General Electric turns Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City into appliance laboratory

Abu Dhabi has been drumming up publicity for its planned carbon-neutral, zero-waste community and research complex, Masdar City, recently — last week airing intentions to raise $600 million to start construction in earnest. Now it says it’s partnering with General Electric to test the conglomerate’s so-called smart appliances, ranging from refrigerators to clothes dryers capable of communicating energy use data and running at off-peak times.
GE has signed on for a two-year pilot project to install its appliances in 10 Masdar City homes, starting in early 2010. The trial period is not only for the appliances, but also for the City’s advanced electrical grid, which will ideally transmit data from the appliances to its central utility in real time.
Abu Dhabi has already taken the development’s sparse population into account, explaining that it will simulate peak demand generated by a fully inhabited city in order to put GE’s equipment through the full range of experiences. Masdar isn’t expected to hit its target of 50,000 residents until 2013.
The utility and appliances will also need to be able to swap demand signals. That way, clothing dryers could know to run when demand is lowest and energy is technically cheapest. Refrigerators could similarly be alerted to the best time to run their energy-intensive defrost cycles. With plans to roll out 1.2 million smart meters and substation monitoring systems, the development seems like the ideal laboratory forthis brand of technology.
Masdar City will eventually be home to the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and the International Renewable Energy Agency. It is also going to be a proving ground for large scale solar and geothermal energy installations (sources that will presumably be integrated into the Smart Grid). In all, it looks like it will cost the United Ara Emirates capital, and its government-owned corporation, Masdar, about $22 billion.
This isn’t GE’s first Smart Grid pilot — it previously teamed with Louisville Gas and Electric to install appliances in several Kentucky households. Working with Abu Dhabi is also nothing new, as it has previously partnered with Masdar’s parent company, the Mubadala Development Company, across sectors, including aviation and commercial finance.

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