Martin Dix: How I proved the Dragons wrong

Martin Dix wasn't deterred when his idea was slated on BBC's Dragons' Den. Instead, he took his product - a meter that translates electrical usage in the home into real-time monetary value - to Britain's biggest energy companies. Now, as fuel bills rise and belts tighten, his company Current Cost is turning over millions.

With one electricity provider after another announcing double-digit increases in bills, households are bracing themselves for an expensive winter. Yet for Martin Dix, the rises are good news. His firm, Current Cost, sells gadgets that tell people the real-time cost of the energy they're using making the quarterly bill less of a shock.

Dix, 51, first had the idea of measuring the cost of electricity use when he was working with amp meters as a 15-year-old apprentice electrician in 1975. "Current meters give readings in amps and I thought it'd be good to have a monetary value that everyone could understand." But it was only in 2004, "when Tony Blair started implementing the Kyoto Protocol and forced electricity companies to act", that Dix could see an opportunity.

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James McKeigue

James graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in English literature and history, and has a certificate in journalism from the NCTJ. James has worked as a freelance journalist in various Latin American countries.He also had a spell at ITV, as welll as wring for Television Business International and covering the European equity markets for the Forbes.com London bureau. James has travelled extensively in emerging markets, reporting for international energy magazines such as Oil and Gas Investor, and institutional publications such as the Commonwealth Business Environment Report. He is currently the managing editor of LatAm INVESTOR, the UK's only Latin American finance magazine.