The GE Brief: April 6, 2021
PUMPING IT UP DOWN UNDER
Australia’s grid is at a crossroads. The country has relied on coal to generate its power for decades, but as coal is cycled out, the country needs other sources of energy to replace it. It plans to build 26 to 50 gigawatts of new wind and solar facilities and — to smooth out swings in renewable generation caused by the weather — add another 19 GW of power plants that run on natural gas and batteries that can step in when the wind stops blowing. One powerful energy storage solution involves pumped-storage hydropower.
The water under the hill: Pumped-storage hydro utilizes a relatively simple setup: two connected lakes, one elevated above the other, and a set of turbines, generators and pumps that shuttle water between them. In favorable conditions, excess energy from wind and solar farms can turn the giant pumps and push water up to the higher reservoir. When demand on the grid spikes, the operators can open the gates, and gravity will take the water downhill through turbines and generate more electrons for the grid. “You’re creating a giant battery that you can literally use on a rainy day,” says Martin Kennedy, head of sales for hydropower at GE Renewable Energy in Australia. With two new agreements signed last year, GE Renewable Energy and Australia are diving headfirst into a future driven by pumped hydro.
Learn more about Australia’s plans to use pumped hydro here.
ULTRASOUND LIFESAVER
Last year, Dr. Yale Tung Chen, an emergency medicine clinician in hard-hit Madrid, Spain, became one of a handful of clinicians around the world testing Vscan Air™, a handheld, wireless ultrasound scanner developed by engineers at GE Healthcare. The device, which GE released for sale in the U.S. and Europe in March, beamed images from the ultrasound probe to an app on his smartphone. “I’ve been using it on COVID-19 patients, scanning hearts, lungs, blocked vessels,” he says. It fit inside his white coat pocket and allowed him to examine his patients “and make decisions quickly right at the bedside.”
Global impact: Anders Wold, president and CEO of global ultrasound at GE Healthcare, envisions the Vscan Air™ “as delivering on the future of healthcare at a time when ultrasound has proven to be an essential tool at the point of care.” The family of Vscan tech is making a big difference in a wide variety of settings. In Papua New Guinea, where roads are scarce and many babies are delivered at home, Vscan has been an invaluable tool for supporting expectant mothers and their babies. In Zambia, Sister Miriam Cibale Mushoda is using Vscan where she once relied on her hands to tell if an expectant mother was carrying her baby in breech. Dr. Nils Petter Oveland also has found the technology essential, whether on a three-month mission to Haiti or overseeing research and development at the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation. At St. Luke’s University Health Network in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, widespread Vscan use is helping improve the standard of care and save money through increased efficiency.
Click here to read more about the advances doctors are making with Vscan.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Sunshine cleansed
Princeton University scientists have developed a solar-powered filtration system that could increase access to clean drinking water on a small or large scale, completely off-grid.
2. Harder than hard
Scientists at Washington State University have created diamonds with a hexagonal structure that makes them measurably stronger than ones that are naturally mined.
3. Explain yourself
Researchers from the University of Toronto and LG AI Research have developed an “explainable” artificial intelligence algorithm that could shed light on how machine-learning models make decisions.
Learn more here about this week’s Coolest Things On Earth.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“You’re creating a giant battery that you can literally use on a rainy day.”
— Martin Kennedy, head of sales for hydropower at GE Renewable Energy in Australia
Quote: GE Reports. Images: GE Renewable Energy, GE Healthcare.