General Electric (GE) is continuing to emerge as a clean energy behemoth and has in particular made big strides in the smart grid space in just the past several months. In the last half of last year the company purchased two smart grid software companies – Energy Control Systems in August and Opal Software in October. A couple days ago they announced the acquisition of Remote Energy Monitoring which provides software and hardware solutions that allow consumers and utilities a better way to monitor and manage their energy usage. The purchase gets their foot in the door in the UK where REM’s solution has been approved by regulators.
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“Advanced software, flexible systems and robust communications are critical elements in modernizing our infrastructure to meet the world’s energy needs,” said Bob Gilligan, vice president—digital energy for GE Energy Services. “The accelerating pace of change of the energy industry demands flexible, cost-effective solutions that can be modified to meet the changing needs.”
GE isn’t stopping at hardware. The company made a big push on the infrastructure side announcing today the purchase of Lineage Power (formerly Tyco Electric) from a private equity firm for $520 million. The company recognizes the exploding growth of energy needs to power all those electronic devices we depend on each day.
“According to recent studies, there will be 1.1 billion smartphones sold globally by 2013,” said Dan Heintzelman, GE Energy Services president & CEO. “Every new mobile device plugs into an infrastructure that requires an ever increasing amount of high-quality power. The growth in high-bandwidth mobile internet applications and cloud computing is accelerating that demand. A globally networked planet needs a lot of power to keep spinning. Customers want efficient, reliable means to manage that power.”
Shares of GE were were flat on the day but have had a great run in the past few weeks and getting a bit overbought in the short term. It appears the stock needs to carve out some kind of handle formation in what is likely a cup with handle base formation.