General Electric Co. (GE) on Tuesday unveiled a new electric-vehicle charger and other new clean-technology products, and announced a $200 million contest for the best smart-grid technology ideas from entrepreneurs and researchers. Smart grid equipment, which can give utilities greater control over energy use, helping smooth demand surges and possibly allowing consumers to save money by using power at off-peak times, is currently a $15 billion to $20 billion market globally. The products and competition are part of GE's Ecomagination brand, which now has more than 100 products on the market or headed for the market, said GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt. GE is partnering on the smart-grid competition with venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer, Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital and Rockport Capital, firms well known for their renewable energy and clean-technology investments. Immelt said the competition, backed by a group of well-known clean technology venture capital firms, will accelerate the process for getting important new grid modernizing technologies to market. The largest US conglomerate's goal is to expand rapidly its presence in that market, which it believes could grow by a factor of ten to about $120 billion over the next two decades, Immelt added. Based on various market predictions, Immelt said the global market for advanced electric grid technology is likely to be about $1.5 billion by 2013 and will likely expand ten-fold over the next 20 years. Immelt said GE wants to boost its brand both to customers and to technology innovators looking to shop new ideas for products. “If GE is known as the go-to [company] for both sides, it gives us a competitive advantage over everyone else,” Immelt said, speaking on the sidelines of a clean-technology conference in San Francisco. Immelt said GE alone could provide global markets with about half the smart-grid products needed, while the company intends to serve the entire smart-grid market with its various partners. Smart-grid innovation winners will be announced in early November. GE also unveiled some new products, including an electric-vehicle charging station designed to charge an electric vehicle in four to six hours. General Electric also is an investor in US lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems Inc., which makes batteries for electric vehicles. GE plans to bring its new charging stations to market by the end of the year, Immelt said. GE is also promoting an in-home energy consumption tracking device that will communicate with GE appliances and report the amount of energy they're using to a display or website, the company said. Consumers will be able to purchase the devices, plug them in and use them immediately, Immelt said. He noted that results from pilot programs indicate that when consumers know how much electricity they're using, they tend to cut their use by about a tenth.
