Cisco is planning to back technology that's designed to reduce energy consumption within electrical grids. Two students and a systems engineer came up with the idea, which won Cisco's iPrize contest.

The winning idea will be nurtured by Cisco and, the company hopes, be turned into a billion-dollar business.

Cisco is being deliberately vague about the details of the winning scheme because it wants to make money off the idea as well as discourage other from trying to exploit it. But a spokesman says the idea calls for making electrical grids more efficient so less energy is wasted, efficiency that could be pushed to homes.

The idea calls for using Cisco infrastructure in the grids to promote the efficiency, the spokesman says.

Here is Cisco’s full written description of the winning entry: “The winning team proposed an approach to using the network as the platform for visibility, manageability and, ultimately, optimized control of energy-consuming systems.” The winning idea includes “a business plan that improves energy efficiency by taking advantage of Cisco’s leadership in Internet Protocol (IP) technology.”

The winning team consists of a Russian woman who is a student in Germany, her husband and her brother. Anna Gossen, a computer science student at the Karlsruhe University in Germany, teamed up with her husband, Niels Gossen, a computer science student at the University of Applied Sciences in Germany, and her brother, Sergey Bessonnitsyn, a systems engineer from Russia.

Cisco is offering the trio a $250,000 prize to share as well as full-time jobs working for Cisco to develop their idea. So far none of the three has signed on. Cisco says that one, Anna Gossen, is still a student and wants to graduate before deciding.

Cisco plans to go ahead developing the trio’s idea on its own and hopes it can come up with a product within two years and generate $1 billion in revenues from it over the next five to seven years.

Cisco’s iPrize contest attracted 2,500 entries.