The GE Brief: December 17, 2020
HELLO, HYDROGEN
Earlier this week GE released a report detailing how natural gas can power a low-carbon future: With the output of renewables like wind and solar linked to the weather, gas turbines can step in quickly to keep the electric grid in balance. But natural gas isn’t the only fuel those turbines can process. They can also run on hydrogen, the universe’s most abundant element, which can yield zero CO2 emissions at the plant site. And they can also run on a mixture of gas and hydrogen. Now a proof of that concept is rising on the banks of the Ohio River. GE is working on the first purpose-built power plant in the U.S. where a turbine from the company’s most advanced turbine fleet — the HA — will start burning a blend of natural gas and hydrogen and aims to transition to 100% hydrogen by 2030.
Elementally powerful: Scheduled to come online next fall, the 485-megawatt plant in Hannibal, Ohio — operated by Long Ridge Energy Terminal — will have enough capacity to light the equivalent of 400,000 U.S. homes. The technology is something GE has experience with: More than 75 GE gas turbines have already racked up over 6 million operating hours running on hydrogen or hydrogen-like fuels. “It’s something we can do today,” said GE Gas Power’s Brian Gutknecht. At first, hydrogen will constitute 5% of the overall fuel mix going into the turbine in the Hannibal plant, which aims to increase that proportion over time until the machine runs solely on hydrogen — which would eliminate approximately up to 1.6 million tons of CO2 emissions annually.
Hydrogen may be plentiful, but it has some hurdles to overcome before it can be widely adopted. Learn more here about the technologies that will enable the hydrogen revolution.
TALK IT OUT
GE’s new report on lowering the power industry’s carbon emissions explores how a variety of technologies — including wind and solar, gas turbines, and hydrogen fuel — can help the world meet its climate goals. So does a new podcast, “Cutting Carbon,” a conversation about the future of energy co-hosted by Jeffrey Goldmeer (GE’s “fuels guy”), Brian Gutknecht and a rotating roster of expert guests. What sectors of the economy are responsible for the biggest carbon emissions — and could realize the biggest savings? What do terms like carbon neutral, carbon negative and zero carbon even mean? Give the podcast a listen here.
THE GAS IS ALWAYS GREENER
High-voltage electrical substations — those ubiquitous installations that adjust voltage up or down so that electrical power can travel over long distances and be used in homes and businesses — have for decades relied on a highly effective insulator and arc extinguisher that helps keep the size of their substations manageable. Trouble is that the insulator, a gas called sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), is also among the world’s most potent greenhouse gases, and it can linger in the atmosphere for millennia. What’s an electrical utility to do? GE Renewable Energy has an answer, and it also has a new customer: This month Scotland’s SSEN Transmission awarded a contract to GE Renewable Energy for the world’s first 420-kV substation powered by GE’s game-changing Green Gas for the Grid.
It's g-g-g-great: Known as g³, the new gas reduces the warming potential of SF6 by more than 99% while retaining the same insulating qualities. It also allows electric substations to keep the same compact dimensions. The gas is the result of more than a decade of research conducted by GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions unit in collaboration with the 3M Company. Earlier this year, the first utility in Spain announced it was adopting the technology, and overall 21 leading utilities in Europe have chosen GE’s g³ equipment. “SSEN Transmission’s 420-kV g³ gas-insulated substation order is further proof of the market’s acceptance of our technology as a game-changing alternative to SF6,” said Heiner Markhoff, CEO of Grid Solutions. “Because 420 kV is the highest voltage level used in Europe, it will demonstrate the scalability of GE’s g³ for all standard voltage levels.”
Learn more about the deal here, and more here about the ins and outs of g³.
LESSONS FROM THE PANDEMIC
Every year after Thanksgiving, tens of thousands of doctors, hospital managers, equipment manufacturers and other medical industry professionals descend upon Chicago for what might be the largest healthcare gathering in the world: the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, or RSNA. Obviously, that didn’t happen this year. But those industry pros still had a lot to talk about when they met virtually for the first time in RSNA’s 106-year history: breakthroughs in medical imaging and artificial intelligence and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. One conversation that week involved GE Healthcare CEO Kieran Murphy and Steve Winoker, GE’s vice president for investor relations. The pair met remotely, but that didn’t stop them from having a wide-ranging discussion about the current state — and future — of healthcare.
Major players: A $17 billion business, GE Healthcare is typically one of the biggest names at RSNA. When Murphy appeared at this year’s conference, it was on the heels of GE Healthcare’s acquisition of Prismatic Sensors, a company developing next-generation sensors for computed tomography scanning. GE Healthcare has long pursued new technologies in fields like medical imaging and AI, and 2020 was a year when AI helped hospitals run smoothly, and efficient imaging helped with the brisk triage of COVID-19 patients. Being “intelligently efficient” is good even in calmer times, Murphy said: “You see a theme here: better-quality diagnosis in less time, improved workflow, better productivity. And that gets at some of the deepest problems in healthcare, which is cost and efficiency.”
Read a recap of their conversation here.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“A lot of combined-cycle gas plants will transition to hydrogen in the future.”
— Robert Wholey, president of Long Ridge Energy
Quote: GE Reports. Images: Getty Images, GE Gas Power, GE Healthcare.