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• GE Solves Global Customers’ Toughest Challenges with Software Innovations that Help Them Better Prepare for Grid Stress and Extreme Weather Events
• End-to-End Technology Delivers Reliable, Powerful Performance for 21st-Century Needs
• GE’s Latest Solutions Will be on Display at the 2015 Americas Software Summit, March 2-6, 2015

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – March 2, 2015 – The forces of population growth, urbanization, climate change, surging energy demand and dwindling resources are reshaping how the world thinks about power. As these pressures intensify, so do the obstacles utilities, telecommunications and industries must overcome to deliver always-on, reliable electricity, including unplanned outages, optimization of existing grid assets and grid congestion.

GE’s Digital Energy business’s (NYSE: GE) technology innovations are helping customers combat these challenges while making it easier to build a more resilient, reliable grid. At this year’s Americas Software Summit – taking place March 2-6, 2015, in Colorado Springs – the company will showcase its software solutions that make the modern grid possible.

“The global need for electricity is rising exponentially and so are the complexities utilities and industries must confront in order to keep pace, let alone get ahead,” said Brian Bradford, product line leader, SaaS solutions, GE’s Digital Energy business. “At GE, we are empowering our customers to prepare for and adapt and respond to both the challenges and the opportunities. Our technology innovations are helping solve the problems presented by grid optimization and grid stress while increasing productivity and enhancing efficiency – ultimately meeting the demands of the 21^st century and beyond.”

Restoring Outages, Assessing Damage

Global economic losses caused by extreme weather events – ice storms, blizzards, hurricanes and wide-scale flooding – have risen to nearly $200 billion per year in the last decade, according to a World Bank Group report. Preparing for these events and then responding to the damage inflicted afterward requires basic infrastructure hardening and improved damage assessment practices that more effectively employ utility resources. GE has the software capabilities and smart grid solutions needed, including its Smallworld™ 5 software, a suite of interoperable outage restoration solutions – from intelligent controls, sensors and automation to visualization, field-force automation and communications infrastructure – and the recently released Mobile Enterprise Damage Assessment App. All of these solutions will be on display and demoed at the summit.

Improving the customer experience by adopting industry-leading Java™ technology from Oracle, GE’s Smallworld Electric Office geospatial information system provides utilities with a complete and accurate view of their electrical grid and assets. The software’s enhanced mapping tools enable end users to visualize and manage their networks and to collect critical data that can be used to assess the impact of a potential outage on the functionality of their electrical distribution systems.

Its custom analysis and tailored technology support productivity improvements in electric, gas, water and telecommunications applications while also helping utilities extend existing assets and enable more renewable generation.

The Mobile Enterprise Damage Assessment App for electric, gas and water utilities and telecommunications operators enables anyone – utility crews, neighboring utility crews, police, fire departments, etc. – to capture network asset damage after storms or other events. The data gathered allows the utility to better understand the scale, location and severity of network damage, supporting more accurate estimated time to restoration and better coordinated efforts to restore services more quickly.

PowerOn™ Response, which will be introduced for the first time at the summit, further improves the mobile capture and analysis of network damage data. Simultaneously integrating data from the field and the utility’s outage management system, PowerOn Response provides a much clearer and faster picture of where network damage exists, speeding up the process of getting the power back on.

Optimizing Assets, Empowering Performance

In addition to its solutions on display, GE also is excited to continue its collaboration with Meridium, a leading provider of asset management optimization software – strengthening the company’s grid and asset management optimization offering.

“GE continues to collaborate with Meridium to expand our Visual Asset Performance Management offering,” said Bryan Friehauf, product line leader, asset management, GE’s Digital Energy business. “GE has made an equity investment in Meridium and is working in conjunction with our Software Center of Excellence (CoE) to architect comprehensive asset optimization solutions. The CoE is working with additional GE asset management and monitoring systems, such as Smart Signal, to provide the spectrum of asset measurement, monitoring and management capabilities.”

Stay connected to what’s taking place at this year’s Americas Software Summit, including an industry panel focused on “Today’s Resilient Grid,” by visiting GE via Twitter @GEModernGrid and LinkedIn. You also can join the conversation with the hashtag #geamss.