General Electric

The US multinational will expand the solar and battery energy storage manufacturing capacity at its factory in Tamil Nadu to 9 GW per annum by the end of 2022. The factory manufactures the FlexInverter power conversion solution and the FlexReservoir utility-scale energy storage systems.

Just as Australia thought its pioneering days were over, it has become the first country in the world to sell General Electric’s new solar inverters.

The U.S. conglomerate plans to deploy and test new controls with its commercial PV LV5 inverter platform. It aims to develop “grid-forming” controls to allow wind and solar inverters to form voltage and frequency levels like traditional generators. The company wants to improve coordination and synchronization among multiple grid-forming resources, and is working on smart PV reserve controls to improve the transient stability of systems with high renewables penetration.

The Swiss-headquartered technology corporation is restructuring, stirring up the figures. That effect was amplified by acquisitions and sell-offs last year with ABB announcing in July it would hand over its inverter business to Italian company Fimer.

This Swiss giant is following a trend as large multinational high-tech companies see their role as redesigning infrastructure rather than supplying inverters at ever lower margins. Schneider Electric has pulled out of large scale solar, Siemens’ Kaco acquisition and Junelight launch show increasing interest in the C&I and residential markets, and GE is likely to divest its power conversion business due to low profit margins in that sector.

Open-source blockchain platform Energy Web Foundation has revealed the number of its affiliates has risen from 37 to 100 in recent months. New members include EnBW, Total and a unit of the State Grid Corporation of China. The platform was conceived to create an energy-blockchain ecosystem and to accelerate the energy transition.

The two companies have installed systems in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo to provide a cheap, secure energy supply. BloombergNEF has predicted the market for off-grid solar will grow considerably as it can meet the needs for universal energy supply at a cost competitive price.

The company reports that its IoT ABB Ability platform connects to existing GE Industrial Solutions’ installations. The company will supply its products to GE, with the GE brand name being retained. Access to the North-American market was named as one of the primary motivators for the acquisition. At the same time, the company inked a deal to support Be Power in the Italian market for dispatching services with its ABB Ability solution.

GE Energy Financial Services (GE EFS), the energy investment arm of General Electric, has started a new fund with the state-owned Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) to invest in operational solar projects.

The Tokyo-based developer has begun construction on what it claims will be Japan’s biggest PV project upon completion in September 2019.