For generations GE has been at the vanguard of innovation. Now it appears the mega-corp is about to unleash an artificial intelligence on the power grid that could save up to $200 billion in power worldwide. Anna Hirtenstein reports in Bloomberg:
“We’re also putting a lot into the machine learning side, a lot,” said Steven Martin, chief digital officer at GE’s energy connections business, at an interview at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance summit in London. “We have a lot of people working on this.”
The technology would optimize how electricity flows in and out of storage devices such as batteries and points of consumption, in real time. This is expected to significantly increase the efficiency of the grid and save consumers money.
Researchers are looking into how so-called machine learning can be integrated into businesses from healthcare to computing, and now energy. The industry is going through rapid changes as everything from power plants to home electricity systems move towards digitization.
“This is an industry that needs infinite disruption,” Martin said. He worked at a number of start-ups in Silicon Valley and Microsoft Corp. before joining GE last year.
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