A local innovator with a new idea for saving energy, water and emissions has been shortlisted for the RBS Innovation Gateway. Aurora Australis submitted their idea after RBS called on innovators and small businesses (SMEs) to come forward with new eco-ideas for the bank’s 2,500 buildings around the UK.
Aurora Australis is one of the first companies to make it onto the shortlist. The RBS Innovation Gateway, which is led by Marcela Navarro, head of customer innovation at RBS, has three aims; to help RBS save more energy, water and waste, to nurture new, brilliant innovations and to help local inventors take their ideas to market.
Reinhold Wieland, general manager, is looking forward to working with RBS on a trial of the newly launched products. He explained that, as Peter F. Drucker said, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”. Pilot Energy meters and Optergy, our real time energy management product, connect to all of the important energy consuming elements in a building via a secure network and in real time. By doing this, the building owners can effectively manage energy, target waste and be alerted to the most critical conditions in the building. This often leads to substantial additional operational savings for a site as well as reducing energy costs and emissions.
Aurora Australis, which is based in Tonbridge, was established in the UK in 2012 and is part of a global group of companies with operations in the UK, Asia and Australia and one of the largest energy management building automation companies in Australia.
Reinhold believes that Real Time Energy Management + Critical System Monitoring System + Early Warning Heat Detection should be of interest to any site where continuation of business is essential – airports, hospitals, manufacturing, government buildings, offices, data centres, retail outlets and hotels. We achieve this by using smart data from sub-meters 24/7 and it alerts operators of any imminent problems in the electrical system (overloads, overvoltage for example) before the problem causes shut down or damage to systems and machinery.
Aurora Australis was one of over 140 companies from across the UK who submitted an idea to the RBS Innovation Gateway when the bank launched the project in March this year.
Their idea went before an independent panel of experts put together by RBS, including academics from Cambridge University and business leaders from major companies such as Carillion, who assessed each idea and decided which ones had made it onto the shortlist.
If successful, the next step for market ready ideas will be a trial on the RBS estate, including buildings and branches. All successful concepts will receive a grant to develop their ideas further.
Tested in house so far, the RBS trial will help us to collate data, scale up the project and provide proof of concept with valuable feed-back from actual users. Once proven, we hope to gain additional visibility be being able to provide a case study based on our experiences with RBS to other interested companies.
The shortlisted companies like Aurora Australis will now receive a huge range of support from RBS including:
· Testing and rolling out their idea on up to 2,500 RBS properties
· £3,000 grant for winning concepts and paper-based ideas
· Expertise to help accelerate their innovation to market
· Practical support and insights from the RBS Innovation Panel
· Access to the RBS Property Team and online events
· Connecting and collaborating with other leading innovators.
The RBS Innovation Gateway is a live project, so innovators in Kent who missed the first round can apply now to enter round two.
