GE Unit Unveils Unique Energy Storage Platform, Reservoir

General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) core business — GE Power — recently unveiled the most comprehensive energy storage platform, GE Reservoir. The Reservoir already has a 20 MW, 80 MWh pre-launch commitment and this is likely to expand GE’s 10-year footprint in the energy storage space and build upon recent successes and milestones. It delivers the new type of energy system that customers are looking to manage electricity’s next chapter.

The energy landscape is undergoing an unprecedented paradigm shift based on growth of renewables, decentralization of power and digitization. GE’s Reservoir platform is developed with innovative technology from GE’s Global Research Center and has a flexible, compact energy storage solution for AC or DC coupled systems. It is expected to deliver a suite of customized storage solutions to help customers address new challenges and seek new opportunities in a rapidly transforming power grid. It also enables cost-effective distribution, storage and utilization of cleaner and more reliable power where and when it is needed the most. It can fit into any setting from centralized grid systems to the most remote villages and communities.

Road Ahead

GE’s Reservoir offers energy providers new degrees of flexibility as well as highly customized solutions for customers with unprecedented levels of resilience and operational efficiency in hybrid generation, grid operation and energy management. The platform leverages Predix and Edge controls technologies to provide data-driven insights that help energy operators enhance their systems. Digital technologies leverage GE’s unique and unparalleled technical and industry domain knowledge across the entire energy ecosystem from generation to consumption.

The 1.2 MW, 4 MWh Reservoir storage unit is the fundamental building block of GE’s Reservoir platform. It is a modular solution that integrates GE’s Battery Blade design (module stack design) with key technologies from across the company’s portfolio to achieve an industry-leading energy density, footprint and lifetime performance. GE’s proprietary Blade Protection Unit actively balances the safety, life and production of each battery Blade, improving battery life by up to 15% and reducing fault currents up to five times. Overall, GE’s Reservoir has the potential to deliver the most comprehensive energy storage platform to help meet the energy industry’s rapidly evolving requirements.

Share Price Movement

GE Power is the largest business segment of the company in terms of corporate revenues. However, the business has been a drag on earnings in the last few quarters as global demand waned with increasing popularity of renewable energy sources, overcapacity, lower utilization and fewer outages. GE has underperformed the industry in the last three months, with an average loss of 17.8% compared with a decline of 4% for the latter. It remains to be seen if GE can turn around its operations and benefit in the future from this upgradation in its power space.




Zacks Rank and Key Picks

General Electric carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). A few better-ranked stocks in the industry are Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE:FSS) , Hitachi Ltd. (OTC:HTHIY) and 3M Company (NYSE:MMM) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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3M has an expected long-term earnings growth rate of 10.2%. It trumped estimates in three of the trailing four quarters, the average being 3.2%.

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