The overall winner was Onzo Ltd who have developed a suite of innovative appliance detection algorithms which disaggregate household electricity consumption from a single source of electricity data into individual appliance consumption. The data source can be a clip-on sensor, such as the one in Onzo’s Smart Energy Kit, or a smart meter.
The judges commented: “Onzo has developed an intuitive product that creates valuable energy savings for its growing user base. The simplicity and reach of Onzo’s offering led the judges to select the company as the 2011 Rushlight Award winner.”
The group category winners were:
- Artemis Intelligent Power for their ultra-efficient Artemis Digital Displacement® hydraulic transmission system which has been scaled up to replace the problematic gearbox and power electronics used in conventional wind turbine drivelines. It provides a compact and robust power transmission with variable speed, grid fault resilience, low weight, modular design and much higher efficiencies than previously achieved with hydrostatic transmissions;
- Nexeon Ltd have effectively addressed the life cycle issues associated with silicon used for anode coatings, thereby enabling silicon’s strong affinity for lithium to be exploited in lithium ion batteries. This enables batteries to have greater power storage and to be smaller and lighter, thereby, inter alia, improving the performance of electric vehicles significantly;
- Highview Power Storage who have developed and deployed the world’s first Cryogenic Energy Storage system using a novel system design and development of ‘asymmetric’ cold recycle and storage. The system can be scaled to 100MWs/GWhs of storage and it can harness low grade waste heat (sub 100°C) from industrial processes converting it to additional electricity. All the components are available from mature supply chains;
- Ocean Resource Ltd for their carbon capture and storage and oil recovery enhancement solution which combines an autonomous high stability buoyant structure moored to an integrated gravity base and fluid riser, seabed injection wells, and a 45,000 tonne capacity liquid CO2 storage facility with an insulated loading system to enable liquid CO2 to be injected into a subsea reservoir to sequester the CO2 and/or to facilitate enhanced oil recovery or methane release for energy production;
- Nextek Ltd who have developed and deployed the first closed loop process for food-grade post-consumer recycled propylene packaging. The technology uses a novel process to decontaminate the polypropylene involving a high temperature melt and a solid low temperature decontamination so that food-grade standards can be achieved, thereby enabling virgin polypropylene to be displaced.
- Advanced Plasma Power who have developed a unique two-stage gasification technology, Gasplasma, which enables the clean, efficient and sustainable conversion of waste-to-energy. The two well-proven technologies convert non-recyclable waste into a clean hydrogen-rich syngas and an inert vitrified product which can be used as a building material. This process is being used on the world’s first enhanced landfill mining project in the world.
The complete list of winners is set out below and the winners and the commended entries, together with a description of their technology and innovations, are set out in the roll of honour at www.rushlightawards.co.uk.