GE awards USD 500,000 for grid efficiency innovations

(ADPnews) - Nov 18, 2010 - General Electric (NYSE: GE) on Wednesday said it awarded a total of USD 500,000 (EUR 367,000) to five firms under an open innovation challenge for ideas to create more efficient grid and grid technologies.

The "GE Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid", launched in July, is in line with the company's strategy to speed up the development of next-generation power grid and global energy transformation through collaboration, GE said. The USD-200-million Ecomagination campaign includes also renewables and green buildings categories.

Each of the five winners under the grid challenge will receive USD 100,000 to advance their ideas.

The awarded companies are: US Capstone Metering for its intelligent water meter that can create its own power; UK ElectricRoute for developing a cyber-secure network infrastructure that allows two-way communications grid monitoring and substation automation from wind and soar farms; Israel's GridON for creating a technology that solves short-circuiting and outages from overload electric grids by enabling precise control over their flow and power; Lebanon's IceCode for its technology that instantly de-ices wind turbine blades so they never slow or shut down; and Israel's WinFlex, which invented a lightweight inflatable wind turbine.

(USD 1 = EUR 0.734)

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