GE’s “Brilliant” PowerUp Platform To Be Put Into 469 Wind Turbines Owned By E.ON Climate & Renewables

As you may recall, I got to write about GE’s new PowerUp platform from the launch event in Chicago* just last month, and also got to conduct follow-up interviews with GE CEO and Chairman Jeffrey Immelt and the head of GE Renewable Energy Services, Andy Holt. As a very brief summary of the PowerUp platform, the new offering will supposedly boost wind turbine output by up to 5%, which translates into about 20% more profit per wind turbine. (Smarter, not harder.)

Andy mentioned in our interview that he actually got a verbal agreement for the first PowerUp order from one of the GE customers who attended the launch event. It seems that customer might have been E.ON. And it seems that the order was a huge one.

A recent GE announcement noted that E.ON Climate & Renewables’ (EC&R) will upgrade (or PowerUp) 469 of its GE 1.5-77 wind turbines. As noted at the event and again to me personally, the PowerUp contracts will only benefit GE if there is an actual output benefit from the installation of the PowerUp platform. Obviously, that’s a good way to get customers on board, and it also shows how much confidence GE has in the platform.

“Without any development risk, or installation expense, EC&R will see the equivalent of 19 new turbines in the ground today,” Andy said in the new announcement.

“The outcomes-based approach aligns well with our goals of providing cleaner, better energy at a more affordable price,” said Steve Trenholm, chairman, E.ON North America. “Investment in wind energy has led to technological advancements like PowerUp that continue to make renewables more and more competitive with traditional forms of energy.”

For a bit more on the PowerUp platform, read our original article about it, or at least check out this brief summary from GE:

“PowerUp is part of GE’s brilliant wind platform, which harnesses the power of the Industrial Internet to analyze tens of thousands of data points on a wind farm every second, driving higher power output, increasing services productivity and creating new revenue streams for customers. It is one of GE’s predictivity technologies, leveraging connectivity and advanced analytics, and is an ecomagination qualified product.”

And, for a little fun, here’s a Journey to PowerUp infographic of sorts:

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*Full disclosure: GE funded and organized my trip to Chicago in order to cover the GE Minds + Machines 2013 conference. For more from the event, check out our Minds + Machines archives.