Each one weighs nearly 400 tons, as much as two really big blue whales. Each one will cover thousands of miles by sea and land from the place of their birth in Belfort, France, to the farming town of Bhikki in Pakistan’s Punjab province. They are still fairly unknown, but once they reach their destination, they will affect millions of lives.

The giants that will be making their way to Asia are a pair of GE’s air-cooled 9HA gas turbines, the largest and most efficient gas turbines on the planet today. They’re capable of delivering greater than 61 percent efficiency – once the power-generation equivalent of running a four-minute mile – when used in a combined cycle configuration with steam turbines. They will become the beating heart of the Bhikki Combined Cycle Power electricity generation plant that’s being built by China’s Harbin Electric International for Punjab government’s Quaid-e-Azam Thermal Power Ltd. utility.

Top: Workers are assembling the first 9HA turbine at the GE plant in Belfort, France. Above: The first 9HA gas turbine started powering through tests last year in Greenville, S.C. Images credit: GE Power & Water

The new power plant will be a key weapon in Pakistan’s arsenal to roll back crippling electricity shortages that have plagued the country for years. “After a while you just have to find ways to work around the load-shedding,” says Muniza Junaid, a biosciences research associate who works at a leading Pakistani university. “It’s ironic. On the one hand, I work in one of the most advanced laboratories in the country, but on the other I can’t even heat up my dinner or run my washing machine when I want to.”

“Load-shedding” is the term locals commonly use to refer to electricity shortages. For many Pakistanis it’s a critical piece of information that determines how they plan their days, just like the weather forecast in the U.S. or Europe. Load-shedding gets ubiquitous in the sweltering summer heat, when power shortages often exceed 12 hours a day. “I don’t think you can understand what that’s like unless you’ve experienced it for yourself,” Muniza says.

The first 9HA turbine arrived in Greenville, S.C., for testing in 2014. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Here’s what it looks like in numbers: Pakistan’s peak demand and supply gap hovers around 5 gigawatts, enough power to serve some 30 million local homes. The World Bank reported in its 2013 Enterprise Survey that more than 45 percent of local businesses identified electricity shortages as the main obstacle to doing business. The estimated value lost due to power outages tops 22 percent of annual sales.

No wonder fixing the power shortage is one of the top government priorities and a key to boosting the economy and improving the quality of life. The Bhikki plant will be the first power installation to use the turbines in the Middle East, and one of Pakistan’s most efficient. “Everything about this project is going to be larger than life – the world’s largest gas turbine, powering one of the region’s most efficient power plants, generating electricity for millions of households, as well as industry,” says Sardar Haider Khan, the local lead for GE Power & Water’s power generation products business.

A 9HA.01 gas turbine with its rotor on “half-shell” in Belfort, France. Image credit: GE Power & Water

The 9HA is the result of a $2 billion investment by Power & Water. It uses technology originally developed for supersonic jet engines. GE refers to this practice of sharing knowledge among different businesses the GE Store.

The turbine can reach full load in a mere 10 minutes – just a little longer than a plane getting ready to take off – and also offers the flexibility to run on a range of gas and liquid fuels. This is critical for fuel-importing countries such as Pakistan.

The two units at Bhikki will be operated on imported “re-gasified” liquefied natural gas (RLNG), but will be able to use substitute fuels if price or availability of RLNG starts to fluctuate.

Together, they will add more than 1.1 GW to the national grid by 2017 – the equivalent power needed to supply more than six million Pakistani homes. And that is a feat worthy of giants.

Ever since people started building things, many of us have burned with an even greater desire to take them apart.

But few can top photographer Todd McLellan and Ryan D’Agostino, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics. They get to the bottom of big and complicated things on a monthly basis.

Like a skilled pathologist, McLellan has spent hundreds of hours dismantling, describing, neatly organizing and photographing the guts of a chainsaw, the “Iron Mike” pitching machine and, most recently, a GE electrocardiograph, among a number of other things. D’Agostino publishes the results in his magazine in a regular monthly feature called Things Come Apart. “Understanding how things work is empowering,” D’Agostino says. “That’s what the magazine has been about since it launched in 1902. It never gets old.”

D’Agostino, who took over the magazine last year, and his editorial team first took apart a refrigerator. “But we soon noticed that Todd had been already doing the same thing for a while,” he says.

In 2013, McLellan published a whole book featuring 50 stylized teardowns ranging from iPad to grand piano. “He was making a bit of a career with it,” D’Agostino says.

In mid-2014, D’Agostino reached out to McLellan and they’ve been at it ever since.

Top image: GE’s Mac 2000, Courtesy of Todd McLellan Above: GE’s MAC 2000 EKG machine. Image credit: GE Healthcare

McLellan’s latest project was GE’s MAC 2000 EKG machine. It took him 5 hours and 21 minutes to dismantle it and you can see a video of the process here. “EKG is something people encounter in their lives, they’ve seen it in the doctor’s office, they are gratified it’s there, but most of them have no idea what’s going on inside,” D’Agostino says.

The heart is a muscle and like all muscles it generates electricity. The EKG machine monitors the heart’s electrical activity and help doctors determine whether it is beating strong or whether things are out of order. “One thing that surprised me was the instrumentation amplifier, which boosts the signals from millivolts to volts,” D’Agostino says.

Next on Popular Mechanics’ list is the payphone. Does D’Agostino ever worry about putting things back again? “Reassembling these items isn’t feasible,” he says. “They would never be the same. But we do recycle the parts!”

Here’s the actual spread from the magazine. Images courtesy of Popular Mechanics and Todd McLellan.

In October, McLellan took apart the “Iron Mike” pitching machine. Images courtesy of Popular Mechanic and Todd McLellan

The aviation industry must work together to achieve sustainable growth, sharing the burden as well as the benefits.

With the Millennium Development Goals having now given way to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the narrative for development shifting further towards a range of sustainability issues, it is worth taking stock on how the aviation industry is contributing to achieving them. SDG 8: ‘decent work and economic growth’ and SDG 9: ‘industry, innovation and infrastructure’ are natural bedfellows of our global industry which connects the world, supports 58 million jobs and $2.4 trillion in GDP, transports half of all tourists and a third of world trade by value. But it is our role in meeting the challenge of SDG 13: ‘climate action’ that is playing an increasingly central part of aviation’s future strategy.

The social and economic benefits of air transport are clear. It connects the world like no other mode of transport, supporting businesses and families across the globe. However, these benefits come with an environmental cost. Liquid fuels are the only source of power capable of generating enough thrust to lift an aircraft off the ground. Nonetheless, the industry knows it has a responsibility to address the issue of CO2 emissions and it is a responsibility that we are meeting head-on.

So what can a vast global industry like aviation do to mitigate its impact on the environment and ensure that we play our part in SDG 13? The most important thing is to work together. In a hugely competitive industry like ours, it is vital that we have shared goals, allowing all sectors of the industry, be they airlines, airports, manufacturers or air navigation service providers, to take on their share of the burden, but also benefit from the opportunities.

At the centre of this collaborative effort on climate are our three global goals, which were agreed in 2008 and which represent one of the first global sets of climate aspirations of any industry in the world. The goals are:

• To achieve a 1.5 percent average annual fuel efficiency improvement from 2009 to 2020 (a goal which is already being more than met);
• Stabilize net CO2 emissions at 2020 levels, with carbon-neutral growth thereafter;
• Reduce aviation’s net CO2 emissions by 50 percent, using 2005 as the benchmark.

These goals will be achieved through a four pillar strategy, based around: new technology (including the development and commercialization of sustainable alternative fuels), more efficient operations, improved infrastructure and, finally, a global market-based measure (MBM) for aviation emissions.

The first three of the pillars have been continually reinforced over the years, with new, more fuel efficient aircraft and engines flying on more efficient routes, supported by better infrastructure. These pillars will carry on being developed, with sustainable alternative fuels coming more to the fore, an increased uptake of alternative energy at airports, and navigation systems that allow aircraft to fly the optimal route and avoid fuel waste. For a flavor of the many individual climate actions taking place within aviation, the http://www.enviro.aero website has examples of what all sectors of the industry are doing all over the globe.

Now, all eyes are on political developments at the UN specialized aviation agency, ICAO, where an historic deal on the global MBM is due to be agreed next year. Industry members have been fully engaged and supportive of this process, but we now need governments to play their part and finalize a fit-for-purpose, workable MBM at the ICAO Assembly a year from now.

If we can keep working towards these goals through the four pillar strategy, with the support of governments and other institutions, aviation will be fully able to both make its contribution to achieving SDG 13. But we will achieve it whilst continuing to play our vital role in global sustainable development.

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

This piece first appeared in the WEF Agenda blog.

Michael Gill is Executive Director of the Air Transport Action Group.

Industrial companies need to adopt a digital mindset that embraces what the Industrial Internet can offer in new growth opportunities.

If you have a mobile phone, tablet, computer or all three, companies like Amazon, Google and Apple are all household names. With the explosion of the consumer Internet during the past 15 years, these companies collectively have amassed more than $200 billion in value innovating and establishing new business models on this singular platform. These companies through the use of data and analytics have defined the consumer Internet.

If you thought the growth of the consumer Internet was big, just wait until you see what the Industrial Internet will bring. For GE alone, we estimate that the Industrial Internet will create at least $15 billion in new value by 2020 to what is today a $150 billion company.

A vast array of industrial machines — jet engines, power generators, pipelines, locomotives — increasingly are becoming connected through the Internet. With the amount of data generated by machine sensors rising exponentially, coupled with ever-more powerful Big Data analytics, the Industrial Internet has reached a critical tipping point. It requires industrial companies to adopt a digital mindset that embraces what the Industrial Internet can offer in new growth opportunities. Many are calling it the emergence of the data economy.

The data economy in fact already is here. Hundreds of billions of dollars in value has been created in the consumer Internet. But we’re just beginning to see the value it can bring to the Industrial Internet. Estimates peg the number of connected things to reach 50 billion by 2020. The consumer Internet was built by connecting several billion people. Can you imagine how big the Industrial Internet could get? For any industrial company looking to expand, my mantra is to generate, segment and analyze the data toward a desired business outcome.

Going back to the examples of Amazon, Google and Apple, how did they transform the consumer Internet? By focusing on consumers and constructing digital profiles of us. Let’s take what Amazon did through the example of a single online shopper.

On Amazon, you might have a female named Linda. Linda is between the ages of 25-34, with an income of close to $70,000. Through her online shopping, Amazon learns a few things about her. It learns, for example, that she has a child between five and 10 months through some infant items she purchases. When she orders and ships a package from an online purchase, we know her parents live 600 miles away and are celebrating their 40^th anniversary. Finally, we know from her account that she spends about $500 -$1,000 on average per month. But the analysis does not stop there.

Once Amazon has formed a profile of Linda, it can do analytics that helps them find other individuals that fit a similar profile to Linda’s. Soon after, Amazon is able to form a psychographic profile of a much larger group of people just like Linda. From this profile, you can amass so much data about the group that you can now begin to predict what Linda or another individual like her will buy. And once you can predict what someone will want to buy and want, you can tailor not only your marketing but also transform and expand your business and service models based on the data and analytics you are able to gather and analyze.

In Amazon’s case, you saw them go from selling books to creating digital devices like the Kindle, Echo, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). They were successful because they had the data and analytics to create a model of one. Achieving a model of one allows Amazon to predict what you may want or need before you even know it. And it’s one of the chief reasons they have been so successful over time.

I’m spending the time to walk through Amazon because it’s very analogous to how GE and other industrial companies will realize new growth opportunities through the Industrial Internet. By creating digital profiles of our assets, that will allow us to extract new value and to transform and expand our business models in the same manner that Amazon has done.

Through our Digital Twin initiative, we’re building up profiles of every machine we make, which will allow us to get to that model of one.

Here are some examples of how the digital profile can transform industries, reducing costs and boosting productivity and reliability:

• On our GE90 Engine, we have used flight data from digital twins of our engines to save tens of millions of dollars in unnecessary service overhauls per customer.
• Through digital twin models of our Evolution Locomotive, we are minimizing fuel consumption and emissions – generated per trip. This saves 32K gallons / locomotive and 174K tons in emissions per year.
• With our 6FA Turbine Combined Cycle Plant, we have used digital models of these plants is helping us achieve a >1 percent increase in efficiency that will be scalable across all plants like this. At this scale, a 1 percent increase represents billions of dollars in savings.

To succeed and capitalize on the growth opportunities the Industrial Internet is creating, industrial companies must not only be deep in software and analytics but have the physical knowledge to match. It’s not enough to have great software. In the complex, high-tech infrastructure worlds, you must have the deep domain expertise and knowledge of the machines and business operating environments to match.

Colin Parris is Vice President for Software Research, GE Global Research

GE signed four deals with Indonesia for a variety of critical energy and transport projects, the company said today. GE said the estimated combined value of the transactions exceeded $1 billion.

Three of the agreements will significantly boost power-generation capacity in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. The fourth accord provides maintenance for locomotives.

One of the energy projects includes a fleet of truck-mounted “mobile power plants” capable of generating 500 megawatts of fast power, the equivalent needed to supply about 4 million Indonesian homes. GE also signed an agreement to provide maintenance for 50 diesel-electric locomotives in Indonesia’s rail fleet.

Top and above: GE’s aeroderivative turbines are based on the company’s jet engine technology like the CF6 engine, which powers many Boeing 747 planes, including Air Force One. But GE Aviation had gotten its start because of GE Power & Water turbine insights. Such knowledge transfer is the idea behind the “GE Store.” Image credit: GE Aviation

GE said the deals involving the power generation and transportation businesses were a key example of the “GE Store,” using its deep portfolio to help a country solve infrastructure needs spanning multiple industries.

The transactions come on the eve Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. The visit is part of an effort to foster closer commercial ties between the two countries.

The Indonesian president is making his first U.S. visit since assuming office a year ago. He also plans to meet with Silicon Valley business executives.

Widodo is seeking to accelerate economic growth in the world’s fourth most populous nation by investing in infrastructure and boosting trade. The President’s goals include increasing power generation capacity by 35 gigawatts (GW) by 2019.

With more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia requires smaller and more localized power generation. Every 1 percent rise in economic output in Indonesia increases energy demand by 1.8 percent— a factor that Widodo and his predecessors in Jakarta have struggled to overcome in recent years. As a result, locals businesses have had to grapple with a growing number of blackouts.

The 35-GW increase that Widodo is seeking represents a massive 70 percent increase to Indonesia’s existing 50-GW power capacity.

GE technology already generates more than 20 percent of Indonesia’s electricity, with more than 8GW of the country’s electricity produced by GE’s gas turbines. The three energy deals that GE signed today will eventually boost capacity by an estimated 3GW.

One of the transactions includes PT PLN Batam, a unit of state-owned power company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PT PLN). The company expects to purchase 20 of GE’s TM2500 mobile gas turbine generator sets — known as GE’s mobile power plant.

GE “power plant on wheels” fits inside a large transport plane. It can start producing electricity within days. Image credit: GE Power & Water

The turbines, which are truck-mounted and mobile, are especially helpful in areas where there are large spikes in power demand caused by a population boom, a rapidly growing economy or a seasonal influx of tourists.

The heart of the TM2500 includes GE’s aeroderivative gas turbine. It’s essentially a ground-based version of GE’s popular CF6 jet engine – the same engine powering President Obama’s Air Force One – and another example of technology transfer through the GE store.

A CF6 jet engine inside a service center. Image credit: GE Aviation

The TM2500s have been a leading technology for fast and emergency power applications in the past 15 years, with more than 200 units delivered globally.

The units, which have 50 percent less emissions than comparable diesel equipment, add flexibility to Indonesia’s power needs. They take just 11 days from arriving on a truck to being operational, and can achieve full power in as little as 10 minutes.

Each TM2500 generator set can produce more than 25 megawatts of power output in the hot and humid Indonesian climate. With most Indonesian homes using only modest amounts of electricity, the 20 new units can provide the equivalent power needed to supply about 4 million Indonesian dwellings.

GE is already installing four TM2500 sets on the island of Sulawesi, in Gorontalo province, which will quickly generate 100 megawatts (MW), equivalent power needed to supply approximately 800,000 Indonesian homes.

To meet rising electricity demand of 9 percent annually over the next four years, Indonesia is taking on about 210 power plant projects — an $88 billion investment. Jakarta forecasts that the increased power capacity will raise annual economic growth more than 6.5 percent. GE also signed two joint cooperation agreements to evaluate developing and investing in power projects using combined cycle technology. The first agreement is with PT PLN subsidiary PT Indonesia Power for a minimum power target of 500MW. The second deal is with independent power producer PT Cikarang Listrindo for a minimum target of 1,000MW.

“We are pleased to play a role in developing Indonesia’s infrastructure by providing technology and capabilities to our customers who will bring much-needed power and transportation services to the Indonesian people,” says GE Vice Chairman John Rice. “The current government’s vision and more recent plans to accelerate spending on infrastructure have given us the confidence to make this commitment.”

How a $9 Burrito Makes the Business Case for Sustainability

Today, many business leaders know the world has changed. They are wrestling with the new mandate to incorporate sustainability and social good into their businesses and brands.

But most companies struggle to figure out how to do this while continuing to meet their quarterly sales and earnings targets. They may have tried “green marketing” and met limited success. Or they may have skeptical shareholders convinced that this is a passing fad, or one that is just for hippies and tree huggers.

Over the eight years I’ve spent compiling evidence that brands can both maximize profit and be a force for social good, the question I’ve been asked most often is: “What’s the business case for sustainability?”

The answer is: a $9 burrito.

Chipotle — which sources its meat from farmers who commit to employ more responsible practices and uses its marketing dollars to advocate for ethical, sustainable farming — is doing $1 billion in revenue each quarter. And it is not an anomaly. It is one of at least nine companies globally — including Nike, Tesla, GE, and others — with more than $1 billion in annual revenue directly attributable to a product, service, or line of business with sustainability or social good at its core.

Together, these “Green Giants” prove that businesses predicated on sustainability and social good aren’t just a viable alternative to business as usual. They are more profitable and more sustainable financially. But how have they converted sustainability or social responsibility into billion-dollar revenue streams, and how can you follow their example? What has enabled these companies to become successful businesses by any standard — not just the standard of sustainable business?

My book, “Green Giants,” isolates six key factors or traits that Green Giants share and that have directly contributed to their uncommon success.

These are:

1. The Iconoclastic Leader. In each case, the sustainability journey can be traced back to one individual who started it all. These remarkable leaders embody “4 Cs” — they are marked by an inner sense of conviction, the courage to stand up and change things, commitment to see change through despite obstacles and a constructive contrarian streak. Surprisingly, for leaders noted for their sustainable business leadership, sustainability is not a job title prerequisite — seven of the nine are CEOs. To drive business transformation on this scale, it seems, you have to be the boss.

2. Disruptive Innovation. Each revenue stream is not founded on a slightly greener or more socially conscious version of an existing product, but on an innovation that disrupted a category. Consider Tesla’s Roadster or Toyota’s Prius, the first automotive alternatives to the internal combustion engine in 80 years. Or Chipotle, which overturned the economics of the fast food category to prove that cheaper does not always mean better. The Green Giants are making things better, not just greener, and inventing the products and services of the 21st century in the process.

3. A Higher Purpose. The Green Giants are guided by a purpose beyond profit. It may seem like a paradox, but businesses with a purpose beyond profit tend to outperform the competition on — you guessed it — profit. Why? Because a purpose serves as a succinct statement of your corporate strategy; it answers the question, “Why does this business exist?” Increasingly, employees, customers, consumers and stakeholders are drawn to companies with an answer to that question, one that aligns with their own personal purpose.

4. Built In, Not Bolted On. Much of the business establishment regards sustainability as an expense to be shouldered, an initiative to be undertaken or a department to be built — a sideshow to the main event of making money. But for Green Giants, sustainability means business, and they integrate sustainability into the core structures of their business. These include the company’s governance structure, its incentive structure, its cost structure and its organizational structure. For example, Unilever CEO Paul Polman has his compensation tied to his delivery of the Sustainable Living Plan, while GE has Ecomagination champions embedded all across its business. Green Giants reframe sustainability from a vertical function to a business horizontal and in the process, they enable it to become a revenue driver, not a drag.

5. Mainstream Appeal. If your product targets only what I call a Super Green niche, it’s hard to reach $1 billion in revenue because there simply aren’t enough people who take green values seriously enough to get you there. Green Giants understand that while for most people, sustainability is increasingly desirable, it comes in as runner-up in the relevance stakes to whatever primary functional or emotional benefit they seek — be it flavor, functionality, cachet, health or value. So Green Giants build their marketing around human wants, needs and desires first, showing that sustainability delivers the benefits people want, rather than focusing on the sustainability itself. That’s how to achieve appeal with mainstream customers or consumers.

6. A New Behavioral Contract. Transparency, responsibility, collaboration: today’s business buzzwords are alive and well at the Green Giants. But it’s more than talk. Reputation today is built through actions, not advertising. If the recent VW emissions scandal is a salutary example of what not to do, actions like Nike disclosing every factory in its supply chain on a public website; Unilever’s proactive efforts to reduce the emissions generated from consumers’ showers (without pressure from stakeholders); or GE’s commitment to collaboration at scale in its Ecomagination challenges are the antidote to businesses behaving badly. Green Giants are forging a new behavioral contract with the rest of us – and behaving their way to billions in the process.

The UN estimates that the market for “green trade” will grow to $2.2 trillion by 2020. That’s trillion with a t in just a few short years. And Green Giants are the leaders in an inexorable business movement, seizing the market’s next great business opportunity.

But it’s their iconoclastic thinking, radical innovation, tenacious commitment, standout creativity and explosive growth that are driving this momentum — instead of the earnest themes of integrity, responsibility, and altruism more commonly associated with sustainability. Ignore their example at your peril.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

Freya Williams is CEO, North America for Futerra.

Technological advances from the Industrial Internet to renewables are transforming the energy industry. Here are the key trends to watch over the next decade.

Hyper-connectivity is transforming many industries — few more so than the energy sector. The expansion of the industrial Internet and power of Big Data analytics is enabling power companies to predict maintenance failures and approach zero downtime, while smartgrids and apps are empowering consumers to become producers.

“We are now in the era of `personal energy infrastructure management,’” where connected consumers are gaining increasing control over energy consumption and production, says Jim Carroll, a futurist and energy expert.

The quickly shifting energy landscape means utilities and other industry players must be careful not to be “MP3’d” like the music industry, says Carroll in an interview, in which he also discusses the prospect of achieving energy access for all and the potential for renewals to replace fossil fuels as the dominant energy source:

How much progress will we make in improving energy access to everyone on the planet in 10 years, with the help of microgrids and off-grid solar and other solutions?

One of my favorite phrases comes from Bill Gates: “People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in 10.”

I think we live in a period of time when there are several key trends impacting out future use of energy. An intelligent, connected and self-aware grid. An accelerated pace of innovation with non-traditional energy sources — there are now window panes for building construction that generate solar power. Major investments and innovation with energy storage battery technology. I don’t think any of us can really anticipate how quickly all of this is coming together.

Will renewables top fossil fuels as the dominant energy source?

History has taught us that significant progress is more incremental than dramatic. The key point is that globally, we are at an inflection point when it comes to energy. Right now, we’re 90 percent carbon, 10 percent renewables, give or a take a few points. At some point — 10, 20, 50, 100 years? — we’re likely to be at 50-50.

A lot will happen with scientific, business model and industrial change between now and then. We’ve had this predominant business model based on carbon that goes back 100 years, but will that last forever? We’d be delusional if we thought so. What is known is that the carbon energy industry has made tremendous and somewhat unforeseen strides with increasing output — shale, horizontal drilling, smarter drilling and production technologies. Yet the same thing is happening with renewables — and it’s probably happening faster. In the long term, I believe we will see a gradual and inexorable shift to renewables.

How much will we be able to reduce the carbon footprint of the power industry, as technological innovation brings down the cost of renewables?

The technology — as well as consumer/industrial demand for new alternatives — will continue at a faster rate but will run up against increasing regulatory and business model challenges. That’s why I have challenged utility CEOs to ask the question, “Could they be MP3’d?” Could the energy generation and distribution industry find itself in the same position as music companies did n the past — stuck defending an older and entrenched business model, rather than embracing new ideas, concepts and methodologies.

How will the relationship between consumers and producers of electricity change, given smartgrid technologies, mobile app connectivity and the increasing availability of small-scale renewable power sources?

I always stress that we are now in the era of “personal energy infrastructure management.” What does that mean? I have the ability to manage my heating and air conditioning spend through an iPhone app. In the not too distant future, I believe my local neighborhood will have some type of swarm intelligence — linked to local and upcoming weather patterns— that will adjust its consumption patterns in real time based on a series of interconnected home thermostats. My sons are 22 and 20 years old, and we’ve had an Internet-connected thermostat in our home and for over a decade. They live in a world in which they are in control of remote devices, include those that manage their energy use.

How much will energy efficiency improve, with the help of the Industrial Internet and Internet of Things and Big Data analytics?

Some people might view the IoT as being the subject of too much hype at this point. Maybe that is true, but it is probably such a significant development that we can barely comprehend its impact. Think about it this way: every device that is a part of our daily lives is about to become connected. That fundamentally changes the use and purpose of the device in major ways. Add on top of that location intelligence — knowing where the device is, and its status. Link together millions of those devices and generate some real-time and historical data — the possibilities boggle the mind.

We are increasingly in a situation in which the future belongs to those who are fast. That might be a challenge for the energy and utility sector, but it’s a reality.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

Jim Carroll is one of the world’s leading international futurists, trends and innovation experts, with a client list that ranges from Dupont to Johnson & Johnson; the Swiss Innovation Forum to the National Australia Bank; the Walt Disney Organization to NASA. His focus is on helping to transform growth- oriented organizations into high-velocity innovation heroes. You can catch his video, “Could the Energy Industry Be MP3’d?” at http://energy.jimcarroll.com

People have been making things from iron and steel for more than 3,000 years. Machines built from their alloys have landed on the Moon and reached the very bottom of the ocean. But engineers like GE Aviation’s Sanjay Correa now believe that “we’re running out of headroom in metals.”

He and his team at GE say that a new class of materials called ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) is set to revolutionize everything from power generation to aviation, and allow engineers build much more powerful and efficient jet engines before the end of the decade. “This is a huge play for us,” Correa says.

Correa has an inside view. He leads GE Aviation’s CMC program and the company just announced that it would spend $200 million to build two new CMC factories in Huntsville, Ala.

The Rocket City factories -a nickname tied to Huntsville’s role in launching Americans to space – will be supplying raw material to the first American CMC plant, which GE opened last year in Asheville, NC. The company also already operates two CMC “lean labs” in Newark, Del., and Cincinnati, Ohio, that are looking for new applications for the materials and new ways to make them. “Opening the new plants in Alabama is a key step in building up the supply chain we need to make CMC parts in large volumes,” Correa says.

Above: GE brought this jet engine turbine blade made from CMCs to the 2015 Paris Air Show. Top: The ADVENT adaptive cycle engine holds some of the most advanced GE technology, including CMCs. Image credit: GE Aviation

GE scientists have been working on CMCs for two decades. These “super ceramics” are as tough as metals, but they are also two-thirds lighter and can operate at 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit – 500 degrees higher than the most advanced alloys. This combination allows engineers to design lighter components for engines that don’t need as much cooling air, generate more power and burn less fuel.

Correa and his team believe that CMCs could allow designers to increase jet engine thrust by 25 percent and decrease fuel consumption by 10 percent by 2020.

While these numbers are pregnant with promise, CMCs have been extremely difficult to mass-produce. Until fairly recently, their use was limited to the space industry and fighter jet exhaust systems.

GE’s first applications were less lofty, but also more practical. Starting in 2000, GE’s Oil & Gas business tested CMCs inside a 2-megawatt gas turbine in Florence, Italy. By the middle of the decade, turbines with CMC shrouds – special parts directing the flow of air into the hottest parts of the machines – were running for thousands of hours without a hitch.

GE’s aviation business picked up the technology in 2007 and started looking for jet engine applications at its lean laboratory in Delaware. (This is an example of the vaunted “GE Store” – the transfer or technology and knowledge between GE businesses.)

Above: GE is testing CMC parts inside engines for passenger planes as well as fighter jets. Image credit: GE Aviation

GE Aviation first used the material for CMC shrouds in the hot section of its F136 fighter jet engine, but their application quickly spread. Static CMC parts are already flying inside the next-generation passenger LEAP engines developed by CFM International, a joint company between GE and France’s Snecma (Safran). CFM has received more than 9,500 orders and commitments for the engines valued at more than $120 billion (list price).

In 2015, GE started testing CMC components in a GEnx engine – the type used by many Boeing Dreamliners – to mature the technology for its latest large engine: the GE9X. When finished, the GE9X engine will be the largest jet engine ever built with 11 feet in fan diameter and capable of producing 60:1 air compression – arguably the highest ever in the history of aviation. “We expect a 10-fold increase in demand for CMCs when these and other engines take off by the end of 2020,” Correa says.

Correa’s team is far from finished, though. Earlier this year, they tested the first spinning parts inside the latest-generation ADVENT adaptive cycle engine, a demonstrator engine for the U.S. Department of Defense.

GE researchers have now started replacing rotating metal components with CMCs. This is big deal since shedding their weight by two thirds will produce a knock-one effect by lowering the centrifugal force inside the engine. For example, it will allow designers to reduce the size of the engine’s main shaft and cut engine weight further.

The ADVENT’s low pressure turbine with blades from CMCs. Some of them are covered with a special yellow environmental coating. Image credit: GE Aviation

GE makes CMCs from tiny silicon carbine fibers embedded in a silicon carbide matrix. The fibers are 5-times thinner than human hair and coated with a “very highly proprietary coating,” Correa says. The result is “tough like a metal [but] not brittle like a ceramic,” he says.

GE first started producing the fibers in Japan in 2012, after it formed a joint venture company, NGS Advanced Fibers Co., with Nippon Carbon and Safran. NGS owns one half of the company and the GE and Safran split the rest. One of the new Huntsville plants will be first such facility in the U.S. It will supply GE businesses and also the U.S. Department of Defense. The second facility will take the fiber and make a highly-proprietary CMC tape for use by the GE CMC plant in Asheville.

The other two components of GE’s CMC ecosystem – the lean labs in Ohio and Delaware – are already looking for new applications for the materials and new fabrication methods, respectively.

Before long, you maybe flying to China in a plane powered by ceramics.

Early one October morning 30 years ago, GE scientist John Schenck was lying on a makeshift platform inside a GE lab in upstate New York. The itself lab was put together with special non-magnetic nails because surrounding his body was a large magnet, 30,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. Standing at his side were a handful of colleagues and a nurse. They were there to peer inside Schenck’s head and take the first magnetic resonance scan (MRI) of the brain.

The 1970s were a revolutionary time for medical imaging. Researchers at GE and elsewhere improved on the X-ray machine and developed the computed tomography (CT) scanner that could produce images of the inside of the body. Other groups were trying to adapt nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for medical imaging, a technology that already used powerful magnets to study the physical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules. But their magnets were not strong enough to image the human body.

At the time, GE imaging pioneer Rowland “Red” Redington (he built the first GE CT scanner) also wanted to explore magnetic resonance and hired Schenck, a bright young medical doctor with a PhD in physics, to help him lead the way. Schenck spent days inside Redington’s lab researching giant magnets and nights and weekends tending to emergency room patients. “This was an exciting time,” Schenck remembers.

Heady Times: John Schenck (standing) and Bill Edelstein at the front opening of the first whole-body 1.5 tesla magnet in 1983.

Schenck’s unique background allowed him to quickly grasp the promise of MRI. Unlike CT and X-ray machines that generate radiation which travels into the body, the strong magnetic field produced by MRI machines tickles water molecules inside body parts and makes them emit a radio signal that travels out of the body. Since every body part contains water, MRIs can recognize the source of the signal, digitize it, and apply algorithms to build an image of the internal organs.

It took Schenck and the team two years to obtain a magnet strong enough to penetrate the human body and achieve useful high-resolution images. The magnet, rated at 1.5 tesla, arrived in Schenck’s lab in the spring of 1982. Since there was very little research about the effects of such strong magnetic field on humans, Schenck turned it on, asked a nurse to monitor his vitals, and went inside it for ten minutes.

The field did Schenck no harm and the team spent that summer building the first MRI prototype using high-strength magnetic field. By October 1982 they were ready to image Schenck’s brain.

Many scientist at the time thought that at 1.5 tesla, signals from deep tissue would be absorbed by the body before they could be detected. “We worried that there would only be a big black hole in the center” of the image, Schenck says. But the first MRI imaging test was a success. “We got to see my whole brain,” Schenck says. “It was kind of exciting.”

The 1.5 tesla magnet has since become the industry standard for MRI. Today, there are some 22,000 1.5 tesla MRI machines working around the world and generating 9,000 medical images every hour, or 80 million scans per year.

Schenck, now 76, still works at his GE lab and works on improving the machine. He’s been scanning his brain every year and looking for changes. Building on new research, he believes that MRI scan could soon help doctors detect and treat depression and other mental disorders. “When we started, we didn’t know whether there would be a future,” he says. “Now there is an MRI machine in every hospital.”

When GE launched Ecomagination in 2005, it redefined what it meant to be “green” for a business. Ecomagination was more than just another idea – it was a groundbreaking strategy the company used to build more efficient machines that produce cleaner energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, clean water and cut its use, and make money while doing it.

Now ten years old, Ecomagination has generated more than $200 billion in revenues since inception. Today, GE is expanding the program with eight partnerships seeking to solve looming environmental and sustainability challenges in ways that make economic sense.

Top image: GEnx jet engines use lightweight composite fan blades and fan case and other advanced technologies that allowed engineers to reduce fuel consumption as well as cut CO2 and NOx emissions and noise. Image credit: GE Reports/Adam Senatori Above: The EcoROTR is still only a prototype, but GE’s wind turbine are a key part of GE’s Ecomagination portfolio. Image credit: GE Reports

GE’s partners include Masdar, Walmart, Total, MWH, Goldman Sachs, BHP Billiton, Intel and Statoil (see infographic at the bottom of the page). GE is already working with Statoil, for example, to lower the need for water needed by hydraulic fracturing and cut CO2 emissions caused by flaring natural gas escaping from oil wells.

“Our goal is to create a network effect,” says Deb Frodl, Ecomagination’s global executive director. “We want to inspire more companies to work together and tackle the world’s greatest resource problems. This is about co-development of solutions that can be scaled globally. Global water and energy challenges require immediate action and the business community isn’t going to wait.”

GE’s Evolution Series Tier 4 locomotive is the first diesel-electric rail engine in North America  that meet’s the EPA’s Tier 4 emission standard. It will decrease NOx and particulate matter emissions by 70 percent, compared to Tier 3 technology. Image credit: GE/Vincent Laforet

GE’s new Tier 4 locomotive will decrease emissions by more than 70 percent from Tier 3 technology

The need for such advances is more urgent now than it was a decade ago. According to GE’s analysis, the global economy will grow 33 percent, from $73.8 trillion today to $98.1 trillion in the coming decade. Rising populations and economic growth are already taxing energy and water resources, not to mention the environment.

GE estimates that energy demand will rise 20 percent over the next ten years, and the International Energy Agency sees global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy production rising 20 percent, to 37.6 million tons annually, over the same period.

GE’s cloud-based Predix software platform is also part of the Ecomagination portfolio. I can help make everything from power plants to airlines more efficient. GE Digital is now opening it to customers. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Ecomagination has always had a vision for the future, Frodl says. GE committed to invest $15 billion in cleaner-technology research and development between 2005 and 2014, and the company has published a list of goals it believes industry can collectively hit by 2020 (see infographic below).

Similarly, the new partnerships and will set “concrete metrics and goals” for each arrangement. Says Frodl: “These partnerships are a collaboration where we will develop new technology solutions which we will then deploy in our businesses, learn [from them] and eventually commercialize.”

It wasn’t just luck that the Ebola epidemic didn’t spread once it reached Lagos. Here’s what other countries can learn from Nigeria’s effective response.

A horror never before seen unfolded in late spring and summer 2014: the first urban Ebola epidemic in human history.

As Ebola spread through the densely populated urban center of Monrovia, Liberia, cases overwhelmed the country’s fragile health infrastructure. Hospitals and Ebola treatment units overflowed with sick and suffering patients; television crews filmed people dying in the streets.

The situation threatened to get worse rapidly — and much, much bigger. On July 20, 2014, a sick traveler from Liberia got off a plane in Lagos, Nigeria — a densely populated city with 21 million residents, nearly 20 times larger than Monrovia. As Africa’s largest city and an international travel hub with departures via every conceivable mode of transportation to cities throughout Africa and the world, spread of Ebola in Lagos could have turned a regional epidemic into a global catastrophe.

The ill traveler sought treatment at a private hospital in Lagos. At the airport and in the hospital, he came into direct contact with 72 people before he was diagnosed with Ebola. He infected 13 of them with the virus, one of whom fled quarantine to travel by air to Port Harcourt, the country’s oil capital, further spreading the infection to doctors and others in that city. It looked as though a nightmare scenario — the exponential spread of Ebola in multiple urban centers — was about to become a reality.

Not Just Luck

With all the elements for a global epidemic in place, why didn’t it happen? It wasn’t just luck.

Unlike the three other nations in West Africa where the Ebola epidemic raged, Nigeria had a functioning emergency operations center (EOC) and incident management system. CDC and international partners helped establish this public health infrastructure in an all-out effort to eradicate polio. When Ebola landed in Nigeria, the government had the critical systems already in place to detect the virus and interrupt transmission before it could spread out of control.

Nigeria also had another advantage: a team of disease detectives trained through CDC’s Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP), in which a CDC resident advisor mentors epidemiology trainees in a two-year program modeled after CDC’s elite Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). Nigeria’s FETP is one of 55 such programs with more than 3,100 graduates in 72 countries. More than 80 percent of graduates of these programs stay in their home countries, generally working in leadership positions.

Nigeria’s FETP trainees spread out across Lagos in the hours and days after the initial patient’s positive Ebola diagnosis, looking for anyone who might have come in contact with the traveler. CDC staff in Nigeria and from Atlanta became part of the incident management system providing a coordinated, urgent response. The teams identified 894 people at risk for Ebola and completed nearly 19,000 home visits to monitor residents for symptoms. At the airports, more than 147,000 travelers were screened for fevers that might indicate Ebola infection.

Eventually, the effort identified 19 additional people with Ebola across three generations of transmission in the two cities, and were able to end the outbreak before it could spread further among Nigeria’s population of about 180 million people — or beyond.

How to Stop the Next Outbreak

Outbreaks are an inevitable threat of nature. They cannot always be predicted. But frequently they can be contained and controlled — if detected in time, and if there is an appropriate, rapid response.

In today’s increasingly interconnected world, an outbreak in one country is just a plane ride away from almost any other country. Every nation’s health security depends on the health security of other nations — which is why CDC supports the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). GHSA is a collaborative effort by more than 50 countries working to ensure that every country has the minimum infrastructure necessary to prevent, detect, and respond to disease outbreaks. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are among the participating nations.

GHSA includes:

• A nationwide laboratory network equipped with modern diagnostic tools and that follows strict biosafety protocols.
• Real-time disease surveillance.
• A timely electronic system for reporting disease outbreaks.
• A dedicated workforce of medical and public health professionals, including disease detectives.
• Emergency operations centers capable of coordinating an effective response within two hours.

Having these capabilities in place helps countries deal more effectively with day-to-day health issues and allows them to be ready to rapidly scale up in emergencies.

CDC is committed to protecting the health, safety, and security of Americans — but we’ll only be safe if we can stop international health threats at their sources. By investing in the world’s health we’re protecting our own — and giving us all a better chance at stopping the next epidemic, or pandemic, before it reaches our borders.

(Top image: CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden exits an Ebola treatment unit in West Africa in 2014. Courtesy of CDC.)

Dr. Tom Frieden is Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When Joe Salvo bought his house in Schenectady, NY, in 1986 he purchased a piece of history. GE built it in 1905, not long after Thomas Edison and his compatriots opened the company’s labs and moved manufacturing plants to the city. It was intended to be the model electric home of the future: light bulbs in every room, sewing machines, a toaster, an electric stove and an electric water heater.

Now that the future is here, Salvo is hardly ever home. As GE’s director of the Industrial Internet Consortium (ICC) – a not-for-profit group seeking to bridge the physical and digital industrial worlds – he’s too busy building the “new” future and telling the world about it. “I actually come from the future,” he jokes over the phone from Shanghai, where he was recently speaking. “I’m paid by GE to work in the future and create the things that are going to be transformational.”

He’s only half kidding. In his office at GE Global Research in the Schenectady suburb of Niskayuna, Salvo has a 2015 version of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1905 electric toaster: a dedicated 100-GB-per-second line (compared to regular broadband speeds of 25 megabits per second) that he can expand to a bandwidth of many terabytes per second in preparation of the data flood that will soon arrive.

Salvo is one of the key people in laying the foundations of the Industrial Internet, a topic that attracted hundreds of customers and industry leaders to Dubai for GE’s Minds + Machine conference, which starts on Monday.

Top: GE’s Minds + Machines conference opens on Monday in Dubai. Above: Thousands of sensors placed on this 9HA GE gas turbine produce nearly 5 terabytes of data, about half the content of the print collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Image credit: GE Power & Water

For all of its blessings, the regular Internet — the one that allows you to read the paper and watch Game of Thrones online — still has problems, foremost among them, security.

The Industrial Internet, a network that connects machines with each other and the cloud for analysis and then dispatches relevant results to human operators, is a different beast. “This is the network where we are going to put the machines that our lives depend on,” Salvo says.

Companies are constantly looking for ways to make smarter decisions. But that’s getting harder without good data. The Industrial Internet will carry all manner of performance data about heat, noise, and vibrations from sensors attached to all kinds of machines including jet engines, locomotives and oil rigs. It can also connect help optimize entire hospitals, factories and power plants.

“We are moving into a systems age, where complex machines become self-aware and will start to make decisions among themselves,” says GE’s Joe Salvo. “If we’re lucky, they will teach us a thing or two.”

Salvo says that thanks to Moore’s law, which states that computing power will double every two years, and Metcalfe’s law – the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users – “we now have both the computing power and memory that is required to make really intelligent machines and then connect them to a network.”

“We are moving into a systems age, where complex machines become self-aware and will start to make decisions among themselves,” Salvo says. “If we’re lucky, they will teach us a thing or two.”

This is vintage Salvo. He helped establish the IIC last year. Along with GE, Salvo signed up four other companies as co-founders – Intel, Cisco, AT&T and IBM – and convinced each company to pay an annual fee of $250,000 to kick-start the funding the group needed. The IIC now includes more than 215 members from 24 countries. They include universities and research institutions as well as telecoms and industrial businesses.

In 1905, GE built in Schenectady the electric house of the future. Joe Salvo, who bought the house in 1986, is now building GE’s new digital industrial future. Image credits: Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady

Salvo says the IIC’s job is to make sure the Industrial Internet will be built on an open architecture where everything is interoperable. This will be important in a future where there will be as many as 50 billion devices connected by 2020 to the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things.

One such piece of architecture is GE’s cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet called Predix. GE has been using the platform internally and in September opened it to outside developers.

Salvo says that GE’s founder would have understood his vision. “Edison based our company on the concept that you build a network and you add all kinds of interesting devices to it that will change the way we live — things like voice recordings, movies, washing machines, stoves and electric motors,” Salvo says. “GE has taken advantage of that network thinking for over 100 years, and the Industrial Internet is the logical extension of that.”

Hollywood producer Brian Grazer says that a curious mind is the secret to a bigger life. It’s also the secret to a thriving business.

Grazer and Oscar-winning director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) have teamed up with GE and National Geographic Channel to make a six-part documentary TV series focusing on scientific breakthroughs and innovation.

Grazer and Howard are the executive producers of the series, also called Breakthrough, which launches this Sunday with an episode focused on fighting pandemics. The episode will air at 9 pm ET on the National Geographic Channel and will also stream on GE Reports.

Like the rest of the series, the pandemics episode will draw on research at GE’s labs. “We’ve been living in this world,” Beth Comstock, GE’s vice chair for business innovations, told Variety. “That’s why we exist. But we’re able to bring the perspective of ‘is this a breakthrough or not?’ — whether it’s ours or someone else’s.”

Above: Albert Einstein visited GE labs in Schenectady, NY, in 1921, six years after he published his theory of general relativity. The man in the light suit in the middle is Charles Steinmetz, the GE mathematician and physicist whose scientific breakthroughs helped electrify America. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science Top: GE scientist Fiona Ginty is working on new tools to fight cancer.

GE scientists have had their share of breakthroughs. Over the years, the company has employed several Nobel Prize winners, as well as scientists who narrowly missed the award, like Nick Holonyak who invented the visible LED. Albert Einstein, Lord Kelvin, Guglielmo Marconi, I.P. Pavlov, Niels Borh and other science superstars have visited its research headquarters in upstate New York.

Each of the Breakthrough episodes was directed by a different marquee name. Peter Berg was behind the Pandemics episode, Angela Bassett did an installment on clean water, Paul Giamatti focused on human engineering, Ron Howard on aging, Brett Ratner on improving the brain, and Akiva Goldsman on the need for clean energy.

A group picture during a visit of Lord Kelvin to the General Electric Schenectady Works. Lord and Lady Kelvin are in the center of the picture. Charles Steinmetz is fourth from the left. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

Breakthrough will follow scientific explorers from leading universities and institutions during their daily quest for disruptive innovations that could change the way we live.

The episodes will also feature GE scientists like Peter Tu, who is working on computer vision, John Schenck, who helped GE build its first MRI machine and used it to image the brain, and Fiona Ginty, who works on the leading edge of cancer research. “When I was a young child, I wanted to be an inventor, but thought that everything had already been invented,” Ginty says. “As an adult scientist, I came to see how much work there’s left to do.”

John Schenck took the first selfie of the human brain. Image credit: GE Reports

GE Reports will profile the GE scientists and their projects over the next six weeks, starting with their work on wiping out malaria. “It’s science in real time,” National Geographic Channel CEO Courteney Monroe told Variety. “We’re covering scientific breakthroughs that are happening right now. Certainly, science is not waiting for us.”

Biologist Fiona Ginty has spent the last decade at GE Global Research trying to crack cancer’s code. She’s also one of the stars of the new six-part documentary series developed by GE and National Geographic Channel called Breakthrough, which is focusing on scientific progress and innovation and premieres on Sunday night.

“When I was a young child, I wanted to be an inventor, but thought that everything had already been invented,” Ginty says. “As an adult scientist, I came to see how much work there’s left to do.” Ginty’s research could one day help doctors treat the right patients with the right kinds of drugs and assist pharma companies with developing new cancer medicines.

Each of the Breakthrough episodes was directed by a different marquee name. Peter Berg was behind the Pandemics episode, Angela Bassett did an installment on clean water, Paul Giamatti focused on human engineering, Ron Howard on aging, Brett Ratneron improving the brain, and Akiva Goldsman on the need for clean energy.

The first episode of the series, which was produced by Hollywood’s Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, is focusing on pandemics, specifically Ebola. It premieres tonight at 9pm ET on National Geographic Channel, but you can also stream it here after it airs. Enjoy!

GE’s innovation center in Saudi Arabia will join the company’s family of global research hubs stretching from the US, to Europe, Brazil, China and India. The move highlights GE’s growing emphasis on software and advanced manufacturing, and its transformation into the world’s largest digital industrial company.

The company made the announcement before the Minds + Machines conference, which is taking place in Dubai this week. Jeff Immelt, GE Chairman and CEO, opened the conference today. He talked about Predix, the company’s cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet, and said the company already had industrial assets valued at $1 trillion under management. He expected GE’s software revenue to grow to $6 billion in 2015, double the number just 2 years ago.

Above: GE brought all kinds of digital assets to Dubai this week, including a hologram host taking a GE9X jet engine for a spin. Top: GE “digital power plant” explainer was standing room only today in Dubai. Image credits: GE Reports

Funding for the project will come on top of the $1 billion GE had already agreed to invest in Saudi Arabia over the last three years. It also highlights the growing importance of the country and the region for GE.

Scientists at the center, which is located in the Dhahran Techno Valley on the Persian Gulf coast, will recruit from GE Global Research, GE Power & Water and GE Oil & Gas. They will be looking for new ways to boost the energy efficiency of new and existing machines and systems, and to meet a growing demand for power in the Kingdom and throughout the region. They will also take part in research seeking to improve power generation and oil and gas technology serving in “hot and harsh” conditions. Even in November in coastal Dubai, for example, temperatures still easily top 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Light fixtures like this LED street lamp will be a key component of the “intelligent city.” This fixture, which GE brought to Dubai, has cameras to monitor traffic and parking and a microphone to detect potential crimes. Image credit: GE Reports

GE researchers will also partner with local customers, companies and developers to speed up the spread and adoption of the Industrial Internet in the Kingdom and beyond.

GE believes that the Industrial Internet, a network connected machines feeding data into the cloud for analysis and operational insights, could add $1 trillion to global GDP by 2030. The company estimates the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey could gain $465 million by 2025 on an annual basis by connecting machines to the network.

The lamp is part of a system that uses cameras to gather data and analyze traffic flow. Image credit: GE Reports

The coming age of the Industrial Internet will create “tremendous growth opportunities for GE in Saudi and the region,” says Nidal Ghizawi, the GE technology and innovation director who will run the new research center.

Observers estimate that over the next five years, more than 50 billion devices — from jet engines to fitness monitors — will be connected via the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things. These devices will churn out terabytes of data constantly — enough information in a single day to match the print collection of the Library of Congress. Industrial data will likely be the fastest-growing segment.

GE Garages helped visitors grasp advanced manufacturing concepts like 3D-printing. Image credit: GE Reports

GE sees an important growth market in the Gulf region, where orders in 2014 exceeded those from India and China combined. One-fifth of those orders came from Saudi Arabia, which is home to Saudi Aramco, a key customer for GE Oil & Gas, and Saudi Electric Company, a customer for GE Power & Water.

The Kingdom has been diversifying its economy in order to lessen its dependence on oil and become a regional center for petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, food processing and auto manufacturing. The Saudi economy is expected to grow, despite weak oil prices.

GE launched GE Digital last summer. The company estimates the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey could gain $465 million by 2025 on an annual basis by connecting machines to the Industrial Internet. Image credit: GE Reports.

GE expects to double its Saudi Arabian workforce to 4,000 in the next five years, the company also said today. Beyond adding jobs, Ghizawi says, GE also plans to double to 300 the number of Saudi suppliers. It will also significantly ramp up its training efforts, offering classes to more than 10,000 Saudi professionals, to boost expertise in the energy and health care sectors.

GE hopes to boost exports from Saudi Arabia to $100 million annually.

GE acquired the power and grid business of the engineering company Alstom on Monday, creating a new global industrial powerhouse. The ink on the deal may still be fresh, but it isn’t the first time the two companies have met. In fact, they both sprung from the same roots.

GE came to be in 1892, when New York financier J.P. Morgan organized a merger of equals between Thomas Edison’s Edison General Electric Company and Elihu Thomson’s Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form GE. Thomson-Houston’s top executive, Charles A. Coffin, became GE’s first president.

Above: Thomson’s early work with dynamos, arc lamps, and alternating-current power made him one of the top inventors of the late 19th century. His Thomson-Houston company merged with the Edison General Electric Company in 1892 to form General Electric. Top GIF: Top image: Thomson looks through a telescope at his observatory in Swampscott, Mass. Image credits: Museum Innovation and Science Schenectady

Like Edison, Thomson was a tinkerer and inventor from an early age. “Having worked, at eleven years of age and on, with electrical apparatus, generally of my own construction, it was natural that I should have acquired an intense interest in all advances in electrical science and its applications,” Thomson wrote in a letter. His interest was so intense, in fact, that his name still survives – albeit in a slightly altered form – as the last three letters in Alstom’s name.

Even before the merger, both GE and Thomson were keen on exporting their products but were running into legal barriers. “In the case of foreign companies notably the French Company…everything without exception must be manufactured in France so as to conform to the French patent law,” the Edison Bulletin reported about Edison’s French subsidiary in June 1882.

To overcome the opposition, Thomson-Houston incorporated in France a group with the ungainly name of Companie Francaise de L’Exploitation des Procedes Thomson-Houston (CFTH) and in 1893 GE gave it “exclusive rights in all lines of electrical products and systems in France,” according to GE’s historical business review.

A Thomson-Houston plant in the mid-1890s, shortly after the company merged with Edison General Electric Co. to form GE. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

In 1928, CFTH combined with France’s Sociéte Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques to create Alstom – or Alsthom, as it was then known – to become a major builder of power plant and other heavy technology.

The business was headquartered in Belfort, France and in 1959, GE gave Alstom rights to manufacture gas turbines there. GE bought it back in 1998.

In 1903, the Paris Orleans Railway Station was powered by Thomson-Houston technology. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GE still makes turbines in Belfort, including the 9HA, aka “Harriet”, the world’s largest and most efficient gas turbine.

Thomson was born in England in 1853 but moved to America when he was a boy. As an 11-year-old boy, he became so fascinated with electricity that he built an electrical machine out of a wine bottle. “I got my first view of electric sparks from that machine, my first knowledge of electricity from that machine,” Thomson told a biographer.

After graduation from high school, he taught science and became a professor at the age of 23. In 1880, he and his high school colleague Edwin Houston started a business selling arc lamp systems. They were so successful that a decade later their company rivaled Edison and Westinghouse Electric Co.

After the merger with Edison, Thomson became GE’s chief engineer and encouraged the company to establish a research laboratory in Schenectady, NY. The lab became GE Global Research.

Over his career, Thomson made pioneering contributions to the development of alternating current systems, dynamos, electric streetlights and railroads, x-rays and other technologies. He received more than 700 patents.

Today, scientists at the GE lab he started are developing advanced manufacturing technologies and materials like 3D printing and ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), which will soon serve inside the latest generation of GE gas turbines and jet engines, and also software and predictive analytics, which will make them more efficient.

Shahid Abdullah has been in business long enough to spot a good opportunity. Abdullah is the president of the Sapphire Group, one of Pakistan’s largest textile companies with 16,000 employees, $800 million in annual revenues, and a global base of customers. But when his country started running out of electricity a decade ago, he switched gears and built a large power plant in Muridke, just north of Pakistan’s second largest city Lahore. “Moving into power generation was a step that made sense,” he says. “Not just from a business perspective, but also in terms of realizing our mission and contributing to the development of the communities in which we work and live.”

Abdullah’s calculation was simple. Lack of power is one of Pakistan’s burning needs. Electricity consumption is growing by close to 8 percent, and peak power demand exceeds supply by more than 4 gigawatts (GW), a massive amount. But his journey was far from easy.

The Muridke Power Plant generates 234 megawatts (MW), but from the start in 2010 it grappled with fluctuating fuel costs, which make up some 85 percent of its operating expenses. Fuel savings of just 1 percent could boost its net income by as much as 20 percent, but the downside was equally steep.

Abdullah, whose company came to GE’s Minds + Machines event in Dubai this week, started looking for a solution and learned about the Industrial Internet, a digital network connecting, collecting and analyzing data from sensors installed inside machines, including turbines that produce electricity. “His answer was in numbers,” says Azeez Mohammed, president and CEO of GE Power Generation Services in the Middle East and Africa, who started talking to Abdullah in 2014.

Top: The Badshahi Mosque (King’s Mosque) in Lahore. Image credit: Muhammad Ashar Above: The Muridke Power Plant Image credit: Sapphire Group

Mohammed proposed to embed hundreds of sensors and other digital instruments in Abdullah’s turbines, analyze the data they collect, and use the information to improve the plant’s performance, optimize production and reduce unplanned downtime. But Abdullah was cautious. “The last thing I wanted was to be a guinea pig in GE’s ‘first-of-its-kind’ experiment,” he laughs.

GE’s Mohammed, however, was convinced that the project would work. So much so that he proposed Abdullah a deal: GE would pay for the sensors and the software and then split all benefits with Sapphire under a win-win scenario.

With Abdullah on board, GE dispatched a team of technicians and software engineers to Muridke. They spent a month developing a self-learning analytical model based on huge amounts of data from the gas turbines and other plant assets at Sapphire. The model allowed them to predict changes in efficiency, electricity output and other outcomes under different production scenarios without having to make any changes to the equipment itself.

Above: The control center at the Muridke Power Plant. Image credit: The Sapphire Group 

In October 2014 the team connected the system to the plant’s two GE 6FA gas turbines, which GE engineers specifically designed with the Industrial Internet in mind. By December that year, the Sapphire plant has started seeing the benefits.

The heart of the system is GE’s Predix software platform and an advanced analytics application called Asset Performance Management (APM). The app allows industrial assets talk seamlessly with each other in a secure manner, and uses analytics to make the equipment more efficient.

The GE team is now working to link power plant’s steam turbine to system. The software is so versatile it doesn’t mind that turbine was the Czech industrial company Skoda, not GE.

GE estimates the Industrial Internet could bring the Muridke Power Plant millions of dollars in benefits over the next decade.

The Muridke Power Plant is using two GE 6FA gas turbines. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Others in Pakistan will benefit from the system as well. Electricity shortages, known locally as ‘load-shedding’, are an everyday reality that families and businesses have had to learn to cope with them. “Our entire daily routine, from the time we sit down to help our children with their homework to the time we iron our clothes, is determined by the load-shedding schedule,” says Zeba Zahid, a mother of three and resident of Lahore, one of the cities that benefits from the power produced at the Muridke Power Plant. “It’s especially difficult to deal with in the summer, when peak temperatures cross 45 degrees Celsius [113 Fahrenheit] and load-shedding often exceeds 12 hours a day.”

GE estimates that making Pakistan’s power plants smarter with data analytics and software could add 600 megawatts to the country’s power output without building a single new plant. That’s comparable to building an entirely new power plant.

Abdullah feels that he made a smart choice. “As far as I’m concerned, the benefits offered by Industrial Internet based solutions are real and immediate,” he says. “This is an opportunity that Sapphire and Pakistan cannot afford to miss out on.”

GE completed its acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid business today. The transaction, GE’s largest industrial deal ever, unites two storied businesses with roots stretching to the very dawn of the power industry more than a century ago and to its pioneering founders Thomas Edison and Elihu Thomson.

GE has been transforming itself into the world’s largest digital industrial company. With Alstom’s power and grid global footprint, GE will be able to apply big data analytics to an even larger installed base to reduce unplanned downtime and improve performance of turbines, power plants, wind farms, and the grid.

“The completion of the Alstom power and grid acquisition is another significant step in GE’s transformation,” said Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO, GE. “The complementary technology, global capability, installed base, and talent of Alstom power and water will further our core industrial growth. We are open for business and ready to deliver one of the most comprehensive technology offerings in the energy sector for our customers.”

The Haliade turbine developed by Alstom has a rotor diameter of 150 meters – one and a half times the length of a football field. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Some 1.3 billion people don’t have access to reliable electricity today. The International Energy Agency’s 2014 World Energy Outlook estimates the world needs to add some 7,200 gigawatts (GW) of power generating capacity by 2040 to meet new demand and replace old plants. Two thirds of that growth will be in non-OECD countries, including places like China when Alstom had a big presence.

The acquisition boosts GE’s installed power generation base to some 1,800 gigawatts (GW). That’s more than enough to supply all of U.S.

The company will also be able to improve its power plant design and greatly expand its grid business. With Alstom, it now has the grid footprint and scale to compete globally. Alstom, for example, supplied equipment to the world’s largest transmission line, the Linhão do Madeira in Brazil. The 2,380-kilometer (1,480 miles) long line runs from the Amazonian state of Rondônia to the state of São Paulo in the southeast, and includes 20,000 kilometers (12,400 miles) of cable held aloft by 5,000 steel towers.

Software analytics applied to data coming from a huge installed base will help GE and customers reduce unplanned downtime and improve performance of turbines, power plants, wind farms and the grid.

The will deal will also leave GE with one of the broadest and deepest renewable energy portfolios in the industry. While GE has been a leader in onshore wind, the acquisition will allow GE to expand into offshore wind. For example, GE acquired the massive Haliade wind turbines that will power America’s first offshore wind farm off the coast of Block Island, RI.

Bryan Martin, head of U.S. private equity at D.E. Shaw & Co. — which is backing the offshore wind farm — says combining Alstom’s wind turbines and GE’s power generation into a single company changes the wind farm competitive landscape. “GE and Alstom getting together creates the first real competitor to Siemens” for offshore wind farms in Europe, Martin says.

A worker is finishing a huge Francis hydroturbine. Image credit: GE Power & Water

The company also believes that the GE Store — the concept that knowledge and inventions fuel further innovation and applications across the company’s varied industrial sectors as workers in different businesses share their expertise and technology — will also benefit from the combined firm. GE expects $3 billion in savings from synergies in year five of the merger.

The deal closed after receiving regulatory approval in over 20 countries and regions including the E.U., U.S., China, India, Japan and Brazil.

The ties between the two companies predate the creation of GE itself. The name Alstom (originally Alsthom) itself underscores the links between the two firms. The name is a mash-up of the Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques (giving “Als” to the name) and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company (the “thom” of the original moniker).

Elihu Thomson and GE engineer Charles Steinmetz, whose power grid designs helped electrify America, on a street in Boston, Mass. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

The two firms merged in 1928. Thomson-Houston was a predecessor to General Electric. In 1892, it merged with the Edison General Electric Company to form GE.

Even today, the two companies have many ties. In the French town of Belfort, Alstom Power and GE have factories that sit side by side, and even share a cafeteria.

In the era of Big Data, project managers need a new skillset and mindset.

Before 1998, the word terabyte didn’t exist. In 2007, the first 1 terabyte hard drive was brought to market. By 2020, we expect GE machines to produce 10 to the 6 terabytes per day of information — 1 million times the size of that hard disk. At GE Oil & Gas, we have unprecedented access to information about our technology and networks, from cradle to grave.

But having overcome hurdles to producing and capturing this information is only part of the challenge. Over the period that this Big Data revolution really got underway, the productivity of industrial companies actually declined, from 4 percent between 1990 and 2010, to 1 percent in the following four years.

Much of this comes down to the human factor. Training and skills hadn’t caught up with the level of data available. Put simply: we could get the data, but didn’t know what to do with it.

The key to contemporary project management is making data work for you. This means collecting the information available to you — from machine data, to client feedback, to social media commentary — and using the insights that information provides to create outcomes your customers can benefit from. Where once project managers reported retrospectively — explaining failures — today they must share issues honestly and proactively, seeking to anticipate and address them before they escalate.

This requires a shift in both skills and mindset. Skill — because project managers must be trained to effectively handle, sift, analyze and share the wealth of data available to them. Mindset — because providing customers access to real-time data, honestly discussing issues as they happen and collaborating to address problems require a new level of confidence and bravery from project managers. We have opened the windows and can’t now close them, whatever the weather.

Just as we expect our project managers to adjust to this new reality, we have to provide them the tools to make this possible. From my point of view, these tools must incorporate “hard” technology — like RealTrack, which helps them manage and share data and insight with customers — alongside “soft” skills, addressing real-time problem solving and customer engagement. It is where hard and soft skills and tools meet that a contemporary project managers finds their sweet spot.

Key to this process is leading from the front. I can’t ask my team to be fluent with data, keep up with the news on Twitter, or interact more frequently with the customer, if I am not doing the same. That’s why, when we set up our Project Management Academy, we made sure all training was staffed by leaders — bringing real world, immediately actionable lessons to the table. The world is moving too fast to theorize. We want our project managers to leave the room as agents of immediate change.

This dynamic form of project management is both good business practice and common sense. Shared access to data means more eyes on the issues, making teams better able to anticipate problems, and utilizing all the available expertise to address them. Empowering project managers helps to keep their interest, as well as to develop and retain them. And better-informed project managers — who engage the customer more regularly, tackling problems collaboratively — make it more likely you will retain the customer.

The growth of Big Data is a huge opportunity for us as a project management community — and we are grasping it. It’s time for the #contemporarypm to shine.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

Alberto Matucci is the Wellstream Global Leader at GE.

Qatar-based RasGas Company Limited isn’t your typical energy business. In just two decades, it has grown into a leading global supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The company employs more than 3,000 people of 68 nationalities and contributes a major part of Qatar’s economic output. It’s also a key tool in the government’s strategy to meet the goals listed under the Qatar National Vision 2030.

Like all successful companies, RasGas is constantly looking for smart ways to improve its operations. It recently found GE’s Predix.

Predix is an industrial-strength, cloud-based software platform that GE developed to analyze data and optimize the operations of machines connected to the Industrial Internet. This week at the Minds + Machines conference in Dubai, RasGas announced a partnership with GE Power & Water to stream its data into the cloud and use Predix to analyze it. RasGas will use the results to make their machines more efficient, extend their lifetime and optimize the company’s product chain.

Azeez Mohammed, head of power services for GE Power & Water in the Middle East and Africa, says the pilot phase of the partnership with RasGas will include GE and non-GE equipment. He says it’s the first time a Predix pilot has been applied beyond GE devices, showing that the platform’s open architecture can work with all devices.

RasGas knows well the power of data. The company has been gathering it from its LNG plants for years, but the use of it was limited. Data time synchronization, consolidation of complex data and holistic analysis proved to be challenging. Predix will help the company improve things. “RasGas has hundreds of assets sending information in different formats for different purposes,” Mohammed says. “But it was hard to aggregate the data using a unified platform.”

At the heart of the RasGas project sits GE’s Asset Performance Management package. It will help LNG workers analyze information coming from their machines, share it across systems and identify spots where there is room for improvement and optimization.

Observers estimate that over the next five years, more than 50 billion devices – from jet engines to jogging fitness monitors – will be connected via the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things. These devices will churn out terabytes of data, effectively matching the print collection of the Library of Congress on a daily basis.

Industrial data will likely be the fastest-growing segment. But industrial data is both complex and voluminous. It’s also inherently messy.

GE software engineers designed Predix to allow users to organize their data and give developers a platform to build apps that address the specific needs of each industry. LNG facilities, after all, are different from airplanes or wind farms.

There are two main pain points for the oil and gas industry — one is reliability and the other efficiency. Because energy companies sign contracts that guarantee a certain amount of gas supply for as many as 10 years out, they need to reliably secure the right output.

Predix will help them proactively minimize unplanned downtime, better manage periodic maintenance, and ultimately improve equipment availability. This will cut the amount of the unprocessed gas produced during downtime. Since such gas is typically flared off, it will also reduce waste. “With Predix, they’ll be able to reduce unplanned downtime and have a more reliable production line,” Mohammed says.

Using Predix-based apps for data analysis will also allow workers to see if the equipment is working within design parameters and ensure that each area is operating as efficiently as possible to maximize performance and output.

Finally, GE’s Asset Performance Management program will also allow crews to share insights and store them in talent and knowledge databases.