Google And GE Team Up On Smart Grids  

Grist reports that Google and GE are collaborating on a range of clean energy initiatives, including pushing for a smarter electrical grid - Honey, We Pumped Up the Grid.

General Electric and Google announced on Wednesday they're teaming up to promote renewable energy, specifically geothermal energy and plug-in hybrids, and spur better investment and swifter government action to create "smart," more efficient electrical grids. In recent years, both enormous companies have announced big green investments: GE launched its Ecomagination initiative in 2005 to expand its spending on greener technology to some $25 billion by 2010, and last year, Google announced a similar program with a smaller budget and a slightly more specific focus called Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal to, well ... you know.

"Both companies believe that our economic, environmental, and security challenges require that we use electricity more efficiently, generate it from cleaner sources, and electrify our transportation fleet," the companies said in a joint statement. Google CEO Eric Schmidt and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt also called on Congress to continue funding the renewable-energy tax credit that's set to expire this year.

From a policy perspective, the partnership will be designed to bring electricity from renewable sources to consumers via a "smart grid" of power transmission lines crisscrossing the country. From there, both Google and GE will work to push two new technologies: enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), or manmade wells that can be heated by the earth's core; and better methods of using plug-in vehicles tied to a new "smart grid".

The announcement was made at the Google Zeitgeist, a loose collaboration of partners gathered at Google's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. There, Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive officer of Google interviewed Jeff Immelt, the chairman and CEO of General Electric, about renewable energy trends and the new policy partnership.

According to Immelt, an admitted lifelong Republican who said he believes in the power of the free market, the government does need to play a role. "We think it's a market that needs a little catalyst from the government here; that's what we'd like to see done, and then the dollars will flow through it," Immelt said of renewable energy policy.

"Clean energy is a technology and a public policy; it's both," Immelt said.

The first area in which the government needs to intercede, Immelt said, is the development of a "smart grid," a plan to harness renewable energy from whatever source is at its peak. GE, for example, transformed Enron's $300 million wind power business into a division n that will generate between $7 billion and $8 billion in revenue this year, according to Immelt. Although one of the partnership's chosen technologies is EGS, Immelt said that of geothermal, solar, and other technologies, "wind is furthest down the path".

The smart grid, which Google could help manage, according to both executives, would pull power from those turbines that were turning. The wind never stops blowing everywhere, Schmidt pointed out.

"There needs to be more transmission and distribution, and the government needs to intercede to make it happen," Immelt said.

Manufacturers, meanwhile, need to keep on making appliances smarter, a trend that makes both environmental and financial sense, Immelt said. Inside GE, there is a saying, he said: "Green means green."

The move to modernize the United States’ power transmission grid so that renewable energy can more easily deliver on its potential is one which gained some steam in the past week. There are benefits when surplus electricity can be managed locally; and, Brooklyn Treehugger Matthew McDermott relays word from The NSF (National Science Foundation) that North Carolina State University will be host to the FREEDM Systems Center.

Whazzat?

It is the NSF’s Engineering Research Center for Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems. The NSF will be supporting the center with an initial grant of $18.5 million, plus $10 million in “institutional support and industry membership fees”.

“Exactly how will the FREEDM Systems Center be delivering us our (cringe) freedm?”

Smart-Grid Tech to Be Developed

In the broadest stroke, the FREEDM center will be working to transform “the nation’s century-old, centralized power grid into an alternative-energy-friendly “smart grid” that can easily store and distribute energy produced from solar panels, wind farms, fuel cells and other energy sources. This “Internet for energy” will enable millions of users to generate their energy from renewable sources and sell excess energy to the power companies. Researchers envision consumers using this “plug-and-play” system anytime, from anywhere.”

Such smart grid research is happening none too soon. Jason Godesky already has made the observation that “the world’s biggest machine already is breaking down under the weight of its own complexity.” So, we need all the help we can get to avoid “plug ‘n pray” time. The United States and its regional grids especially could use help with greater development and better integration of renewable energy resources.