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Google and GE form alliance to upgrade US electric grid

Tony Chan | September 24, 2008 | 0 Comments

A new alliance between Google and GE is looking to advance the US electricity grid in order to support emerging renewable energy deployments. The companies announced at Google’s Zeitgeist conference that they will work together to develop both technology and policy initiatives to facilitate additional capacity and capabilities on the electricity grid.

The companies said the goal of the collaboration was to make renewable energy more accessible and efficient, including the large scale support of plug-in hybrid vehicles. The plan was announced on Google’s official blog and by Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and GE’s chief executive Jeffrey Immelt.

One of the challenges the plan aims to tackle is the limited transmission capacity on the US electric grid at the moment, which limits the supply of power from renewable plants located typically away from areas that can use the power. The two also plans lobby Washington to develop policies that facilitate the upgrade and construction of the transmission grids, including making it easier to build and link up inter-regional grids.

The initiative sounds similar to Google’s foray into the submarine cable market. The main reason cited by industry experts for Google’s motives for entering a consortium to build a trans-Pacific cable is that the telecoms industry could not provide the capacity that the search-giant wanted at the price that it wanted, leading it to invest in its own infrastructure.

As the company behind the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative, Google is no doubt looking for ways to take advantage of the renewable energy technologies that it has invested in, including geothermal and solar power start ups. In order to do that, it needs the electric grid supplies to upgrade their infrastructure to transmit the power from where they are generated, to where they are in demand.

Google and GE also said they would look to combine their expertise in software and hardware to improve energy management and distribution.

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