Teenagers from a Cornwall school had an appointment with royalty on Monday as they accepted an award for their inspiring idea for making life ‘better, simpler or easier’.

Maggie Sykes, 13, Lauryn Hughes-Jones, 14, and Lauren Healey, 14, from Richard Lander School, Truro, picked up the gong for the energy category at the TeenTech Awards in Buckingham Palace in London for their inspiring idea 'Playground Dynamo' – a play park that generates electricity on its own and pumps water to rural communities.

The Duke of York, patron of TeenTech and The TeenTech Awards, held a special ceremony for the talented young entrepreneurs at the palace, to award them with their official prize and to hear more about their innovations.

The local youngsters were joined by a handful of winners from other schools, who had seen off fierce competition from hundreds of teams across the UK to travel to London to receive their award from TeenTech co-founder and BBC Tomorrow’s World presenter Maggie Philbin, BBC Bang Goes The Theory’s Dallas Campbell and Stargazing Live’s Liz Bonnin.

Speaking at the palace prize giving, the Duke commented: “Young people should recognise that science and technology are the basis of how we are going to be prosperous in the future.

"We have to create an enterprising culture where education is conducted in a culture of enterprise, where young people are encouraged to understand they can rather than they can't. I believe TeenTech has the ability to inspire kids to do things they wouldn’t otherwise aspire to do.

"There’s a real need for teamwork, leadership and adaptability to be taught – we need this to be part of the culture in schools.”

Students, aged between 11-16 years old and working in groups of three, were encouraged to search for scientific and technological solutions to real problems in 15 categories linked to industries important to the future, such as environment, healthcare and wearable technology.  The Cornish pupils saw off stiff competition and won the award which was sponsored by the National Grid.

Maggie, Lauryn and Lauren, explained: “Our idea is a play park that generates electricity and/or pumps water for rural communities in developing countries. This park would consist of a round-a-bout, a see-saw and perhaps a spinning swing. However we’d like to provide blueprints enabling the local community to source the materials cheaply from things like broken car parts to create a sustainable project.”

The ceremony also marked the launch of the 2015 awards, which will add three new categories to its line up, and now the winning students are encouraging other schools in the county to sign up and bring their own ideas to life.

In a first for 2015, a brand new category entitled ‘Consumer Innovation Award’ will be launched and run across all categories in the competition. In partnership with electronics specialist Maplin, the winning design will work closely with Maplin's own new product development team and bring it to market – selling it in stores across the country and on the Maplin website.

The ‘Infrastructure’ category will give young people the opportunity to delve into the ever-complex organisational structures of buildings, roads and power supplies and is sponsored by Network Rail, while ‘Retail and Finance’ will open up the increasing challenges of the consumer world and look at how technology can overcome these.

As well as the annual awards, TeenTech offers one-day interactive science events to schools nationwide to engage young people in STEM and show them a possible career path. The Awards are the culmination of TeenTech’s six years of hard work in giving young people direct access to leading corporations.

Full details on how to enter this year’s awards can be found on the TeenTech website: http://www.teentech.com/awards/