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Tendril launches contest to find killer smart grid app

By | January 6, 2012, 2:32 PM PST

Tendril, the Boulder, Colo.-based home energy monitoring startup kicked off a contest this week to encourage independent developers to design a killer smart grid app for the company’s management platform.

The $5,000 prize will be awarded Jan. 22 at the Cleanweb Hackathon. Tendril actually opened up its applications developer program last August. More than 100 developers have signed up to use the Tendril Connect platform to create apps, according to the company.

The cloud-based platform was designed to support networked devices and data as well as enable remote management capabilities. The hope is that by opening up the platform to developers, innovative home-energy-related apps will emerge for customers and utilities. The end goal is a smart grid and smart home apps store, according to a statement from Tendril’s chief technology officer Kent Dickson.

Other smart grid news from the week:

  • ComEd, a subsidiary of Exelon, says it will invest $2.6 billion to upgrade Chicago’s smart grid. The 10-year plan aims to strengthen the electrical system against outages and will add high-tech features that will eliminate the need for meter readers, give consumers greater control over their power use and automatically restore power outages, the Chicago Tribune reported. ComEd hired startup Silver Spring Networks to design and deploy the smart grid platform.

Photo: Flcikr user Caveman Chuck Coker, CC 2.0

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Kirsten Korosec

About Kirsten Korosec

Kirsten Korosec is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Kirsten Korosec

Kirsten Korosec

Contributing Editor

Kirsten Korosec has written for Technology Review, Marketing News, The Hill, BNET and Bloomberg News. She holds a degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She is based in Tucson, Arizona.

Follow her on Twitter.

Kirsten Korosec

Kirsten Korosec

Kirsten does not have financial holdings that would influence how or what she covers.

She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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