GE’s Grid IQ Connect SaaS awarded best smart grid solution by municipal utility customers
Solidifying itself as best in class in the electrical distribution industry, GE’s Digital Energy Solutions as a Service business received the award of Best Smart Grid Solution at the Municipal Smart Grid Summit (MSGS) for its innovative Grid IQ Connect services offering. The summit took place last month at PGA National in West Palm Beach, Fla.
At MSGS, more than 40 of the cutting-edge smart grid technology and consulting industry companies presented their smart grid products and solutions to 100 or more municipal utility executives for review and consideration. After three days of boardroom presentations, GE’s Grid IQ Connect was chosen by the collaboration as the best smart grid solution.
“It is both an honor and a great achievement to be recognized by our customers as the provider of the best smart grid solution for municipal utilities for the second time in three years,” said Todd Jackson, product line leader – software solutions for GE’s Digital Energy business. “This award signifies GE’s commitment to the municipal utility segment and further establishes the company as a technological leader within the industry.”
Grid IQ Connect is a services-based program offered by GE’s Solution as a Service (SaaS) business. It offers customers incredible value from accelerated benefits due to the speed at which the system is deployed, technology risk mitigation and by providing smaller utilities access to technology otherwise not affordable in traditional project delivery models. The offering consists of five primary services to enhance the effectiveness of advanced meter infrastructure systems and other aspects of grid operations. These services include meter data services, pre-payment services, outage detection and notification services, asset monitoring services and consumer portal services.
GE's SaaS offerings are available via three levels of delivery modes – total managed services, software as a service and deployment at the customer site. Additionally, its advanced application solutions provide municipal utilities with comprehensive outage management (Grid IQ Restore) and demand response capabilities (Grid IQ Respond). Currently, Grid IQ Connect is being utilized by Electric Cities of Georgia, the city of Norcross, Ga., and the city of Leesburg, Fla.
“Advancements in digital technology have led to an increased demand on electrical grids worldwide,” said Craig Mims, utilities director for the city of Norcross. “Implementing GE’s Grid IQ Connect technology has helped modernize our grid and provide our customers with more efficient and reliable electricity.”
Advanced grid management technologies, such as Grid IQ Respond and Grid IQ Restore, enable municipal utilities to deploy smart grid technology faster, allowing customers to realize all of the benefits associated with implementing these advanced systems in a much shorter time span. Not only does Grid IQ Connect reduce technology risks and software costs to municipal utilities by using a SaaS-hosted model, it also provides a choice of capital expenditure and operational expense pricing options to fit the individual needs of each customer.
In addition, Grid IQ Connect provides utilities with a means to improve operations and customer services while also improving customer engagement and account management. The technology helps reduce the duration of system outages and lower municipal utility operating costs.
Introduced last year, GE’s SaaS – one of the company’s innovative Industrial Internet technologies – provides small- and mid-market utilities with the grid modernization technology they need without having to incur the overhead expenses associated with developing their own smart grid networks. As a cloud-based, fee-for-service grid management system, GE’s Grid IQ Connect empowers utilities of all sizes to create modernized, interconnected grids to meet the needs of today’s ever-evolving businesses. GE’s Industrial Internet solutions establish a constant flow of communication between a business operation and its machines, enabling big data to be converted into real-time analytical insight, improving grid reliability and efficiency.
