August 27, 2019
MAKING THE MOST OF THE CALIFORNIA SUN
With the addition of 13 gigawatts of solar capacity, the makeup of California’s baseload curve — the bare minimum electricity supply — has changed dramatically in the past decade. The future is bright for renewables in the state but the new arrangement also presents new challenges, particularly around sunset. People returning home from work create a peak in demand at just around the time when solar generation stops, meaning utilities need to rely on other sources of power, like gas-fired power plants. If you were to sketch out the baseload curve, you’d get a little bump (morning) followed by a long swoon (midday) followed by a steep upward climb (dusk) — a pattern that some recognize as the profile of a right-facing duck. Operators of California’s gas power plants, though, see an expensive, inefficient pain in the tail feathers.
Duck, duck, upgrade: “Solar generation has made it even more challenging for utilities that provide baseload power to respond to the steeper peaks and troughs of California’s power demand,” said GE Power’s Alexander Pistner. You can’t just turn on gas-burning power plants like you can turn on a light; they’re somewhat more akin to cars, which use fuel most efficiently at steady highway speeds, burning it quicker in start-and-stop city traffic. GE engineers are designing solutions for utilities dealing with the duck curve: for instance, an upgrade for gas power plants that uses 3D-printed parts to help turbines burn hotter and ramp up faster. It’s expected to help GE’s 7F turbines in California reduce annual fuel consumption by around 25%, and slash yearly emissions by 20% — equivalent to the emissions of around 3,000 cars per unit, per year.
What technologies are GE engineers employing to roast this duck? Learn more here.
BLOCKCHAIN’S QUANTUM LEAP
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it,” said Niels Bohr, a guy with a pretty good understanding of quantum mechanics — work in the field helped earn Bohr his 1922 Nobel Prize in physics, after all. That’s because the quantum world is a wild place where time travel is possible and an electron can be in many places simultaneously, for example. For decades, researchers have been trying to harness this weird power to create computers that could be millions of times more powerful than today’s machines. If they’re protected by quantum technology, too, they could be a whole lot more secure — a project is underway right now at GE Research in Niskayuna, New York, where scientists are applying quantum mechanics to make blockchain safer.
All tangled up: Blockchain is already a terrifically powerful tracking method, which can be used to keep tabs on digital wallets, smart contracts and also specific products — say, the powder that makes up a 3D-printed part for a jet engine or a medical device — along their entire supply chains. But it’s not unbreakable, and experts think it’s only a matter of time before someone uses quantum computing to hack the blockchain. One possible solution? Fighting quantum with quantum: specifically, a technology called quantum key decryption, which takes the science of scrambling and reassembling digital information to the next level. It relies on the property of quantum entanglement, where particles can communicate with each other faster than the speed of light — no matter how far apart they are. Fantastical? Yes. But also a foolproof alarm system, said Jim Bray, chief scientist at GE Research: “Successfully cracking or stealing becomes impossible.”
It sounds futuristic but quantum technology will be here sooner than you might think. Learn more here.
REMOTE CONNECTION
Access to healthcare is a persistent problem in remote parts of the world, where many people are hours — even days — from the medical treatment they need. Technology can help, though. Recently, American nurse Marie Elizabeth Bell worked for nine months at a clinic in rural Papua New Guinea, a country with high infant and maternal mortality rates. A three-day walk from the nearest hospital, the clinic had no advanced imaging capabilities to check up on expectant mothers — except the Vscan with Dual Probe, a handheld ultrasound device from GE Healthcare. “It can be life-changing for some of these expectant moms, as this may be the only medical care they receive during their entire pregnancy,” Bell said. It was certainly life-changing for one pregnant mom who ended up needing an emergency C-section: Her condition swiftly diagnosed, she was helicoptered to the hospital, where surgery saved both her life and her baby’s.
Going the distance: In rural China, meanwhile, GE Healthcare is using cloud computing and artificial intelligence to bridge another rural-urban divide — namely, high rates of heart disease in the countryside. The company’s Cloud ECG technology lets rural clinicians link up with medical professionals hundreds of miles away to consult on a diagnosis, giving distant physicians instant access to data on the heart’s rhythm and electrical activity. And in Africa, the GE Foundation is funding efforts to “train the trainers,” making sure local medical workers are up to speed on best surgical practices to ensure the safety of their patients.
Learn more here about how technology is bringing healthcare to every corner of the globe.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Zeppelin Reunion Tour
Maritime cargo shipping generates a lot of carbon emissions, and a new paper proposes an old solution: massive hydrogen-filled airships that will take advantage of the jet stream to transport goods around the globe.
2. Full Moon Fever
It was a big week for moon news: Two companies announced plans to send the first American craft to land on the moon since Apollo, and the European Space Agency said it’s seeking proposals for how to study the many tunnels beneath the moon’s surface, in hopes of eventually building bases there.
3. Coral Comeback
Researchers at the Florida Aquarium successfully induced the spawning of endangered Atlantic pillar coral in the lab — giving a boost to efforts to restore the ailing Florida Reef.
Read more about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth here.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“What’s really surprised me is how quickly the technology is maturing from a laboratory out into the world. People hear quantum and think it’s 20 years out when it’s really more like 20 months out.”
— John Carbone, senior engineer at GE Research
Quote: GE Reports. Image: Getty Images.
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