Investments in the smart grid and related technologies continue to grow. The latest was made last week by General Electric which announced the first round of winners of the GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid. The competition was launched in August, 2010 and is co-funded by venture capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, KPCB and Rockport Capital. 3,500 applications from 150 countries were received by GE for the $200 million prize pot.
Last week’s announcement showed GE’s strong interest in supporting solar, EV charging stations, energy management software and grid optimization projects. $55 million have been awarded as part of the first round; GE plans to make more rounds of investments over the next 18 months. Included in the list of winners is North Carolina based Consert, which Parks Associates has profiled in our Residential Energy Management: Company, Alliance & Technology Profiles report and will also be covered in our latest Home Area Networks (HAN): Analysis & Forecast 2010 report scheduled to be published by the end of this month. According to the press release from GE, Consert’s load curtailment technology helps increase operations efficiency and act as a virtual power plant. The product complements GE Digital Energy’s existing solutions to meet the unique needs of these market segments.
Besides supporting the firms financially, GE will provide winners access to its engineers and sales staff. The fact that GE is also developing energy management technology in-house, such as the GE Nucleus, and investing in competing technologies along with other cleantech ventures, it is clear that GE wants to be involved in all facets of the new and improved power grid.
The government and academia have also continued their financial support for the smart grid with the DOE announcing investments of $19 million in five smart grid projects and Stanford University’s TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy launching a $1.2 million fund for researchers focused on smart grid related studies. Investments in consumer focused solutions are still taking a backseat to grid and renewable energy related investments, but we expect this to change over the next 4-5 years. Based on our forecast, by the end of 2014 approximately 9 million residential energy management systems will be in use in U.S. households. This fact, coupled with a growing interest among consumers to have better insight into their consumption, is attracting interest from all smart grid participants.
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