Last year in December I have participated at the Hult prize on Campus competition with 3 of my coursemates. We signed up for this two-day boot camp to come up with a solution as social entrepreneurs to make an impact on 10million lives by 2025. This year Hult prize was on energy.

We came up with a solution to democratise the electric system and support the traditional grid system by handover control to private households and using blockchain technology to create a global virtual grid. The fundamental concept is to build on existing and emerging resources by creating a new market space as a user-centric agent, rather than building up the infrastructure for renewables or being an energy supplier. With this concept, we give the user the control to send his surplus via our network to his community; friends and families or for the social cause to prevent energy poverty.

We had less than 24hours to come up with the idea, create a feasible concept and prepare a pitch-deck for pitching it in front of a panel. My contribution was on the crucial technology for the concept with expertise about blockchain and big-picture thinking.

In total, we were competing against 12 groups. The first round only 4 teams will be invited to pitch in front of 12 panel members to get fast-tracked to the regionals in London.

We pitched ourself through the first round and become runners up at the overall event. Even if we didn’t got fast tracked, we had a lot of positive encouragement from experts in the energy industry mentioning that energy trading will come in the next 2-3 years down the line. However, the complexity and feasibility as an emerging service has diminished the credibility for the Hultprize competition.

One of the panel members was the CEO of an startup based in Newcastle, to whom we had a catch up meeting after the Hultprize as well as with another Researcher and social entrepreneur for renewable energy systems in Africa. It seems like, we are on something and it would be a shame, if we are not creating something out of it.