From the living rooms of Louisville, Ky. to the halls of Masdar City, General Electric's smart appliances are being put through their paces.
Louisville was the first test bed for GE's smart washers, dryers, refrigerators and electric ranges that can power up and down to help utilities manage peak loads and customers save on power bills (see GE's Smart Appliances: Smarter With GE Home Energy Manager).
Now GE is sending its prototype smart appliances and home energy manager to the United Arab Emirates to test them out in Abu Dhabi's $22 billion showcase green urban development.
Masdar City is meant to be a zero-emissions city in the desert, powered by renewable energy and housing about 40,000 people to work in a nascent Middle Eastern green technology and manufacturing hub (see Reporter's Notebook: From Fishing Village to Energy Mecca). Masdar City is a project by Masdar, a company owned by one of the emirates, Abu Dhabi.
Of course, there aren't 40,000 people living there yet, so GE plans to put its first appliances in the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology building some time early next year. About 10 people living there will test the appliances over two years, GE said.
Masdar is best known for bankrolling massive renewable power projects, both at home and abroad. Examples include its investment in several solar plants and solar panel manufacturing facilities and its billion-dollar stake in the London Array wind farm (see Green Light post and Masdar Bets on Massive Offshore Wind Park).
Abu Dhabi is also building a smart grid infrastructure to include 1.2 million smart meters and substation monitoring and control systems, according to Danish smart grid networking company Amplex (see Green Light post).
By the way, GE's interest in Masdar is far from limited to testing smart refrigerators.
"The Masdar City pilot project comes as part of the broader relationship between GE and the Mubudala Development Company, of which Masdar is a wholly owned subsidiary, which extends to a broad range of initiatives in the fields of aviation, commercial finance, industry and corporate learning," the companies said in a press release.
