GE's Sylvester says that we have arrived at a moment in energy change

April 1, 2016
Maryrose Sylvester, the fast-rising GE executive who is now president and CEO of Current, Powered by GE, has posted an interesting essay on LinkedIn. Sylvester says that society has arrived at a significant moment in terms of energy generation, usage, and management.

Maryrose Sylvester, the fast-rising GE executive who is now president and CEO of Current, Powered by GE, has posted an interesting essay on LinkedIn. Sylvester says that society has arrived at a significant moment in terms of energy generation, usage, and management. She projects that it will be transformational on a scale from individual households to entire countries.

The moment is being enabled by the convergence of a number of disparate factors and elements, and energy-efficient LED lighting is key among those. In fact, Sylvester even references Haitz's Law that charts the exponential improvements delivered by LED technology.

Still, energy efficiency is only one element, albeit an important one. There are other factors such as the granularity of generation that's being enabled by lower-cost solar. Of course, energy-efficient LEDs have made solar more effective as well.

And it's really the move toward the Internet of Things (IoT), or what Sylvester calls the Industrial Internet, that will interconnect the disparate elements and bring about the systematic advantages.

Like many speakers at the recent Strategies in Light conference, Sylvester points out that 2 billion lighting endpoints in the US alone provide a great place to realize a networked future. But the data analytics task will be enormous. Very interesting read.

About the Author

Maury Wright | Editor in Chief

Maury Wright is an electronics engineer turned technology journalist, who has focused specifically on the LED & Lighting industry for the past decade. Wright first wrote for LEDs Magazine as a contractor in 2010, and took over as Editor-in-Chief in 2012. He has broad experience in technology areas ranging from microprocessors to digital media to wireless networks that he gained over 30 years in the trade press. Wright has experience running global editorial operations, such as during his tenure as worldwide editorial director of EDN Magazine, and has been instrumental in launching publication websites going back to the earliest days of the Internet. Wright has won numerous industry awards, including multiple ASBPE national awards for B2B journalism excellence, and has received finalist recognition for LEDs Magazine in the FOLIO Eddie Awards. He received a BS in electrical engineering from Auburn University.