Thank you to everyone that submitted ideas to our online competition – What’s Your Big Idea?

Congratulations to our winner, Karl Dorn, who walked away with £10,000 and runners up William Harris and Julian Fisher. To see who they were up against, take a look at our panel’s top twenty below.

See Karl’s winning idea the Standby Plug.

The Standby Plug is an electrical plug that will automatically turn off an electrical appliance that is in standby mode.  For example, a television in standby mode still uses 85% of the power it does when switched on, wasting a large amount of electricity. 

When the sensor detects the 15% drop in power to standby mode, the timer waits 5 minutes and the trip switch shuts the appliance off.  When the appliance is needed again the Standby Plug automatically resets and is ready to use. 

The UK Government are thinking of outlawing the use of standby, meaning the manufacturers would have to change the design of such appliances in the UK only, and customers would not be able to use the standby mode. 

The Standby Plug can be fitted to existing appliances, making it unnecessary for a change in design, and giving the customer the ability to use the standby mode.  The Standby Plug uses already known technologies, making it quite easy to develop.