Picture: Team Project M

Another innovative idea from the UNIST ‘Project M’ team was awarded the Gold Prize in the 2014 KEPCO Electricity Technology Idea Contest. This is an idea about developing a smartphone application that monitors the usage of household electricity and helps to save it.

A junior at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of UNIST, Kyung In Baek suggested this idea. “I got the idea by watching my mother keeping track of the household account,” said Baek.

This application will help users become aware of their electricity usage in real-time, and assist in cutting down on the waste of electricity.

The application allows one to set the limit of monthly power usage, and notifies that person of daily or weekly expected, electricity usage. Users are able to verify their real time electricity bill and control the amount of power used.

 The App is also able to tell the last month’s or last week’s power usage. It provides various other kinds of useful data: – comparable power spent of other households with same family size and similar house size, – Power spent in each time zone, as well as the electric bill.

 “Power shortage is a national crisis that we all have to try to solve,” said CEO of Project M Dong-Hwan Song. “We have to lead people voluntarily to use only necessary electricity without any waste rather than insist on cutting their power usage.”

Project M is a venture team, consisting of ten UNIST students. This team is getting closer to opening their own business by receiving three awards. One award from the DB Mash-up Contest, one from the 2013 U (University)-Startup Contest, and the most recent from the KEPCO Electricity Technology Idea Contest, all since last October.

 “We are all so delighted that we have won these awards in such a short period” said team leader Youn Jae Lee. “We will try our best to develop ‘Project M’ to a real venture business.”