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The GE Brief — February 20, 2020

February 20, 2020
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February 20, 2020


 


SETTING THE PACE


For more than a century, the electrical grid was a one-way street, with current traveling from power plants to consumers. But 20 years into the 21st century, it’s rapidly becoming more like a busy highway, with lots of on-ramps and off-ramps: The rise of the renewables age, with tech like rooftop solar, storage batteries and electric vehicles, is adding a new layer of complexity for grid operators. Vera Silva, chief technology officer of GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions unit, says utilities must “operate the grid like a Swiss clock” — and that her business is there to help: “If you think about the transition to decarbonization, how do you convert that ambitious goal, in a way that keeps the grid rock-solid all the time, but deals with this rate of change?”

Numbers game: The answer is digital technology. That’s why Silva’s business is working to solve the challenge in partnership with GE Digital, the GE’s software and analytics arm. During everyday operations, the grid generates a mammoth amount of data that can be mined for insights. Past outages and weather data, for instance, can help locate future spots of vulnerability during a storm — so utilities are prepared to speed up repairs and minimize downtime. The ultimate goal? An autonomous grid that can not only fix but actually predict problems on its own.  “Our vision is that we will provide the technologies that enable the grid to continue to be highly reliable, but also resilient — so that it actually becomes even better-performing, more energy-efficient, and renewables-centric,” said Patrick Byrne, CEO of GE Digital. “That’s a tremendous technology opportunity and challenge for us to take [on].”

Learn more here about how GE is helping build that grid of the future.

 

MAKE NO SMALL PLANES


The idea behind “Richard Hammond’s Big,” which debuted in the U.S. this month on the Science Channel, is right there in the title: The British TV host travels the world seeking out its largest structures and machines. The first episode brought Hammond to the world’s largest car factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. The second episode, though, brought Hammond right to Steve Scavo’s front door. Scavo works for GE Aviation in Ohio on a very big project indeed: He’s the program manager for the C-5M Super Galaxy, the legendary giant of a military transport plane, which can carry two battle tanks across the Pacific Ocean on a single tank of fuel. Made by Lockheed, the plane is powered by GE’s CF6 engines.

Thinking big: The engines that power the Super Galaxy aren’t merely powerful — they also reflect a revolutionary lineage in engine design. Developed in the 1960s, the original Galaxy’s original TF39 engines used a design called a high-bypass turbofan; innovative back then, today it’s standard in virtually every midsize and large commercial plane. The latest version of the plane, the Super Galaxy, comes outfitted with GE’s CF6 engines, the same family of engines that also powers Air Force One. It continues to be a giant of the sky, so maybe it was inevitable that Hammond’s show would come calling. When they did, Scavo was ready — if a bit shy. “I must admit that I was nervous during the actual filming,” Scavo admitted. “There were no dry runs.”

The episode aired last night on the Science Channel. Learn more here.

 

ELEMENTAL ENERGY SOLUTIONS


In places like the Niagara Falls, water marks the border between the U.S. and Canada — but water could also be the basis of a beautiful cross-border relationship, according to a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It finds that states in the northeastern U.S. can take advantage of hydropower reservoirs in Quebec as they transition to low-cost, low-carbon energy. Those reservoirs, the study stresses, are just one piece of a bigger, green picture: They can store electricity generated by other, intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar. That’s all great news — but it may not be particularly surprising to engineers at GE, who’re already working to put such technologies in place.

Water, water everywhere ... Hydro storage works like this: Excess electricity generated when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing is used to move water uphill into a reservoir. Once the sun disappears or the wind dies, that water can be released to flow through turbines, producing power for the grid, so consumers can get an uninterrupted flow of electricity. It’s one clever engineering idea in a field that’s — pardon the pun — overflowing with them: Last autumn in Montreal, 25 GE employees at the annual industry conference WaterPower Canada were paired with 25 Canadian college students for a two-day hackathon. The goal? Think outside the box to come up with ideas for the next generation of hydropower generation.

Click here to find out what they came up with. Learn more here about the MIT study, and here about GE’s work on pumped-storage technologies.

 

— VIDEO OF THE WEEK —





Fifty “Aqua Agents” participating in a hydropower hackathon last year included students from Canadian universities and GE employees.



— QUOTE OF THE DAY —


“Our vision is that we will provide the technologies that enable the grid to continue to be highly reliable, but also resilient — so that it actually becomes even better-performing, more energy-efficient, and renewables-centric.”


Patrick Byrne, CEO of GE Digital


 
Quote: GE Reports. Image: Getty Images.

 

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