industry consolidation? GE Vernova Acquires Greenbird to Accelerate GridOS® Innovation and Help Utilities Reduce the Complexity of Energy Data Integration
Business WireAug 14, 2023 1:11 PM EDT
- Acquisition highlights GE Vernova’s commitment to invest strategically in technologies and talent that help accelerate the sustainable energy grid
- Greenbird’s utility-focused technology and data integration experts will expand the capabilities of the company’s GridOS ® software portfolio, allowing grid operators to more easily connect systems and integrate data at scale
- Reducing the complexity of big data integration for utilities creates more opportunities for AI-driven grid automation and enables them to move at speed to meet decarbonization targets and electrification demand while managing climate-related disruptions
GE Vernova’s Digital business today announced it has acquired Greenbird Integration Technology AS, a data integration platform company focused on utilities. This acquisition highlights GE Vernova’s commitment to investing in technologies and talent that help accelerate the sustainable energy grid. The platform will accelerate GridOS ® , the world’s first software portfolio designed specifically for grid orchestration, adding new capabilities for connecting systems and integrating data across the grid more easily and at scale. The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed.
“Utilities have an urgent need to connect data from multiple sources to gain visibility and effectively automate their grid operations. Fragmented data is a major obstacle to modernizing the grid and is holding the energy transition back,” said Scott Reese, CEO of GE Vernova’s Digital business. “The Greenbird acquisition brings the proven ability to connect multiple data sources and accelerates our vision for GridOS that is making energy security a reality for many of the world’s leading utilities. Data and AI are key to helping utilities run a reliable and resilient grid and this acquisition is a massive accelerant to making that vision a reality for utilities of all sizes.”
The GridOS orchestration software platform and application suite enables secure and reliable grid operations while delivering resiliency and flexibility needed by utilities worldwide. GridOS delivers these tools with the cloud service provider and system integrator partner ecosystem necessary to accelerate grid modernization and the energy transition. The software portfolio uses a federated data fabric to pull together energy data, network modeling, and AI-driven analytics from across the grid. The Greenbird acquisition will expand the capabilities of the data fabric, eliminating data silos to make it faster and easier to connect and aggregate energy data, reducing the time and expense of data integration projects. This also better connects modern software like Advanced Energy Management System (AEMS), Advanced Distribution Management Solutions (ADMS), and Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS), creating new opportunities for grid automation.
“Having access to utility data in context gives grid operators an opportunity to better leverage AI for automation and potentially enables the grid to be self-describing and self-healing in the future,” said Mahesh Sudhakaran, General Manager, Grid Software at GE Vernova’s Digital business. “This is the vision we have for grid orchestration enabled by the GridOS portfolio, and this acquisition provides both the technology and the talent to help us get there.”
“We started in 2010 with a mission to simplify data integration for utilities, helping them leverage data to run smarter, more efficient analytics-driven services to accelerate the energy transition,” said Thorsten Heller, CEO of Greenbird Integration Technology. “Our technology platform is purpose-built to support a distributed data and IT architecture and aligns perfectly with GE Vernova’s vision for the GridOS federated grid data fabric and one network model, providing the data foundation utilities need to transform their operations.”
An example of the need for more connected and integrated data is evident in the exponential growth predicted for electric vehicles (EVs) – there are expected to be 77M EVs on the road by 2025 and 229M by 2030 – that will both draw from and possibly contribute to the grid as “rolling batteries” that can be tapped when demand is high and supply is low. Integration of data from multiple sources like charging stations as well as operations, forecasting, billing, and other systems can support the success of future use cases such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) while keeping the grid safe.
Data integration is also key to solving renewables connection challenges. Approximately 1,350 gigawatts of additional, mostly sustainable power capacity is waiting to be constructed and connected to the grid. This large-scale interconnection backlog results in wasted capacity and unutilized investment. Scenario planning and grid simulations can provide an opportunity to increase line capacity and drive deeper visibility into the impact of such assets on the grid, allowing capacity to be connected faster and helping to reduce hundreds of millions of dollars of traditional back-up generators. Such use cases require the integration of forecasting, simulation, historical grid OT, sensor, line, and inertia data.
The Greenbird integration platform is delivered as a service (iPaaS) and is built with containerization and a suite of cloud services, which will accelerate the availability of key GridOS components. In addition, GE Vernova welcomes Greenbird’s innovative team to the Grid Software group, including data specialists skilled in developing and deploying distributed data processes at scale for utilities. The acquisition will advance the AI- and data-driven vision for GridOS that GE Vernova’s Digital business believes will solve grid orchestration challenges while cultivating an energy data ecosystem that advances decarbonization and electrification at scale.
Learn more about GridOS here .
About GE Vernova’s Digital Business
GE Vernova’s Digital business is putting data to work to accelerate a new era of energy. We deliver the platforms and intelligent applications necessary to accelerate electrification and decarbonization across the energy ecosystem – from how power is created, how it is orchestrated, to how it is consumed. More than 20,000 customers around the globe use our software to help plan, predict, manage, and optimize operations today for a sustainable tomorrow. For more information, visit www.ge.com/digital .
About Greenbird Integration Technologies
Greenbird is an international solution and technology company with roots in Norway. We simplify the complexity of Big Data Integration to help organizations unlock the value of their data and mission critical applications. Our flagship innovation, Utilihive, is a cloud-native platform combining enterprise integration capabilities with a data lake optimized for energy use cases. We founded Greenbird in 2010 with a mission to revolutionize how the energy industry thinks about enterprise system integration. Today, Utilihive is used by more than 230 utilities across Europe, Middle East and Asia serving more than 50 million consumers. Greenbird is headquartered in Oslo and has around 50 employees, comprising primarily of senior developers and consultants and specializing in technology development and customer onboarding of the Utilihive platform. To learn how you can unleash the value of data while removing silos, explore more at www.greenbird.com .