The ENERGY GLOBE Award was founded in 1999 by the Austrian energy pioneer Wolfgang Neumann and is one of today's most prestigious environmental awards. Goal of the Award is to present successful sustainable projects to a broad audience, for many of our environmental problems already have good, feasible solutions. National (country) ENERGY GLOBE Awards distinguish the best project submission from a country. Any national winner can become winner of an international ENERGY GLOBE Award or of the ENERGY GLOBE World Award. The international ENERGY GLOBE Award distinguishes the best projects in the five categories earth, fire, water, air and youth. The international ENERGY GLOBE Awards are presented annually in the realm of a televised ceremony.

On May 30, 2016 the Energy Globe National Award 2016 for Poland has been handed over at Commercial Section of the Austrian Embassy in Warsaw. This year the prize received a physicists Ernest Grodner, PhD, the inventor of ScanTheSun tool. Commercial councillor dr Karl Schmidt congratulated the winner and invited not only Ernest's friends and colleagues but also media representatives and experts who may help to commercialize his invention.

Ladies and Gentleman, I thank you very much for coming. Just to give you a brief introduction into the Energy Globe Award. With more than 170 participating countries and over 1400 projects submissions annually the Energy Globe Award is most prestigious environmental prize world-wide.

It distinguishes projects regionally, nationally and globally that conserve resources such as energy, or utilizing renewable or emission-free sources. Award ceremonies are held allover the world, so like ours today you have almost everyday in other countries award ceremonies. Prominent personalities as well as Energy Globe ambassadors in 90 countries support the mission of Energy Globe. The activities of Energy Globe attract media attention and international TV stations support each year with approximately 1000 hours of broadcasting time.

Especially about the international award which for 2016 will be handed over only next year 2017 but, of course, your project will also be an entry for the international award. The aim of the Energy Globe Award is to attract global attention on sustainable, everywhere applicable environmental solutions and to motivate people to become active in this area.

Now, you might ask how we as the Austrian Embassy and Advantage Austria come into this picture. First of all, the award was founded in Austria and we are enthusiastic supporters of Energy Globe Award. And its aim is to strengthen society awareness of the necessity for ecological change by honoring outstanding best practices and projects in environmental sustainability from all parts of the world. And to explain what we do, Advantage Austria is the official trade promotion organization of the Republic of Austria and as a country we are proud of our success in green technologies. An our support of the Energy Globe Awards continues this tradition.

So, now I would like to proceed in handing over the award. Mr. Grodner, please come next to me. You know of course the description of the project. So I have here the official certificate and then still I would like to read out a little bit at least of the description. And this is: The highest insolation of a solar panel is at the forefront of any solar installation but different solar collector shapes strongly affect the optimal panel orientation. Finding optimal panel orientation was a pure guesswork at the presence of obstructions like landform, trees or buildings around the installation area. This year national winner of the Energy Globe Award in Poland developed a smartphone application that adjusts solar panels towadrs the Sun for maximum operational efficiency. The app enables panel optimization even in crowded urban surroundings.

With that I would like to congratulate you on your initiative and hand over the official certificate ENERGY GLOBE NATIONAL AWARD 2016 winner for Poland, project: ScanTheSun, applicant: Ernest Grodner, signed by Maneka Gandhi the former minister for environment of India member of the famous family and She is also the chairwomen of the Energy Globe jury. And also Wolfgang Neumann who is the founder of the Energy Globe foundation. And you see here also is the logo of Advantage Austria but also UNESCO and UNEP as a supporters. So congratulations.

I would like to thank the organizers for that exceptional award. Such moments give me the motivation for my further activity in teaching and sharing my knowlegde.

I would like to take this opportunity to say few words about the origins of the ScanTheSun initiative. In the year 2012 I have been asked to prepare lectures about nuclear energy techniques for students at the Faculty of Physics at University of Warsaw. Then, there was a natural question on comparison of the nuclear energy with alternative, ecological energy sources. I started preparing ScanTheSun app just to play with my students around the university building after finishing the nuclear energy course.

First version of ScanTheSun app has been prepared for one type of an old cellphone I possessed in 2013. It was working supprisingly well so I decided to change the code enabling the app to work on the majority of the mobile devices. This process together with debugging took another year. My wife, Dominika, prepared then an attractive graphic design making the project ready for publication in 2014.

Fortunately, there was a feedback from users. Basing on that I have extended the app by features related to solar panels optics. In 2015 the app has been coupled with an online database of optical efficiencies of solar panels. So it took 3 years for ScanTheSun to become what it is now.

Let me end up this brief presentation with acknowledgements. First of all I would like to thank my present and former supervisors prof. Teresa Rząca-Urban and Dr Julian Srebrny for, I would say, for a certain freedom of action they have given to myself. I would like to thank my principals profs Tomasz Matulewicz and Marek Pfutzner for the proposal of giving nuclear energy lectures at our faculty. As I told, it was the origin of the ScanTheSun initiative.

Special thanks are to my Wife Dominika for preparing of a fantastic graphic design for the ScanTheSun app as well as for ScanTheSun Web-site. Sometimes my collaborators and students watching my lectures are asking how did I make such a nice picture or animation ? And I'm sometimes answering - actually it is very simple, the only thing you have to do is to marry a computer graphic designer.

I'm thankfull to Chiara Mazzocchi for preparing the italian version of the cellphone-app. There are persons not directly involved in the project. These are my closest friends. Bartłomiej Zaremba, Konrad Stamburski and Sebastian Siuchta. Finally I would like to thank the youngest person involved - my daughter Agata. She was my best app tester at any stage of development. In the future, maybe she will remind herself the todays ceremony and then get involved in some public activity too.

Thank you very much.

Short video of the Energy Globe National Award Ceremony 2016 in Warsaw together with the Energy Globe image film. Click here for a high resolution video.

University of Warsaw about Energy Globe National Award 2016 (in Polish)

Faculty of Physics UW about Energy Globe National Award 2016 (in Polish)

Energy Globe National Award 2016 for Polski - Advantage Austria website (in German).

Wirtschaftskammer Osterreich about the prize (in German).

ScanTheSun initiative at the Energy Globe website.