PG&E lawsuit spreads down Smart Grid supply chain
Last week, we reported on the lawsuit being filed against Pacific Gas & Electric for price hikes seemingly caused by installation of smart meters in the Bakersfield area of California. Now the plaintiff’s attorneys say that PG&E’s suppliers should also be sued — a who’s who of Smart Grid companies including General Electric, meter maker Landis+Gyr and communications provider Silver Spring Networks.
The original plaintiff, Bakersfield resident Pete Flores, filed the suit after his electric bill… Continue Reading
Chinese-made turbines to harness Texan winds
Last week, VentureBeat reported that China is likely to overtake the U.S. in green innovation and manufacturing. Now they’re proving it, with an announcement that 36,000 acres spanning several counties in Texas will be developed for wind power using 240 turbines made by the Shenyang Power Group.
The turbines will be Shenyang’s 2.5 megawatt model — among the largest in the world. Totaling 600 megawatts, the unnamed west Texas wind farm will be one of the… Continue Reading
General Electric turns Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City into appliance laboratory
Abu Dhabi has been drumming up publicity for its planned carbon-neutral, zero-waste community and research complex, Masdar City, recently — last week airing intentions to raise $600 million to start construction in earnest. Now it says it’s partnering with General Electric to test the conglomerate’s so-called smart appliances, ranging from refrigerators to clothes dryers capable of communicating energy use data and running at off-peak times.
GE has signed on for a two-year pilot project to install… Continue Reading
Whirlpool leaps into Smart Grid game with 1M smart dryers by 2011
Since the move toward a cleaner, more efficient electrical grid picked up speed last year, it’s been a land grab for goliaths like General Electric, IBM, Intel and Cisco Systems. Today, there’s a new player on the field: Major appliance maker Whirlpool is promising to deliver 1 million Smart Grid-compatible clothes dryers by 2011.
Prime competitor General Electric has long been vocal about its line of smart appliances, particularly thermostats and water heaters, but has failed… Continue Reading
Trilliant, ABB partner to make Smart Grid technologies interoperable
Trilliant, provider of communications infrastructure used to beam energy consumption data between so-called smart meters, utilities and their customers, announced today that it is partnering with automation company ABB to make sure their technologies can talk to one another. This type of interoperability is one of the major issues impacting how and how fast the Smart Grid — a cleaner, more efficient electrical grid — takes hold in the U.S.
It seem to be all the… Continue Reading
GE, Tendril ink deal to create even better home energy management
General Electric’s Consumer & Industrial division finalized a deal with home energy management startup Tendril today to improve broadband communication between demand response appliances in the home, smart meters and utilities. Ideally, the result of this tandem project will be a wide range of appliances that respond automatically to utility signals — programmable thermostats that shut off by themselves during peak hours, for example, or dishwashers that run only when electricity is cheapest.
Of course, the… Continue Reading
GE juices green economy with $100M battery plant
Batteries are attracting a great deal of cleantech buzz these days — a trend that’s just spiked with General Electric’s announcement that it will build a $100 million plant to make sodium-based batteries for hybrid locomotives and other heavy equipment engines. With plans to create 350 new jobs, the Albany, N.Y., project seems be exactly what president Obama had in mind when he predicted a burgeoning green economy.
And government aid it will get, with GE… Continue Reading
GE kicks off $6B health care campaign
Modeled after its expansive Ecomagination clean energy campaign, General Electric has launched Healthymagination a $6 billion strategy to jumpstart health care innovation in the next six years — including $3 billion that will go directly toward development of products designed to make health care more affordable and accessible.
In addition to boosting its own productivity in the sector, the company will lend $2 billion more to hospitals and medical facilities to upgrade their technology and adopt… Continue Reading
IBM pours $2B into smart grid as other big names reach for a piece of the pie
IBM’s lending and leasing branch, IBM Global financing has committed $2 billion to fund startups and utilities working on smart-grid and green technology projects. With this investment, it leaps to the front of a crowd of major corporations like Intel, AT&T, General Electric and others looking to get in on smart grid while the getting’s good.
IBM says the move is an attempt to give an additional boost to companies that will also qualify for some… Continue Reading
Car battery maker A123 scores $15M more from GE
A123 Systems, maker of lithium-ion batteries — primarily for hybrid and electric cars — has nabbed another $15 million in funding from General Electric, marking the seventh time the conglomerate has invested in the capital-rich startup. This brings the total of A123’s recent round of financing to $69 million.
The Watertown, Mass.-based company says it plans to use the money to construct battery factories in Michigan close to its key automotive clients. These days, it’s rare… Continue Reading
Intel and General Electric team up on healthcare products
Intel and General Electric announced today that they have teamed up to deliver personal health care products and services to patients in their homes. Both companies will invest $250 million in the products and research over the next five years.
Intel chief executive Paul Otellini and GE CEO Jeff Immelt announced the alliance in a press conference this morning, where they said the goal is to use technology to attack the rising costs of health care…. Continue Reading
TPI Composites raises $20M for wind turbine blades
TPI Composites, maker of blades for wind turbines, just brought in $20 million in second-round financing, mostly from General Electric’s Energy Financial Services and equity branch. The Scottsdale, Ariz. company will use the money to build out its manufacturing plants in Mexico, Iowa and China. It is still looking to expand despite the downturn, and had a three-fold increase in production last year.
TPI’s current plants supply energy to Mitsubishi Power Systems and GE Energy, the… Continue Reading
Roundup: Moore’s Law extended, AT&T pays Apple $900M, Bill Gates’ new venture and more
Here’s the latest action:
Moore’s Law gets a life extension — Researchers at McGill University claim to have discovered a new state of matter, a “quasi-three-dimensional system,” that may extend the famous trend of tech companies being able to pack twice as many transistors onto computer chips every two years.
AT&T income up; company surprised by iPhone payments — AT&T has lifted its net income 5.5 percent over the same reporting quarter last year, but its stock price dropped…. Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo, Apple pre-earnings reports, Akamai’s new ads, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Earnings: Yahoo may shortly be cutting employee compensation – This may be instead of or in addition to planned job cuts.
Earnings: Apple lowballs projections, as usual — Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog has a closer look at this historical trend.
Akamai launches ad targeting service — The content delivery network company has bought ad-targeting company Acerno for $95 million, as part of this new focus.
Research in Motion joins Blackberry cross-device application testing service — The service, DeviceAnywhere,… Continue Reading
Concentrating solar outfit Soliant Energy gets General Electric investment
General Electric seems to be covering its bases when it comes to solar power. The company, which four months ago bought a controlling stake in thin-film solar panel maker PrimeStar Solar, has added concentrating solar to its portfolio with a $2.5 million bet on Soliant Energy, based in Monrovia, Calif.
The two startups are about as different as they come. Whereas thin-film solar, such as PrimeStar makes, is very low efficiency but dirt cheap, Soliant makes… Continue Reading
Roundup: Buffet invests, M&As and IPOs sink, Mac laptops rise and more
Here’s the latest action:
In Buffet we trust — Billionaire Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathway group is investing $3 billion in General Electric. Why the investment? GE is the “symbol of American business to the world,” Buffet told VCCircle. That’s the spirit in a troubled economy — or is it bottom-feeding?
New data on M&As and IPOs — Mergers and acquisitions activity and initial public offerings of venture-backed companies are on pace for the lowest levels this decade, according to… Continue Reading
Roundup: Palin’s email hacked, Google and G.E. team up, stocks take a dive
Wall Street’s crisis deepens — Panic in financial markets spread as Dow drops 4 percent, or 449 points. investors cash out of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. [photo: SFGate.com]
Carnage among tech stocks — Which of your favorites took a beating today?
Google and General Electric team up on clean energy – At Google’s Zeitgeist conference, the big companies push for policies to modernize the electrical grid and tap renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal.
Also from Google… Continue Reading
Advanced Electron Beams promises a low-energy revolution for industry
Sometimes, a nice jet of flames is the best way to get a job done. More often, it’s not. Advanced Electron Beams, which just took a new round of funding led by General Electric’s venture arm, is a company that wants to help industries conserve energy by shifting away from traditional but wasteful practices, like burning or heating material with fire, to a more efficient alternative.
As the name implies, AEB works with electron beams, which… Continue Reading
Thin film maker PrimeStar Solar sells majority stake to GE Energy
PrimeStar Solar, a startup developing thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells, has sold a majority state to General Electric Energy, a division of tech giant GE.
Founded in 2006, PrimeStar makes use of technology developed in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In 2007, the company received around $3 million as part of a DoE grant, and later announced a strategic investment by GE.
Relatively few thin-film manufacturers use CdTe technology, but among them is one of the… Continue Reading
GE, Chevron investing big-time in clean technology
General Electric invests more into clean technologies than any other company.
The company’s yearly allotment for Ecomagination, its cleantech investment arm, totals $1 billion, and GE says it’s on track to raise the number to $1.5 billion by 2010. Compare that to the mere $844 million invested in U.S. clean-technology companies by the entire venture capital establishment last quarter, which is at record levels.
The GE money will go to both new research and existing projects, as… Continue Reading