‘New Energy’ national award recognises global growth potential
Company announcement
Wattwatchers thanks the organisers, sponsors, partners, judges and mentors of the Australian Technologies Competition for their support this week in making us the winner of the 2016 ‘New Energy Award’.
Our team also applauds all of the 141 Australian innovators that entered ATC16, and all 38 semi-finalists and 20 finalists across 8 categories – with 6 of these categories still to be judged at the national innovation competition’s grand finale in Sydney on November 2.
Wattwatchers’ Managing Director Gavin Dietz was presented with the distinctive ATC trophy (see left) at the preliminary awards ceremony in Melbourne on October 5, following a live judging session embedded into the All-Energy Australia conference and trade show.
Dietz said: ‘It’s very important to recognise the partners that have collaborated with Wattwatchers over several years to help us to shape this success, especially the world’s most intelligent solar performance monitoring solution Solar Analytics, and its investor and market roll-out partner AGL New Energy; business energy management dashboard group Grid Analytics by Acresta (now Simble); our early residential energy app partner Our Green Home (Object Consulting); narrowband communications partner NNNCo; manufacturing partner Classtek; and software-as-a-service provider Knowledge-Global.
‘Innovation can be a lonely business without supportive partners. So we thank them all.’
NSW taking a lead in homegrown clean energy innovation
The 3 finalists in the ‘New Energy Award’ category showed clear evidence of NSW’s rising status as a clean energy technology engine room for Australia, with the runner-up Mako Turbines, and 3rd place-getter and ‘People’s Choice’ winner SunSHIFT, also being Sydney-based along with Wattwatchers. Well done Mako Turbines and SunSHIFT.
Wattwatchers also highlights the success of our new friends from Independent Products, the Melbourne-based winner of the other ‘cleantech’ category judged this week, the ‘Smart Cities Award.’ Independent Products ingeniously uses the waste-water created by air conditioners to improve energy efficiency by up to 40%, and can be retrofitted to most of the world’s split system air conditioning and refrigeration units.
The official ATC16 media release says: ‘Both winners feature world-leading Australian inventions combined with strong commercial acumen and international expansion strategies that persuaded the judges that they had the greatest “global potential”.
‘These winners go on to compete in the national finals in Sydney on 2 November against technologies from other sectors. The day will feature the unique ATC Investor Connect speed-dating, “Dragon’s Den” style “Fast Pitching” and the Gala Awards Dinner at which the prestigious Australian Technology Company of the Year will be announced.’
The judges’ comments on Wattwatchers were: ‘A well-developed solution for which there is a clear market need. The company provides data and control to its users in a sophisticated and accessible way. The global strategy is credible and it will be exciting to watch the company’s growth.’
Leading Australian clean technology online publication Renew Economy reported on the ATC16 ‘cleantech’ winners.
