.
How can the open innovation approach help a company that wants to become a data driven organization generate new value from the huge amount of data it continuously collects?
If you think you have an interesting proposal that could enable the data’s value exploitation for Enel as a utility, the time to propose it is now.
The best proposals will have the possibility to be tested on sets of real data the company will make available for the proof of concept.
Background: Enel is a multinational energy company (30+ countries across 5 continents) and one of the world’s leading integrated electricity and gas operators, ready to lead the “energy transition”, based on renewables and grid digitization. Enel “Open Power” vision means: opening energy access to more people; opening the world of energy to new technologies; opening energy management to people; opening energy to new uses; and opening to more partnerships”. This represents Enel’s identity: a modern, open, flexible and responsive utility company.
Technologically, the company is already investing heavily in solar PV, hydro, geothermal, and other renewable sources, as well as digitizing the grid. However, to achieve its vision, the company will need to apply open innovation, specifically with regards to:
a) new relations with consumers, who might generate electricity and sell back to the grid
b) new partnerships with NGOs, who monitor sustainability issues
c) social entrepreneurs, to bring renewable energy to the developing world
d) startups, innovative companies and research centers.
