The GE Brief: August 25, 2020
POWERFUL AGREEMENT
Air conditioning isn’t a luxury in Iraq, where summertime temperatures can top 110 degrees — it’s a necessity. And it’s also a challenge, as heavy demand for cooler air can stretch the country’s power supply. But relief is on the horizon: This month, GE and Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity signed a pair of agreements, one to upgrade the country’s key power plants and the other to fortify its electrical grid. “Our primary focus is delivering uninterrupted electricity, especially during summer months, to meet the needs of our people and industry,” said Majid Al-Emara, Iraq’s minister of electricity. “The new agreements with GE, a leader in power technology, are an ideal fit for our requirements and build on the strong partnership with GE to deliver more power for the nation.”
A solid foundation: GE has been operating in Iraq since 1965, when it installed the country’s first gas turbine. And in the last decade the company has helped bring 15 gigawatts of power online, including in areas that had been liberated from the Islamic State group. Today GE is responsible for 55% of Iraq’s electricity, with some 300 GE employees — nearly all local Iraqis — working across the country. The new deals are worth $1.2 billion, including $500 million in parts and maintenance services for existing plants across the country. To reinforce Iraq’s grid, GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions will essentially link it to the grid of its neighbor Jordan, reducing overall congestion and ensuring dependable power supply.
Learn more about the deals — and about GE’s deep involvement in Iraq — here.
BIG LIFT
Even under normal circumstances, removing an old steam-powered generator from a power plant and replacing it with a new one is a substantial undertaking. Earlier this year, when a trio of GE engineers planned such a maneuver at the Calaca power station in the Philippines, they figured they’d need to make a big hole in the station’s roof to lower the brand-new machine in. This approach required procuring one of the few cranes in the country big enough to lift the 180-ton generator, in a narrow window of time. But the logistical challenge didn’t end there: They also had a nearby volcanic eruption to contend with, as well as the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Luckily, GE has more than a century of expertise with just these kinds of projects.
Not their first rodeo: The trio working in the Philippines recalled a story that’s become the stuff of legends at GE, when a field engineer in 1912 coordinated the delivery of a turbine-generator to a Manhattan brewery owned by Jacob Ruppert, a former congressman and future New York Yankees owner. The brewery’s ceiling wasn’t strong enough to lower the machine in on chain hoists, so the field engineer had to get creative: Struck by inspiration while eating ice cream one night, he slid the huge generator into its cavity on blocks of ice, then pumped out the meltwater as it sunk into its place. In the Philippines 108 years later, the GE engineers came up with something equally ingenious involving a temporary roof, precise timing and a complex process of assembly. But they had little time to celebrate: They still had to complete installation while ash from the volcano fell — and the pandemic picked up.
Learn how they did it here.
NUMBERS CRUNCHERS
For months now, doctors, nurses and other essential workers have been giving their all in efforts against the coronavirus pandemic. Computer scientists are also pitching in. In the U.S., the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium made more than 25 supercomputers available to scientists studying potential vaccines or treatments. One of those is Summit, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, housed at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). When they’re not busy solving the world’s most pressing challenge of the moment, though, Summit and other supercomputers are busy solving other looming issues, like climate change. GE is no stranger to this work.
Engineering, supercharged: GE Research, for instance, recently partnered with ORNL to use the Summit supercomputer to learn more about how heat moves inside jet engines and gas turbines at power plants. These machines run so hot that ordinary computers can’t model their internal dynamics. Supercomputers, though, can give engineers ideas for how to squeeze out incremental gains in fuel consumption and emissions. The power of these machines cuts across disciplines (and across GE businesses): It’s also helping engineers streamline the process of 3D printing and better analyze the airflow around wind turbines — so that wind farm operators can catch more breeze for their buck.
Learn more here about how GE uses supercomputers to fast-track innovation in medicine, manufacturing, aviation and beyond.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Meet The RoBeetles!
Researchers at the University of Southern California created “the lightest and smallest, fully autonomous crawling microrobot reported to date,” and named it the RoBeetle.
2. Have A Mini Heart
A functional miniature model of the human heart, grown from stem cells by scientists at Michigan State University, could offer researchers new insights into the development of congenital heart defects.
3. Very-High-Speed Internet
At 178 terabits per second — the data transmission rate achieved by researchers at University College London who set the world record for internet speed — you could download everything on Netflix in less than a second.
Read more here about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“I never posted about any project on Facebook but this project I posted. That’s how crazy this project was for me.”
— Ganesh Potharaju, project manager at GE Power
Quote: GE Reports. Images: Getty Images.