GE announced Tuesday that Chicago-based Exelon signed on for a five-year enterprise-wide software license, one of GE's largest deals in the power industry to date.
Exelon will use GE's Predix software (a new industrial operating system) across their 32,700 megawatts of nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric and natural gas generation, covering power plants in 48 states that serve over 10 million customers. Exelon will also have access to GE's Digital Power Plant and Digital Wind Farm solution suites, and GE and Exelon are co-developing applications for future energy management, such as wind farm optimization.
"Digital analytics has changed the way we live our lives: How we interact with each other socially, how we find information, how we pick a place to stay, how we get around," said Sham Chotai, CTO of software and analytics at GE Power. "We're seeing the same thing in the energy business and power generation."
The deal comes after two years of pilot testing GE's technology across Exelon's wind, nuclear, gas and solar power plants, which increased power plant efficiency by 3 percent and reliability by 5 percent, while cutting operating and maintenance costs 25 percent, according to Reuters. It's one of the largest deals so far for GE's Predix platform, a cloud-based platform that provides IoT technology and data analytics to industrial clients.
Exelon will be able to use analytics to manage maintenance and optimization of energy sources. For example, the software to predict if a part at a nuclear plant is about to fail, and balance wind power with additional energy sources to decrease volatility on the grid.
“As the only Fortune 100 company in the electricity sector, we have a unique opportunity to lead the energy industry in the exploration, development and deployment of the next generation of clean, diverse energy technologies,” said Chris Crane, president and CEO of Exelon in a statement. “This agreement allows for enhanced collaboration between GE and Exelon to develop solutions to complex industry challenges and accelerate the adoption of new, digital technologies across our industry.”
Industry experts say there's significant value in providing analytics to the energy industry: A white paper from the World Economic Forum released in January estimated there is $1.3 trillion in value to be captured globally from 2016 to 2025.
"New pools of value could also be tapped 'beyond the electron' by harnessing big data across sectors," the authors wrote.
