October 15, 2015 – GE has launched its Digital Power Plant, a software and hardware solution that creates a virtual “Digital Twin” of an entire industrial power plant complex, it says. Powered by GE’s Predix platform, “Digital Twin” is a collection of physics-based methods and digital technologies that are used to model the present state of every asset in a Digital Power Plant or a Digital Wind Farm. This technology lets utilities monitor and manage the power generation ecosystem to generate electricity, GE says.

Central generation of energy will account for up to 95% of the energy mix by 2025, according to GE, and as a result GE’s Digital Power Plant will “enable GE’s utility and industrial customers to harness information technologies to optimize the underlying infrastructure that generates electricity, in a manner that will transform the way electricity is generated and managed worldwide, helping minimize the impact of power production and consumption to the climate.”

The expected benefits include up to $230 million for a new combined-cycle gas power plant and up to $50 million for an existing combined-cycle gas-powered plant in savings, GE says. Across the power industry today this will equate to up to $75 billion in savings, it adds.

Once an entire power plant is digitized, it can deploy applications powered by the Predix platform to continuously improve assets and operations, GE says. Predix is the only secure cloud and platform built for and by industry experts to support the e scale and requirements of industrial data, GE adds.