emhTrade platform wins at NZ Sustainability Awards

Spiking power prices around the country have left the large power companies look-ing to burning imported coal to solve what’s going to be a long dry summer. Fear not though, the future of the power industry is right under our noses in a little office in central Auckland.

Winners of the ‘Revolutionising Energy’ category in last week’s Sustaina-ble Business Network Awards, emhTrade have been cooking something up set to change the way Kiwis interact with electricity – a mobile app called PowerPal.

After piloting the technology for the last 12 months emhTrade have created a plat-form which helps Kiwis choose clean, affordable electricity while getting rewarded for more energy efficient behaviour. Using data from your home’s smart-meter, cus-tomers receive daily notifications on ideal times to use power hungry appliances based on the spot price of electricity.

By following these simple steps customers can choose from either a reduced power bill, donations to the Auckland City Mission or planting a tree with Wellington startup Trees That Count.

By incentivising efficient power usage, PowerPal can help New Zealanders use fewer fossil fuels, get charged less and help make the electricity network more effi-cient as a whole.

“As homes and appliances get smarter, our vision is for this to become a beautifully seamless experience. Your washing machine will talk to our app and then decide for you the best time for you to clean your sheets. What seems quite a simple thing, could help NZ ending up having the most efficient power network in the world.” Says founder and CEO Stuart Innes.

The emhTrade team are in discussions with several large local retailers which could easily see their user base grow to 500,000 people in the next 6 months. Their award winning platform is also destined for electricity grids around the world with discus-sions across Australia and Asia in progress.

Watch this space.

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