…2 Winners To Share N7m
Front runners, who will participate in the final smart meter hackathon, organized by the Lagos State government has been announced.
The grand finale of the event, organized to ease access to electricity in the Centre of Excellence, will hold between 16 and 18 September, 2020, at Eko Innovation Centre, 50, Awolowo Road, Victoria Island, Lagos, when Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu will declare the overall winner from competing entries in hardware and software categories.
A statement issued by the Honourable Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Mr. Olalere Odusote, disclosed that five contenders each have emerged from both categories of the competition and the eventual winners will share the grand prize of N7 million.
Odusote said that the finalists were shortlisted after a transparent, rigorous and competitive process, noting that the hackathon initiative received 274 entries, with 127 bids in the hardware category, and 147 competed in the software group.
Disclosing that 65 hardware and software prototypes were submitted by applicants, Odusote explained that the shortlisted five finalists from the hardware category are: Cosmo Automation, Smart Energy, Techwizard, Power Bit Crushers and Gadozz Electricals, while the five software finalists are: Vectorians, Zeena Platform, Magnitronics, Chosen Soft-Tech and Gideon.
He said, “The initiative by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources is aimed at providing affordable electricity meters to the populace, by facilitating the design and production of meters that will accelerate efforts towards achieving improvement in energy distribution, monitoring and prevention of revenue leakage.
“Suffice to state it here that over 60 per cent of Lagosians and Nigerians are estimated to be unmetered due to unavailability and the high cost of the meter acquisition. The Lagos State government is, therefore, leveraging bright local talents to design and produce affordable smart electricity meters.”
Speaking on the hackathon judging process, Advisory Board Member, Eko Innovation Centre Mrs. Doja Ekeruche, who is also one of the curators of the hackathon, noted that 19 judges with expertise in the power and tech ecosystem participated in the shortlisting process that produced the finalists.
She said, “We asked companies in the energy and tech ecosystem to nominate representatives to serve on the selection panel tasked with shortlisting the top five finalists from both hardware and software tracks to proceed to the final hackathon events.
“At the end of the shortlisting phase, a session was held with the judges to discuss the reviewing process and an analytics team ranked the submissions by all judges to arrive at the top finalists.”
Recall that at the launch of the programme on July 30, 2020, Lagos State governor, Mr. Sanwo-Olu, noted that the Smart Meter Hackathon Initiative marked a significant milestone in the implementation of the state government’s plan towards improving access to electricity, as it aligned with the Sustainable Development Goal, SDG 7 of the United Nations, targeted at achieving universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030.
