Tue, 08/05/2014 - 00:00

ABERDEEN, Miss. (Aug. 5, 2014) – GE’s Digital Energy business and the City of Aberdeen has announced plans to implement GE’s Solutions as a Service (SaaS) technology. SaaS is a cloud-based, fee-for-service grid management system that enables small- and mid-market utilities, like the City of Aberdeen, to build modern and interconnected grids. “Aberdeen was seeking an opportunity to empower customers to become more engaged with their electric and water utilities,” said Todd Jackson, product line leader—software solutions, GE's Digital Energy business. “Through GE’s pre-integrated SaaS, Aberdeen will be able to provide the information end-users need to make more knowledgeable decisions about their resource usage and budgets.” Using SaaS, a GE Predictivity solution, GE will provide Aberdeen with access to an online customer portal, enabling residents to visualize their energy usage and billing information. As part of the portal, the city can engage consumers with tools to better manage energy and water habits, removing uncertainty about their monthly utility bills. Under the terms of the agreement, GE will also provide Aberdeen with a range of services, including electric and water metering for the city’s advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), asset monitoring and mapping, outage detection and meter data management. “Our goal is not only to establish the City of Aberdeen as a regional leader in grid modernization, but to provide residents with the power to take control of their resource usage. GE offers the expertise and innovative solutions required to make these goals a reality,” said Cecil Belle, mayor of Aberdeen. “The result is reliability and real-time information utilities and consumers alike need—and have come to expect—in today’s interconnected world.” Introduced last year, GE’s SaaS can establish a constant flow of communication between a business operation and its machines, enabling big data to be converted into real-time analytical insight, improving grid reliability, productivity and efficiency. Currently, GE’s SaaS is being utilized by Holly Springs, Mississippi, marking Aberdeen as the second utility in the state to integrate this solution. It’s also being integrated by Electric Cities of Georgia/City of Norcross, Georgia, the City of Leesburg, Florida, and Skiatook, Oklahoma. GE’s Digital Energy business provides transmission and distribution solutions that manage and move power from the power plant to the consumer.