The GE Brief: September 24, 2020

LEGO MY FACTORY
 
Akos Jancsik and Patrick Bean understand the power of data: The two GE engineers work with industrial customers, including food and beverage manufacturers, to make their factories smarter. Essentially, it’s the internet of things on an industrial level, with the right software able to spot patterns or predict when a part might fail. A connected factory can increase efficiency or speed up new product design. But “data” can be a bit abstract, and not long ago Jancsik and Bean were looking for a vivid way to demonstrate the potential of their systems. Eventually they found an off-the-shelf solution — if the shelf in question is in a toy store. Jancsik and Bean used Legos, the tiny but iconic Danish building blocks, to create a scale model of a plant.
 
Child’s play? Hardly: Their finished product was small enough to fit on a lunch tray, but it nonetheless captures plant data like motor temperatures and air tank pressure. The scale model also simulates a bearing failure by having a small brick act as a brake on the motor. The data collected by the tiny plant displays on a dashboard in the plant itself, but also shows up on Jancsik’s and Bean’s laptops, so they can show customers how GE’s software interprets the insight. “I wanted to make sure we have real hardware that we can run and real instruments, real data with noise,” Jancsik said. And customers loved it: Before the pandemic restricted travel, the tiny factory was a hit at trade shows. Their Lego replicas now reside at GE offices from Paris to Shanghai where they use them during video presentations.
 
Learn more here about the tiny factory.
 
POWER PLAY
 
The winds of progress are blowing in the renewable energy industry. On Monday, GE Renewable Energy announced it had signed the first contract for the Haliade-X, the world’s most powerful offshore wind turbine in operation, to be installed at Dogger Bank, a project in the North Sea that will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm when completed. But that’s not all the good news out of Europe: France has just started building its first offshore wind farm in the Loire River estuary near the city of Saint-Nazaire. Set to come online in 2022, the project will comprise 80 of GE’s Haliade 150-6 MW turbines and be capable of generating enough power to meet 20% of the electricity consumption needs of the Loire-Atlantique, a region of France that’s home to around 1.4 million people.
 
The French connection: The new wind farm is also a potent symbol. While France has emerged as a player in offshore wind — the 107-meter-long blades for the Haliade-X, for instance, are made by GE Renewable Energy subsidiary LM Wind Power in the port city of Cherbourg — it has not previously tapped its own offshore wind potential, unlike European neighbors including the U.K. and Germany. The factory in Saint-Nazaire where GE just started producing the generator and other components for the country’s first wind farm had previously turned out parts for projects, including the U.S.’s first offshore wind farm at Block Island. At a ceremony last week in Saint-Nazaire, GE France president Hugh Bailey said, “We are proud today that this factory, which has already been producing ‘from France’ for several years, can today, at last, do it ‘for France.’”
 
Learn more about France’s first wind farm here.
 
 
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
 
1. New Vision
Researchers at Australia’s Monash University are preparing to begin clinical trials on a brain implant technology that could restore sight to people with vision loss — and may also help patients with spinal cord injuries and epilepsy.
 
2. Get In Formation
European planemaker Airbus is looking to fellow denizens of the sky— namely, geese and pelicans — for inspiration for more efficient flight. The V-shaped pattern that those birds fly in helps them conserve energy.
 
3. Say Cheese
Engineers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory captured the world’s largest digital images with the world’s biggest digital camera — which is bound for an observatory in Chile, where it will help astronomers study the universe at 3,200 megapixels a picture.
 
Read more here about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.

— QUOTE OF THE DAY —

“If you’re not an extremely technical person, you’re not a data scientist, some of it can become a bit mundane. There’s nothing like a Lego set that’s running, actually turning pumps, to liven that up.”
 
— Patrick Bean, senior staff solutions architect, GE Digital

Quote: GE Reports. Images: GE Digital.