How digital power plant tech can help utilities get the most from their assets
Utility Dive, October 19, 2015. Image credit: geralt
As policymakers push the integration of more variable renewable generation, the need to balance supply and demand on the grid in the most clean and efficient manner will only grow. While storage offers one solution, another big opportunity, especially in the short term, is optimizing existing peaker resources for the grid.
That’s where GE’s new digital power plant comes in.
At its core, a digital power plant is a combination of software and hardware that interact in a generation plant to make it more flexible and responsive to grid demands.
GE Power and Water, the company’s power subsidiary, unvieled its offering last month, and aims to make its digital plants landmarks of the industrial internet as it moves toward fulfilling the promise of its 2014 annual report, “A new kind of industrial company.”
The effort is part of GE’s much-heralded corporate shift away from finance and back toward its industrial roots.