GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid seeks
best ideas to transform the way we create, connect and use power.
Open competition Challenge is one of largest ever
SAN FRANCISCO--Tuesday, July 13, 2010--
GE announced today a $200 million open innovation challenge
that seeks breakthrough ideas to create a smarter, cleaner, more
efficient electric grid, and accelerate the adoption of more
efficient grid technologies. GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt
unveiled the challenge, the "GE ecomagination Challenge:
Powering the Grid," here today.
The global challenge invites technologists, entrepreneurs and
start-ups to share their best ideas and come together to take on
one of the world's toughest challenges - building the
next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century.
The challenge is one of the largest ever and is open immediately.
See here.
"Innovation is the engine of the global effort to transform the
way we create, connect and use power," Immelt said. "At GE we have
invested broadly and deeply in digital energy solutions and see
this as a substantial market for us, but we can't do it alone. We
want to work with our partners to make sure we have a comprehensive
digital energy offering."
"This challenge is about collaboration
and we are inviting others to help accelerate progress in creating
a cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid. We want to
jump-start new ideas and deploy them on a scale that will modernize
the electrical grid around the world." GE Chairman and CEO Jeff
Immelt
The Challenge, launched in collaboration with leading venture
capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital,
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer and RockPort Capital, and Chris
Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired magazine, is part of GE's
ecomagination initiative, a global commitment to build innovative
clean energy technologies and will help fund the most promising
ideas.
Proposals are sought in three, broad categories:
Renewables, Grid and Eco
Homes/Eco Buildings.
Select Challenge entrants will be offered the opportunity to
develop a commercial relationship with GE through:
- Investment: the
$200 million capital pledge of GE and its partners will be invested
globally into promising start-ups and ideas
- Validation:
evaluate entrant's business strategy through
in-depth discussions with GE's technical and commercial teams
- Distribution:
explore partnership opportunities with GE to scale a business and
create global reach
- Development::
leverage GE's technical infrastructure and GE Global Research
Centers to accelerate technology and product development
- Growth: explore
opportunities for utilizing existing GE customer to take Challenge
products to market
The $200 million commitment will help bring these new ideas to
market by providing businesses and individuals with
the opportunity to secure growth capital
through GE investment and/or investment by participating venture
capital firms. It is open to anyone aged 18 years or older and all
legally formed entities.
GE CMO Beth Comstock said, "We took on a challenge when we
launched ecomagination five years ago and we have learned about the
power of partnerships to deliver clean energy solutions today. The
challenge announced today is about collaboration and harnessing the
promise of fledgling ideas and businesses to transform our energy
future. We are confident in people's willingness to change the way
the world uses energy and in the ideas that will make this
possible."
"The Smart Grid is a new platform and a new market that is
just beginning to be explored. Great ideas on how to do
this can come from anywhere, so this competition is designed to tap
the widest possible range of innovators, from big companies to
entrepreneurs to students," said Anderson, who is serving as an
advisor on the Challenge.
Over the course of 10 weeks, entrants will be able to submit
their ideas via ecomagination.com. Entries will be evaluated as
candidates for both a potential future commercial relationship as
well as a $100,000 innovation challenge award acknowledging their
entry as an example of outstanding entrepreneurship and
innovation.
The candidates for a future commercial relationship with GE will
be evaluated by a committee of representatives of GE businesses and
the challenge partner firms.
A separate, independent judging panel including challenge
advisor Chris Anderson, GE executives and leading academics and
technologists will also provide input on the commercial
relationship candidates, as well as select the five recipients of
the $100,000 innovation challenge award.
Members of the general public will also be able to review and
comment on entries and show support for the idea that they believe
will have the most impact on the smart grid of the future. To view
the full terms and conditions, visit ecomagination.com/challenge.
Modernizing the world's aging electrical infrastructure is
critical to meet ever-increasing demands on the power grid, support
more renewable energy and increase energy efficiency. Full smart
grid implementation could reduce U.S. carbon emissions through
efficiency and enable further reductions through new source
management, make the most of current assets, and support thousands
of new jobs.
"Modernization of global electricity transmission and
distribution systems have simply not kept pace with our society's
growing demand for clean and highly reliable power," said Gina
Domanig, Managing Partner of Emerald Technology Ventures.
Foundation Capital General Partner Paul Koontz said, "Global
power grids make up the largest networks in the world. In most
cases, the technology on which they are based is essentially 100
years old. The opportunity to reinvent how energy is produced,
distributed and consumed is extraordinarily large and is critical
in the battle against climate change.
"Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is committed to a
sustainable energy environment and are working to reduce the
world's dependency on
fossil fuel-based energy through our growing
portfolio of innovative Greentech companies," said Ray Lane,
Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
RockPort Capital General Partner Chuck McDermott said, "The
electric power grid is the central nervous system of the global
economy. Though today's grid is a 20th
century engineering marvel, the smart grid of tomorrow promises to
revolutionize how we manage our homes, offices and factories and to
maximize the use of next-generation clean energy resources.