Renewable energy gains powerful new ally through GE and Google partnership

New partnership could help progress renewable energy

General Electric has teamed with Google in order to help utilities increase their energy productivity. Through the partnership, General Electric’s various electrical, telecommunications, and gas applications will now come with Google Maps accessibility. This will allow these applications to offer better visualization of areas of operation, enabling utilities to better analyze data concerning productivity. The two companies are also putting a strong focus on renewable energy, as this may also help boost productivity significantly.

Smallworld applications to include Google Maps

General Electric is incorporating Google Maps into its Smallworld suite of applications. These applications allow for the design and modeling of complex network infrastructures and provide utilities with a multitude of management tools that can help address problems within a given network. While these applications do not solely focus on renewable energy, they do help utilities better understand issues concerning productivity, highlighting prospective ways to boost productivity, sometimes through the use of renewable energy systems.

Energy efficiency tools provided by GE

Apart from the prospective benefits of renewable energy, efficiency is becoming a major interest for utilities. Energy efficiency has been recognized as a viable way to cut the costs associated with energy production, as less energy needs to be produced in order to meet with the demand coming from consumers. The Smallworld suite also provide utilities with tools to address efficiency issues. Energy efficiency is not the sole concern of utilities, however, so meaningful progress in this field must also come from the private sector with consumers adopting energy efficiency practices of their own.

Future plans concerning renewable energy may be in the works

General Electric and Google believes that, through their new partnership, they will be able to help enhance the productivity and efficiency of utilities in the U.S. General Electric’s customers are likely to see significant benefits through this partnership, as the company plans to work with Google well into the future to develop more innovative solutions that could have a meaningful impact on the world of renewable energy.