On the heels of Google’s $10 million investment in the geothermal energy arena comes their next–and related–project: advancing policy for a smarter electrical grid.  They’ve chosen to partner with General Electric and have aimed at throwing a lot of weight at Washington.  Here’s the synopsis from their informational two pager:

Initial federal policy priorities

Resources for the transmission capacity necessary to enable large scale deployment of renewable electricity generation.

Develop and deploy the smart electricity grid for better grid management.

Technology collaboration

Large-scale renewable energy starting with advanced geothermal technology.

Helping to integrate plug-in vehicles into the grid.

This all sounds great, and it seems to signal that the future is now.  There are some great signs we can take from this kind of participation from big companies (where will the next hot investments be–wink, wink–if we can get the market out of the gutter).

The accompanying video on this topic highlights some interesting points from both sides.  Jeff Immelt, GE CEO, says that his company is spreading their support for energy technologies across the board.  Aside from making the best wind turbines in the business, he mentions that they’re also interested in solar and now geothermal.  Any of those could be the superstar tech and he knows it.  On Google’s side there was an intriguing and short mention of V2G-Vehicle to Grid.  That’s a particularly interesting subject that’s in the background right now.  We’ll be sure to talk about it in another post.

The real question about this partnership is how much progress they’ll be able to make in our nation’s capital.  Go big G!