Students to learn from housewife inventor

Perth entrepreneur aims to pass on experience at Aberdeen lecture

By Ian Forsyth

Published: 06/03/2008

Tanya Ewing, 39, from Perth, came up with the idea of energy-monitoring device Ewgeco.

She had no previous product-development experience, yet she now has a global patent pending and the first orders are scheduled for installation in May.

Ms Ewing will explain to students what it takes to conceive a new product idea, protect its intellectual-property rights, choose a manufacturer and get it to market.

Ewgeco is the result of nearly two years of research and development after she discovered there were no products that would enable her to know her real-time consumption of electricity, water and gas without getting on her hands and knees to read the meter under the stairs.

As a sufferer of the debilitating Lyme disease, Ms Ewing not only found the meter difficult to reach, but the information was not easily interpreted.

Ewgeco uses a simple traffic-light system, whereby the display changes from green to amber to red depending on the usage of various utilities.

Ms Ewing has identified a market opportunity at a time when businesses and consumers are trying to cut energy bills and carbon dioxide emissions. She said: “The demand is there and not just from Scotland.

“I get contacted from people all over the world wanting to buy Ewgeco. It is this demand that is driving me, as helping people to change their behaviour will make a difference to the planet for our children and their children. I am very proud that Ewgeco has been invented and designed in Scotland.

“It is being made in Scotland and the first units off the production line will be installed in my home town of Perth. I have been on an amazing learning curve during the last two years, and I aim to tell the RGU students that with determination, total belief in the concept and a strong support network, the sky is the limit.”

Marzena Starnawska, of the Charles P. Skene Centre for Entrepreneurship at the RGU business school, organised the lecture.

She said: “Tanya Ewing serves as an excellent example of someone who, even if they have no engineering background, can make their innovative invention viable.

“We all see all these potential market opportunities all around us, but we do not have enough passion and persistence to grasp them. For me, it also proves that there is very clear and continuous support for entrepreneurship in Scotland. Entrepreneurship can indeed be taught in a variety of ways.”