THE GE Brief: October 20, 2020
WATERWORLD
Stretching across Europe, the Alps mountain range is alive with more than just the sound of music — it’s also a potent energy source that can help European governments meet renewable goals. One of the chief ways mountains come into play here is a technology called pumped storage hydropower, which relies on two reservoirs at different elevations. When the grid is alive with electricity to spare, some of the extra juice is used to pump water uphill into the high reservoir — from which it can be released later, with gravity pulling it downhill through generators to produce energy at the drop of a hat. In this way, pumped storage hydro can be used to help the grid achieve its delicate balance of supply and demand — and help Europe power its way toward a carbon-neutral future.
H2O vs. CO2: In September, the European Commission proposed an ambitious new goal — a 55% reduction in greenhouse gases (from 1990 levels) by 2030, and an aim to be “climate-neutral” by 2050. Wind and solar are the sources that come to mind when people think about renewables, but hydro can be relied upon after the sun goes down, for instance, and when the wind is still — making it a crucial factor in the renewable equation. “Hydropower is one of the most reliable and proven sources of generating electricity, with three important attributes: It’s renewable, available on demand, and it can be used to store power,” said Pascal Radue, CEO of GE Renewable Energy’s Hydro Solutions. “This combination is the perfect complement to the growing popularity of solar and wind farms.”
In the Alps and elsewhere around the world, GE technology is helping grid operators work toward renewable goals. Learn more about the company’s projects here.
HEALTHY FUTURES
Last year, GE Healthcare and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a study examining the adoption of artificial intelligence in medicine, finding that three in four health systems had developed or planned to develop AI in their institutions. That was 2019; as GE Healthcare CEO Kieran Murphy puts it in a new op-ed in Roll Call, “These adoption rates have exploded in the months since the start of the pandemic. Health systems quickly saw an opportunity to put AI and analytics to work to minimize burdens on staff, maximize hospital resources, manage capacity and treat as many patients as possible.” The benefits have proved valuable during the pandemic, but they could also offer a blueprint for the future of healthcare.
What’s next: To achieve the best possible outcomes, Murphy argues, healthcare leaders today need to seize the opportunity the current moment has created. They can take inspiration from some of the models that have already emerged, whether it’s a Florida “command center,” based on NASA mission control, that uses AI and analytics to manage patient care, or technologies like the GE Healthcare platform Edison, which allows for fine-grained analysis of patient and hospital operations data. “Now, the industry must harness this momentum and permanently adopt some of the revised policies around remote medicine — and continue to modernize the health care infrastructure,” Murphy writes. “This means convening an ecosystem that leverages the strengths of clinicians, technology providers, academics, governments and others to bring together more data for healthcare professionals.”
Read the full piece by Kieran Murphy here.
TRAINING WINGS
One of the most storied fighter jets of the last half-century is the F-117A Nighthawk, the “stealth” aircraft whose existence was finally confirmed at a 1988 Pentagon news conference. Years earlier, when Lockheed Martin was developing the jet for the U.S. Air Force, it had selected engines from GE’s F404 family to power the craft. And why not? The Nighthawk’s designers knew the engine could be modified to suit the unique needs of their quiet flier. They weren’t the first drawn to its versatility, and they wouldn’t be the last. In the more than 40 years of the F404 program’s life, variants of the engine have powered 15 different production and prototype aircraft. It’s a truly well-traveled machine.
Renaissance engine: Now the F404 has got a new job. The latest variant, the F404-GE-103, has been selected to power the Boeing/Saab T-7A Red Hawk trainer jet and carry the next generation of U.S. Air Force pilots through a rigorous flight training program. “We’ve demonstrated the ability to integrate this engine into all different types of aircraft with different inlets and different exhaust systems,” said Adam Donofrio, GE’s T-7A program director. Though venerable, the F404 hasn’t stayed stuck in the past — the latest engines come with new digital capabilities that allow for an assortment of benefits, namely advanced engine health monitoring and enhanced engine diagnostics. “We have 40 years’ experience telling us the engine will perform,” Donofrio said.
Learn more here about the past and future of the F404 engine.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Blink And You’ll Miss It
At Caltech, researcher Lihong Wang is creating cameras that can capture images at billions and even trillions of frames per second — and now in 3D.
2. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
An international team of researchers developed a one-step, low-cost method for converting plastic waste into clean-burning hydrogen gas.
3. Speed Limit Of Sound
What’s the fastest that sound can possibly travel? Finally, physicists can put a number to it: 22 miles per second.
Read more here about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“If we retire fossil fuel generation plants and stop building nuclear, we’re taking away a lot of synchronized and dispatchable generating plants. What’s left to keep that balance on the grid? Hydro.”
— Pascal Radue, president and CEO of GE Renewable Energy’s Hydro Solutions
Quote: GE Reports. Images: GE Renewable Energy