GE’s Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Smart Grid,” unveiled in San Francisco on Tuesday, will fund five awards of €80,000 each to individuals or companies for breakthrough technologies, services and business models that accelerate the development of an intelligent energy grid. Meanwhile, the balance of the €160 million will be deployed as growth capital for promising start-ups and concepts.
“The GE ecomagination challenge is looking for the best ideas that will help create smarter, cleaner, more efficient electric grids and accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies,” said Nani Beccalli, president and CEO of GE International, launching the European challenge at GE’s Global Research Labs in Munich today.
Next generation grid technologies range from smart meters that give consumers control over their energy consumption, to sensors for load balancing, and new storage technologies that will enable intermittent and dispersed renewable energy sources, such as solar arrays around the Mediterranean and offshore wind power from the North Sea, to be integrated into Europe’s electricity networks.
“If you look at the electricity grid today, we are standing in front of a huge need for an entire overhaul of the system,” says Carlos J. Haertel, director of GE Global Research, Europe. “The timing is right. We have to set the stage for large-scale demos and start developing the technology solutions now.”
Europe is poised to play a key role in the global deployment of smart grids. Its electricity networks are more advanced than those in the US, according to experts, giving it a more modern base on which to upgrade. The European Commission has also made the drive for a low-carbon economy a top priority. On June 3, it launched a €2 billion smart grid initiative, as part of a 2020 Strategic Energies Technology (SET) Plan to develop large scale demonstration projects – the costly last step before taking new technologies to market.
“Historically, the EU always had money for R&D but not a lot for actual deployment. The EU’s SET Plan is an incentive to deploy new technologies and reap their benefits,” says Keith Redfearn, head of GE’s transmission and distribution business in Europe.
Smaller smart grid pilots are underway already in countries including Germany, UK, France, Italy and Austria. In one project, GE is working with German utility RWE and the University of Stuttgart to develop components for advanced energy storage on the smart grid of the future. Given the right conditions, Europe can become, “A leading hub in low-carbon innovation,” said Beccalli.
GE’s goal is to act as a catalyst for private sector innovation. But it acknowledges public officials have a key role in ensuring the framework conditions exist to deploy 21st century grids.
“The public role starts with having the right legal framework for generating and processing data for individual households – and regulating pricing for electric power. That can have a significant impact on how quickly you deploy the smart grid,” said Tore Land, head of the Ecomagination Challenge.
The core challenge in building smarter grids is to graft information and communications technology onto ageing transmission networks, to show where energy is being used in real time. This information is vital for improving efficiency and integrating rising volumes of renewable energies, such as wind and solar, into the existing electricity infrastructure.
Redfearn pointed to two key areas for breakthroughs: low-cost sensors to effectively measure how the network is performing and low-cost communications to get that information to consumers, utilities and distributors.
New technologies can also help to cut the energy currently lost in transmission and distribution by as much as 10 per cent. “Distribution utilities haven’t been incentivised to reduce losses before now,” said Redfearn.
GE is working in partnership with Science|Business to attract entries from Europe’s brightest innovators and researchers. European entrants into GE’s ecomagination Challenge will also be eligible for participation in the ScienceBusiness Academic Enterprise Awards (ACES), an annual contest for European university spin-out companies, judged by the Science|Business Innovation Board, a leadership panel co-founded by Science|Business, with the business schools INSEAD and ESADE, in association with Microsoft and BP.
The ACES Awards, now in their third year, are the only pan-European awards for enterprise in university and public research institutes. The Awards give public recognition to researchers, engineers, professors, students and government officials in Europe who foster a culture of enterprise on the campus.
ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, will host the next annual ACES event in early 2011. Awards are granted across all sectors, disciplines and countries in Europe.
GE’s private-sector initiative arrives in a European market starved of growth capital. In the wake of the global financial crisis and recession, bank loans for start-ups and entrepreneurs have become scarce. “This is new for us. We’ve done it in pockets, but we’ve never engaged with early stage innovators in an open, networked innovation model on this scale,” says Land.
GE will put in €80 million, with its venture capital partners, including Zurich-based Emerald Technology Ventures, contributing a matching €80 million. GE’s other venture partners include Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers and RockPort Capital.
Many of the technologies needed to make electricity grids more flexible and capable of two-way communications are already in existence, but have yet to be deployed as part of an entire energy system in large-scale demonstrations. “The challenges are huge. But these technologies will be developed if there are markets that allow businesses to profit and consumers to save money,” says Haertel.
Governments need to set the stage, define the framework for competition and put regulation in place to support a change in people’s behaviour, Haertel added.
GE Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Immelt kicked off the ecomagination competition in San Francisco July 13, inviting researchers, innovators and startups around the world to compete for the money and become part of a huge virtual innovation team. “We want to tap the best scientists. We don’t think we can invent everything ourselves,” Immelt said at the launch.
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