CLASS OF 2016
WORLD-GENERATION FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016
8
One of the often-cited benefits of GE’s
acquisition of Alstom’s Power business is
the opportunity for the Power Services
business—the new global entity created by
combining both companies’ services
teams—to integrate the Industrial Internet
and GE’s software solutions portfolio into
Alstom’s global installed base. As the
world’s Digital Industrial Company, GE is
transforming the power industry with soft-
ware-defined machines and solutions that
are connected, responsive and predictive.
The company knows industrial machines
and businesses, and it knows how to build
software that will best serve and optimize
them. GE has invested more than $1 billion
in the Industrial Internet, with more than
14,000 software professionals around the
world working to optimize industrial asset
performance and industrial operations.
GE’s Industrial Internet applications
and solutions run on Predix*, the world’s
first and only cloud platform built exclusive-
ly for industry. With one common, connect-
ed language and a dedicated cloud built for
industrial data, Predix offers the strength,
scale and security that operators require to
thrive in the new industrial era.
Now consider that GE’s Power Services
business serves an installed base of more
than 28,000 power generation assets global-
ly. These assets provide nearly 1,600 GW of
power—enough to power more than 1.5 bil-
lion homes—and represents about 40 per-
cent of the global thermal energy sector.
The continued infusion of Industrial
Internet technologies into GE equipment,
as well as the introduction into Alstom-
supplied systems has the potential to save
utility and industrial power plant operators
millions of dollars in operational and main-
tenance costs.
A HUGE OPPORTUNITY
By tapping into the Industrial Internet
through GE’s Predix cloud platform, utilities
and industrial power plant operators can
improve the life cycle performance of their
power generation equipment through the
power of software and big data analytics.
For years, the energy industry has collected
data on its generation assets, but only a
small fraction of this data is actually being
used. As utilities and industrial operators
more fully embrace the potential of integrat-
ing software with their hardware, there is a
huge opportunity for the industry to con-
nect the operational and informational tech-
nology worlds with external data sets.
Some operators have already bet on
software solutions and seen significant bene-
fits. For example, Whitegate Power Station’s
Bord Gáis Energy, a subsidiary of the
Centrica Group in County Cork, Ireland,
became the world’s first power plant to
install GE’s Asset Performance
Management (APM) system—an advanced
software solution that taps into industrial-
scale data analytics to predictively identify
operational issues before they occur. With
the Irish government’s 2020 targets aiming
for 40 percent of gross electricity consump-
tion to come from renewable energy produc-
tion, a greater requirement for reliable, on-
demand generation capacity has been creat-
ed. Bord Gáis Energy took this into consid-
eration when it decided to better prepare its
power station for future grid challenges.
The solution included a condition-
based, real-time monitoring platform featur-
ing 141 sensors throughout the power
plant. GE’s APM technology monitors
Whitegate’s hardware assets around the
clock and provides a single, consolidated
view of plant performance. These insights
are then translated into operational recom-
mendations to help the station focus its
maintenance activity on minimizing down-
time. Additionally, the software’s compre-
hensive data analytics helps the Whitegate
staff detect operational anomalies, including
combustion dynamics and parts degrada-
tion, before they become serious issues
that could force the plant offline for costly
unplanned repairs. GE’s analytics integrate
multiple data sources and provide a deeper
insight into how the whole system works.
For example, they are able to see both
short-term implications—such as increased
fuel burn and revenue from advantageous
wholesale sales—and long-term ones
including the consequences that operation-
al stresses can impose on equipment. It’s all
about data, analytics and better productivi-
ty—the idea is that companies have soft-
ware running on all kinds of machines used
in the workplace. If these devices could col-
lect data and transmit it to a central location
where it could be analyzed by software, it
could be very useful to businesses.
In a power plant, GE’s new software
and hardware solutions can create a virtual
replica or “digital twin” of the entire indus-
trial complex for analysis. For example,
both Exelon and Public Service Enterprise
Group (PSEG) are implementing pioneer-
ing projects with GE’s Digital Power Plant,
which is designed to drive continual
improvement of assets and operations. The
Digital Power Plant helps utilities and other
industrial operators save millions of dollars
in operational and maintenance costs by
enabling them to manage their power gen-
eration ecosystems cleanly, efficiently and
securely with unprecedented intelligence
and precision. It will enable companies to
harness information technologies that
transform the way electricity is generated
and managed worldwide, helping minimize
the impact of power production and con-
sumption on our climate.
ABOUT PAUL McELHINNEY
Paul is the president and chief execu-
tive officer of Power Services, a $15 billion
organization within GE Power. Based in
Baden, Switzerland, Power Services is a
combination of two of the best service
teams in the power industry – GE’s Power
Generation Services and Alstom’s Thermal
Services.
PAUL McELHINNEY
President and CEO
GE Power Services
