GE wants a slice of the burgeoning green-data-centers pie &8212' and ita4ぎa4г willing to spend half a billion dollars to get it.
The company, which manufactures everything from wind turbines to electric car charging stations, announced today it has acquired power conversion technology company Lineage Power for $520 million from Gores Group, an offering that GE says will help it leverage huge opportunities in telecom and making data centers more efficient.
In 2006, the government reported that data centers consumed 1.5 percent of all electricity in the U.S., costing $4.5 billion, and projected that energy use could nearly double by 2011, costing $7.4 billion a year.あKevin Skillern, who heads up GEa4ぎa4г energy venture capital investments told us he believes the rate is higher &8211'あthree to four percent of U.S. energy output a year. GE hasあbacked other green data center technology companies like JouleX and SynapSense in the past, but this acquisition is a major move into the sector.
Lineage Power makes energy efficient power conversion technology that converts the AC electricity delivered from the grid to DC electricity to power the servers and equipment in data centers. It also makes DC-DC power modules for telecom purposes and helps companies set up energy systems. Some companies have been demonstrating data centers running on all-DC power as of late, as a way to save energy.
Lineage Power had revenues of approximately $450 million last year and counts Verizon among its customers. It also appears to have a small fuel-cell business.
Next Story: IBM&'s Watson AI takes on Jeopardy&'s best contestants Previous Story: HeyStaks makes searching social
Print Email Twitter Facebook Google Buzz LinkedIn Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Delicious Google More&8230'
Companies: GE, Gores Group, Lineage Power
People: Kevin Skillern
Companies: GE, Gores Group, Lineage Power
People: Kevin Skillern
Iris Kuo is the VentureBeat's lead GreenBeat writer. She has reported for The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, Houston Chronicle, the McClatchy Washington Bureau and Dallas public radio. Iris attended the University of Texas at Dallas and lives in Houston. Follow Iris on Twitter @thestatuskuo (and yes, that's how you pronounce her last name).
VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters. Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.
Discuss Add this link to... Bury
Comments