Inventors, engineers, DIYer’s, get your pencils sharpened and your plans on paper.

The second round of General Electric’s (NYSE: GE) ecomagination challenge got underway yesterday. The company is offering five, $100,000 awards to winners of the contest. And this time it’s called: “ecomagination Challenenge: Powering Your Home.”

The Powering Your Home challenge was born out of the first “ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid,” which had more than 4,000 entrants. Of those, 1,100 focused on home energy use, according to GE.

In the first challenge, the company and its venture-capital partners awarded a total of $500,000 to five innovative companies that helped regulate power on the grid.

This time, though, the emphasis is on home energy use, said Tore Land, director of the ecomagination Challenge.

“The two primary focus areas for the ‘Powering Your Home’ challenge are home energy management and harnessing renewables for the home,” said Land. “Solar and other renewables like wind, hydro and biomass for home use are important areas for this phase of the challenge.”

Though GE offers photovoltaics, wind turbines, inverters and power controllers, the challenge is technology-agnostic.

For instance, despite introducing its Nucleus at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, entrants need not use it in their bids.

“Entrants are free to incorporate the GE Nucleus home energy management system, but we are judging entrants based on the idea, not use of GE products,” he said. “At GE, we make strategic investments around the world with public and private sector partners, governments and academia. We are confident the best ideas can come from anywhere.”

Applicants who applied for the first round, but didn’t win, are encouraged to resubmit their projects for the second round. Particularly if they focus on home energy or they’ve reevaluated and improved their proposals, according to GE.

But hurry up, Land said.

“The ‘Powering Your Home’ challenge ends March 1, so we encourage innovators, entrepreneurs and DIY’ers to submit their best eco-home ideas over the next six weeks,” he said. “We plan to announce initial results in late March or early April.”

Image courtesy of GE’s ecomagination.