This past week we wrote the first words of a next chapter in building out the European and global impact of the GE Global Research Center in Munich when we launched the Advanced Gas Engine Technologies Center of Excellence (COE). This team is uniquely positioned in maintaining a close linkage with the GE Jenbacher engineering team in Jenbach, Austria, and the global brains of GE Global Research, particularly the teams right here in Munich.

A new study by the Boston Consulting Group, quoted this week in the press, indicates that decentralized power generation (including wind, solar energy and small power plants) will be the largest growth in generating capacity in Europe over the next decade or two. This means that reliable, distributed thermal power generation will play a vital role in providing stable electric power – and in many cases heat – to customers. GE Jenbacher engines have already made their mark in high efficiency, burning natural gas as well as specialty gases including landfill gases, and low emissions.

The new Center of Excellence in Advanced Gas Engine Technologies will play a critical role in extending the flexibility, efficiency and emissions-friendliness of GE Jenbacher engine systems. Efficiency remains a key competitive benchmark, and reciprocating gas engines are creeping up to 50% efficiency in base configurations. This is significantly better than most simple-cycle gas turbines. Together with Waste Heat Recovery systems, over 50% efficiency can readily be achieved. GE Jenbacher has already built a productive partnership with the Munich center: the Cascaded Organic Rankine Cycle Waste Heat Recovery system was developed by the Global Research team in Munich and the first system is currently in the final stages of assembly and testing in Jenbach before being shipped to a customer site for field trials.

But there is more work to be done on the base engine, architecture, materials, gas exchange and controls. What new technologies does a gas engine with +50% efficiency need? What novel configurations could reciprocating engine power generation take? These are some of the questions the team, together with colleagues in Jenbacher Engineering and Global Research, will solve. And we’re looking to extend our team to do this. Interested to join? Please visit GE’s careers site and look for Jenbacher postings in Germany.

Jenbacher gas engines are already appropriately painted a bright green color. My job as leader of the new team will be to ensure GE Jenbacher has the most advanced, cost-effective technology in the gas engine business, and to bring sustainable energy into the present, engine by engine. And we’re starting right now, this week, to do just that.

Sitting in on the event, the most intriguing thing I heard was that GE is going to spend $200 million to partner with smaller companies, start-ups, inventors etc. to bring their ideas or technologies to life. I look forward to seeing great and innovative challenge submissions.  Check out this video summary of the event posted to YouTube by EUX.TV — very exciting!

How to efficiently and robustly connect vehicles to the electrical grid has many challenges. Initially the small numbers of electric vehicles will not strain the grid. However, I would argue that providing a good customer experience will be critical for these early adopters. In today’s social-media connected environment, the communication of their perception may impact the overall adoption curve. Here are some of the challenges that I see:

- Home wiring. Will the vehicle owner’s house have the proper wiring already installed to support vehicle charging? Will it only be adequate for slower Level 1 (120V) charging? Will they need to upgrade? If an electrical upgrade is required, how long will it take to get a permit? How much will it cost? What about people that don’t have a garage? Where will they locate the charger and the wiring?
- Charging programs available. There is discussion about the possibility of offering discounted electrical charging rates for vehicle owners. How do they find out about these rates? How do they sign up for the programs? Do they have the right metering infrastructure in their house to permit the separate measurement of electrical energy delivered to the vehicle?
- Vehicle cost. The vehicle OEMs are working hard to offer an attractive product and an affordable cost. The battery systems for these vehicles are still expensive. How will this impact the overall vehicle cost? What is the true pathway to lower cost battery systems and at what rate will this happen?
- Cable management. The cord that connects the vehicle to the charging station could pose tripping hazards. I know that my own garage is not always clean and tidy (the case most of the time). I could easily see a cord left on the floor.

On a broader level, there are a couple of issues or challenges that we need to face.

- Lack of charging stations outside the home. Initially, there will be few charging stations outside the home. Will this cause range anxiety?
- Clustering of electric vehicles. Even with the relatively small numbers initially for electric vehicles, if they are “clustered” in certain neighborhoods, will this tax the local electrical distribution system, including transformers?

Some of these challenges are quite real, and a few may only be perceptions. However, the good news is that the electrified transportation community has recognized these issues and is proactively developing solutions. Many of the utilities that I have spoken with have active programs to make sure their networks and systems are ready for electric vehicles and that they can provide a great experience for the customer.

The MOU announced today by GE and Nissan will also look to help develop a more quantitative understanding for several of these potential issues. We will also look to investigate methods to connect vehicles to local buildings or homes in a manner that is synergistic with the existing loads, such as appliances and heating/cooling systems. The joint team will also look to understand the synergistic role that an aggregated number of vehicles can play with the electrical grid system.

While there are several challenges to overcome to make electrified transportation a reality, much progress is already being made. The entire community from vehicle OEMs, utilities, electrical equipment suppliers, and government/municipal agencies are working hard to make sure that this change is truly transformational and sustainable. Exciting times ahead!

You can read more about today’s announcement with Nissan at GE Reports.

Along with Arizona Public Service (APS), Arizona State University, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a team from GE Global Research and GE Energy will take part in a 3.5 year, $3.3 million dollar program to study the impact of high solar energy penetration levels on the US power grid. This project is called “High Penetration of Photovoltaic Generation Study – Flagstaff Community Power” and is a part of the Department of Energy’s High Penetration Solar Deployment Program which was announced last year.

The project is built upon a larger pilot project launched by Arizona Public Service in Flagstaff called the APS Community Power Project. The Community Power Project will provide an opportunity for customers connecting to the utility through a designated feeder to experience the benefits of solar power without the upfront costs associated with the purchase of solar panels, equipment, and installation labor. The utility will provide rooftop solar electric systems at no cost to the community and will then charge customers for the power produced by these systems at a lower Community Power rate which is fixed for 20 years. Approximately 1.5MW of solar generation is expected to be installed along the Sandvig 4 feeder in Flagstaff. Participating customers will host a total of 1000kW of distributed PV: 600kW will be installed as residential rooftop systems sized 2-4kW, and 400kW as larger commercial/industrial systems sized 50-150kW. The remaining 500kW will be hosted by APS and installed as a small solar farm located on the feeder. This project is a step toward helping APS to achieve its Renewable Energy Standard of 15% of electricity generated by renewables by 2025, while also helping customers to gain control over energy costs. The pilot project will also be a part of APS’s smart grid initiatives for operation and data collection, and comprehensive monitoring and data collection will be installed throughout the feeder and on many of the distributed PV sources. The data collected on this project will enable APS to evaluate how distributed energy impacts its system, and to define guidelines for the design of similar systems in the future.

GE’s collaboration with APS on the High Penetration of Photovoltaic Generation Study will provide us with a unique opportunity to study the effects of increasing levels of PV penetration on a typical distribution feeder. Our partners at GE Energy EA&SE will provide system impact and performance evaluation studies leading to an evaluation of the impact of distributed PV generation on the feeder voltage. This evaluation is more complex than it sounds because both the load (the amount of power being drawn from the feeder) and the source (the amount of power being created by the sunlight) are constantly changing. We will also have the opportunity to study the effect of several of the advanced features of the recently introduced GE utility-scale solar inverter. We will deploy the GE inverter in the 500kW solar farm. Data collection and analysis coupled with modeling and simulation will allow us to better understand the behavior of the inverter under real-world conditions. These results can then be extrapolated to help us to understand other systems, even those that may be significantly larger in scale.

We are very excited to start this project and to further our understanding of how GE can best contribute to technology development in grid-integration of photovoltaics.

Tomorrow is Thomas Edison’s birthday, and I can’t think of a better way to pay tribute then to celebrate the new Center of Excellence (CoE) in Power Conversion technologies GE just opened at our research facility in Germany. A tribute because Edison was a big believer in the future of renewable power, and this new CoE will create the next generation of technologies needed to help realize their full potential.

It’s no secret that renewable power sources like wind and solar are becoming more prevalent on the grid today. In fact, it’s no longer a question of if, but how much we can take on. I’ll save that question for another day, but what is clear is that the grid will have to improve as higher amounts of wind and solar are brought on line

That’s where our new Center of Excellence in Power Conversion comes into play. To take on more solar and wind, more power electronics and controls technologies will be needed to ensure that we can reliably integrate them into the grid. Because solar and wind generate power differently from conventional power generators like a gas turbine, you need a seamless conversion process to modify them into usable electricity for the grid. GE Energy is hiring 20 new design engineers as an extension to the Controls & power CoE in Salem, Virginia. This new team will work in conjunction with my team, the High Power Electronics Lab, which is part of GE Global Research Power Conversion Systems, to develop and bring needed power conversion technologies to market faster. We’re looking for highly qualified engineers. If interested, you can learn more by visiting GE’s careers site.

How right Edison was about the future of solar energy. My  job is to help make sure we have a grid that is capable enough to handle the higher levels forecast in the future.

Thanks for checking in and we’ll be back soon with another update from the Global Research Clean Room.

With the prospect of a more diverse electric grid that has higher penetrations of renewables like wind and solar, in the future, we will reach a point when large-scale energy storage solutions will be needed to support managing these intermittent resources.

Working with a number of partners on this project, such as RWE, ESK, Zueblin/OIH, the DLR and GE’s Oil & Gas business, our team at GE Global Research in Munich has initiated a program in next generation Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES). We actually call it “ADELE”. It’s basically the idea of absorbing large amounts of surplus electricity – like excess wind power – from the grid to compress air into underground caverns beneath the earth’s surface. The innovation of the ADELE approach is that heat generated during the compression is stored in a thermal energy storage. Thereby, the compressed gas can later be heated up again and used to help power an air turbine and generate power when electricity is in high demand.

The system has a very large energy storage capacity, is highly efficient and has no emissions. Before this concept can be commercially implemented, substantial technical issues must be addressed, mainly in the field of turbomachinery and the thermal energy storage. Our team in Munich will be responsible for the overall system optimization and, jointly with our colleagues from GE Oil & Gas, for the development of the advanced compressor and turbine which are critical elements of the concept.

The aim is to install an initial demonstration plant by 2013. It will have a storage capacity of one billion watt-hours (GWh) and generate electrical power of up to 200 megawatts. With this kind of large-scale energy storage, ADELE could provide backup capacity within a very short time and replace forty state-of-the-art wind turbines for a period of five hours.

The three-year project is a direct follow-up activity of a successful feasibility study between GE and RWE on the same subject in 2008 and 2009.  Read more on GE Reports.

Hello everyone, I would like to give you a recap of theSmart Grid Summit we held last week, which hosted various utilities, national institutions, government agencies, and GE businesses. The Summit helped to furtherdevelop many conversations about what Smart Grid really is and how we can improve it.

We started with a media event that included over thirty representatives from different media outlets, ranging from print to television to the web. It was a great opportunity to explain and demonstrate what Smart Grid actually is and how it one day may be a part of our daily lives. We also hosted a number of tours for the symposium attendees, giving them a first hand look at our Smart Grid lab, complete with real time grid simulation capabilities to GE’s new demand responsive appliances, which are capable of reducing their energy consumption during periods of high price of electricity.

Following the media day, we kicked-off a day and half longtechnical symposiumthat evening. A featured keynote speaker at the Symposium was Patricia Hoffman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability at the United States Department of Energy. Pat delivered a great speech, virtually covering all aspects of the DOE’s Smart Grid vision and their expectation to see great results out of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Patricia challenged GE and all symposium participants to help solve tomorrow’s energy problems. Global Research and many of the GE businesses are working closely with electric utilities, universities and national institutions to jointlydevelop Smart Grid technologies.

During the symposiumon Wednesday, representatives from different public utilities such as Southern California Edison and American Electric Power GE presented on the ways in which they are implementing Smart Grid technology. We also had some folks from GE talking about what we aredoing to help make it a reality. Furthermore, speakers presented on the progress of renewable energy sources and how new Smart Grid technology will help to better manage an increasing base of clean yet intermittent generation. Additional presentation topics ranged from asset management and health monitoring to the best ways of delivering power to customers while minimizing losses during the transmission and distribution process.

The Summit wrapped up on Thursday with a GE-only Session T, a technology strategy session where business leaders and technology experts discussedplans to further develop new Smart Grid technology.

We believe the event greatlyfacilitated the flow of information around Smart Grid as well as having the opportunity to meet and discuss ideas with key industry members. For more information, check out the stories and coverage highlighted on GE Reports.

Please checkout the story and video featured on GE Reports to learn more about the smart grid effort being carried out in Miami.

Our team of engineers, researchers, and utility operators and planners are working together to help Hawaii reduce its energy costs, reduce its dependence on imported oil and reduce its carbon footprint by taking steps towards a smarter grid that can accept unprecedented levels of wind and solar energy. As the world transitions to a more affordable, sustainable and secure energy system, these projects in Hawaii will help GE identify the most relevant technologies for enabling significant penetrations of wind and solar power around the world.

Unlike the mainland United States, where almost 90% of our electricity is generated by natural gas, coal and nuclear energy, Hawaii significantly relies on imported fossil fuels for electricity generation. Since oil meets almost 90% of Hawaii’s energy needs, the State of Hawaii was significantly affected by the skyrocketing oil prices we witnessed in 2008. This reliance on imported oil translates into approximately $7B leaving the State economy each year to purchase fuel. Unlike the rest of the United States, the islands of Hawaii do not have natural gas pipeline networks, have no indigenous coal resources and the state forbids the use of nuclear power. At more than 31 cents per kWh, residents of Hawaii spend nearly three times as much on electricity as most Americans in the continental United States. The State is committed to driving its energy cost downward and reducing its dependence on imported oil. Early in 2008 the Department of Energy and the State of Hawaii established the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative. The Initiative’s goal is for the state to meet 70 percent of its energy needs with clean energy sources by 2030.

To reach very high levels of renewable energy, Hawaii will leverage its impressive wind and solar profiles by deploying wind and solar power. Integrating very high percentages of these variable renewable energy sources does not come without challenges, particularly on islanded power systems that are not well interconnected to larger grids that can import or export imbalances in generation. Unlike traditional power sources that are predictable, utilities have no control over when the wind blows or when the sun shines. Imagine the challenge of meeting peak energy when the wind suddenly calms and other generation is needed to fill in the gap.

One of the many programs our team is working on in Hawaii is the Oahu Wind Integration Study. As part of this program our team will be assessing the challenges of integrating up to 400 MW of wind power on the Oahu grid, delivered to Oahu via undersea cable from the islands of Molokai and Lanai, each located more than 20 miles from the island of Oahu. Our team is building power systems models of the island of Oahu that will be used to simulate these wind projects and assess the technical and economic performance of various technologies, such as energy storage, advanced wind power plant controls, and other system-level controls, that could be deployed to address the day-to-day system operating challenges associated with very high levels of wind and solar power.

We are working very closely with the Operations and Planning teams at the Hawaiian Electric Company to ensure our study can help achieve the objective of increasing the content of renewable energy in the Hawaii power system in a way that is acceptable and realistic to the folks that maintain, operate and perform long-term planning for the power system. By addressing the challenges of integrating record-levels of wind and solar power, GE can start down the path of technology development for wind turbines, gas turbines, and transmission and distribution system products that can help the power system accept very high levels of renewable energy.

Last month, Google’s RE<C (Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal) group met with various engineers and scientists at Global Research to present their initiatives and discuss collaboration opportunities. Google recently put together a team of engineers and energy experts to focus on renewable energy sources such as solar thermal power, wind power technologies, and enhanced geothermal systems among other promising renewable technologies. All have the potential to be a cheaper source of energy than coal.

Google toured our Smart Grid lab, receiving a detailed presentation of the suite of electric grid enhancement technologies we are working on in the lab. These technologies range from large-scale transmission control to intelligent household appliances. And being a Smart lab, of course they all come equipped with full communications capabilities for efficient resource utilization.

Our tour ended in a healthy discussion and exchange of ideas relating to the future of renewable energy and how our energy grid will have to develop to meet growing energy demands. It is exciting to think what a collaboration between GE and Google in this important area could achieve.

I also wanted to mention that this month, the MIT magazine, Technology Review, is featuring a video on their Web site spotlighting Juan de Bedout, the Global Technology Leader of the Power Conversion Systems technologies organization at GE Global Research and the work we have been doing in the Smart Grid lab. I make a guest appearance in the video, so check it out here. As well,the January 2009 issue of Technology Review also features an in-depth story on the Smart Grid initiative.

I hope everybody had a happy holiday season and is looking forward to exciting things to come in 2009!

An off-highway vehicle, also known as a haul truck, is a very big dump truck used for open pit mining operations. In general, the larger the truck, the lower the operational cost for transporting ore from the mine face to the processing facility. There are two types of trucks, mechanical and electric. The mechanical trucks are just like the vehicles you are familiar with, just bigger. They use a diesel engine to turn a transmission through a torque converter. The transmission transmits torque to the wheels through shafts and gears. Braking is accomplished with wet disc brakes to help conduct the massive heat generated from the rotors.

An electric truck replaces the mechanical drivetrain with electrical power components. The diesel engine spins an alternator that generates electricity. The electricity is used to power traction motor inverters the spin induction motors mounted in the wheel hub. Reduction gears increase the motor’s torque by about 30x to provide the massive torque required to move these large trucks. During braking, the electric truck is able to utilize the wheel motor as a generator! Conventional trucks dissipate this power as heat in a big air-cooled resistor box (kind of like a big hair dryer). This is where the hybrid system steps in – we capture the generated electricity in batteries to use later.

When the driver calls for acceleration or power to climb a hill, the energy that was captured from the wheel motors during braking is released from the battery. The energy is used to supplement the engine and reduce fuel usage or provide a power boost to increase speeds. The hybrid OHV uses the same batteries as our hybrid locomotive demonstration shown publically last May in California.

GE will continue testing the hybrid OHV to learn how to best utilize the batteries and understand how long we can expect the batteries to last in harsh applications such as the mine haul truck. I’m looking forward to next steps in the OHV project and in other hybrid applications – these technologies continue to gather interest and value against the continuing increase in fuel prices and price pressures on manufacturers and distributors.

Hello everyone … Here’s a brief update on some exciting developments in micro and nano-mechanics at GE Global Research. Some quick background… I am a Senior MicroSystems Project Manager in Global Research’s Micro and Nano Structures Technologies (MNST) organization. Our organization is about 250 people strong at GE across ourglobal sites. We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years with major developments in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microfluidics, wide band gap devices, harsh environment applications, packaging, thin films, solar cells, specialized electronics, digital X-ray and nanotechnology to name a few! In the area of MEMS, we are developing various novel devices for applications of interest to several GE businesses. We are also performing advanced research in nano-enabled MEMS (NEMS).

It was quite an opportunity when DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) invited me to the DC area back in 2006 for discussions on how we can keep pace with Moore’s law – in other words, how we can continue to double the performance of computers every 2 years or so. Today, solid-state transistors are the fundamental building blocks or switching elements of a logic device. Unfortunately, silicon transistors are not ideal switches – they are leaky when they turn off and don’t do very well in high temperature environments. These issues work against the paradigm of scaling – putting more transistors in less space. The industry also takes a lot of trouble to make sure that these chips run cool.

DARPA currently funds GE and other institutions as well for investigating tiny mechanical NEMS switches that can switch extremely fast – these can potentially get around the limitations of transistors. However, several aspects of this technology still remain to be proven. Computerworld recently interviewed both myself and the Principal Investigator (PI) on this project, LoucasTsakalakos. Other team members in this project include: Marco Aimi, Joleyn Balch, Albert Byun, Jody Fronheiser, Joseph Iannotti, Christopher Keimel, Xuefeng Wang and Le Yan. This is a great example of how we work collaboratively at GE Global Research; in this case, combining several MEMS technologies that we are developing with the unique Nanotechnologies that Dr. Tsakalakos and various teams across the center are developing.

Here is a link to the article titled “Different engines: The return of the mechanical computer”.

The article talks about the efforts of GE and others towards creating the basic elements of a mechanical computer. The technologies we develop could have potential benefits across several GE businesses in the long term. Once we can prove that the technology is small, reliable and cost-effective, we may open the doors to new paradigms that keep us on track with Moore’s law for many years to come!

You may have seen a press release that GE put out this morning about some of the ways we are influencing technology development in the world of batteries.

I thought this would be a good time to take you into one of our chemistry labs where we are working on novel sodium-metal-halide batteries that could be used in a number of industries where GE has a big presence… for example, the rail, mining, marine and energy industries.

The announcement regarding A123 Systems and Think had to do with lithium-ion batteries. These batteries offer relatively high-power density, and low weight. These types of batteries are used in everything from laptop computers to power tools and automobiles.

The sodium-based batteries we are working to develop have a very different purpose. These batteries have very high-energy density, can operate in harsh operating environments and if designed properly can have an extremely long operating life.

Power density refers to how fast you can push energy in and out of the cell. Energy density refers to the amount of energy that you can squeeze into such a small space. Normally there is a trade-off between these two important metrics. So, the economics and application demands will dictate the best type of battery to use in a given situation.

Our key challenges in the Chemical Energy Lab are economics, safety and reliability. We invent and design for this, in part by subjecting our chemistries to actual real world duty cycles – for example aboard GE Transportation’s Hybrid Locomotive.

Additionally, because we need to be prepared for the unexpected, and predict long-life performance, we study fundamental degradation mechanisms and attempt to accelerate life and catastrophic failures in the laboratory. Batteries include mechanical, chemical, and electrical components – we are working hard to optimize these together into a high-performance system.

When it comes to batteries… GE is pretty “charged up” about the possibilities.

1. Improving wind energy economics. The primary metric here is Cost of Energy (COE), which is measured in $/KWh, or how many dollars it costs to produce one Kilowatt-hour of electrical energy. It turns out that one good way to reduce the COE for wind is to make the turbines larger; essentially the energy production from the larger turbines outweighs the added capital investment. GE’s workhorse today is our family of 1.5 MW machines, which have rotor diameters between 75 and 80 meters; that’s about 80 yards, or the bulk of the length of a football field! Each blade today weighs about 6 tons, so you have 18 tons worth of blade material rotating on the turbine! As turbines get larger, the problems associated with making these blades will become more challenging. For example, a 6 MW wind turbine could have a rotor diameter closer to 140 meters, and each blade could weigh close to 25 tons! At the media day we described some advanced materials and blade design concepts that will dramatically reduce weight in future blades while increasing strength. As a result, the blades not only become more manageable, but the tower structure supporting the turbine does not have to be as bulky.

2. Achieving a high penetration of wind energy. The big challenges with getting a lot of wind in the electrical grid around us will be overcoming the intermittency associated with wind, and managing the integration of wind turbines and farms with the grid. A decade or so ago, grid integration issues were not as critical as they are today. Back then, during grid voltage disturbances wind turbines would essentially disconnect themselves from the grid and wait for the problems to be resolved before re-connecting. Today, and as wind penetrations increase, this approach is no longer acceptable since you are removing significant portions of the power generation capacity supporting the grid. At the media event we showcased advanced power electronics for our wind turbines, which not only make the constant 60 Hz power that the grid consumes, but also regulate voltage at the turbine point of interconnection and have advanced features that allow the turbine to remain connected to the grid through voltage disturbances. In fact, our turbine power electronics can provide voltage regulation even when the wind is not blowing, essentially helping to make some grids more stable.

At the event we also discussed some of the intermittency management strategies that will be needed to achieve higher penetrations of wind energy. While some studies, including a recent study for NYSERDA performed by GE Energy analyzing the NY state area, conclude that 10% penetrations of wind energy are in many cases manageable without affecting utility operations, additional technologies will be needed as penetrations reach higher, such as the 20% target the Department of Energy has in mind for the united States. Some of the technologies discussed at the event include balancing generation, such as natural gas turbines designed with good heat rates at partial loads that can be operated to level the variability in the wind, essentially mirroring it’s variability so that the combination is smooth. Energy storage technologies such as batteries, pumped hydro and compressed air were also discussed. Finally, the topic of load participation, a concept to control power consumption in certain loads to mirror the variability in the wind, was also discussed. Loads such as water treatment facilities, for example, could potentially be operated in this fashion to smooth the wind power production. Also included in this category are demand-side management technologies such as time-of-day or real-time pricing signals, which incentivize energy conservation by raising electricity prices during times of heavy consumption.

There is a lot of opportunity in wind energy, and we and our guests at the media event walked away energized and optimistic about the future of this area!

It is a huge question with an enormous list of possible answers (but the best thing is that we are all part of defining what the answer will be). Specific parts of this question that capture my imagination are energy and the environment.

Energy is a key factor for everyone. Coal will play a big role in electrical production and possibly chemicals and fuels too. We are working on some great concepts to advance the state of art while being fully conscious of the environment. We’re looking at highly integrated cycle concepts to convert coal into electricity in a very efficient manner, while capturing CO2. One of the key advances is to understand the various types of coal and how that impacts the specific hardware.

On the topic of environment, understanding the possible implications of CO2 on the climate, its sources, means of capturing it and what to do with it once you have it are all fascinating areas of research. We are heavily involved here at GE Global Research with research in this field as well as working with Stanford University and the GCEP initiative. The more research we do and the more we find out … the more interesting an area it reveals itself to be. The complexities of the systems we are trying to understand, the tradeoffs that need to happen and the variety of information available makes it an addicting area to study.

I’ll add posts as I learn more or when I find out some cool items of interest. I’m also interested in hearing others thoughts on these topics. In the meantime, to learn more about what GE is doing to address CO2, check out the recent feature story that appeared in this month’s issue of Wired Magazine. Just click here or on the picture at left to access the story.

The other cool thing to mention is that we moved up from 17th to eighth in Wired Magazine’s annual list of top 40 tech companies for 2006. Click here for the link to that story.

As Juan talked about in his blog entry, one of the key areas our Lab focuses on is the technical challenges with incorporating renewables like wind and solar into the electric grid. Grid integration is becoming an increasingly important issue as renewables become more widely utilized. And there’s no question about the great potential for renewables growth in the U.S.

I wanted to share with you an exciting project we are working on here at Global Research in offshore wind. GE will design and develop an optimized multi-megawatt turbine system targeted to operate in offshore environments.

Under a $27 million partnership between GE Global Research and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), GE is embarking on a four-year Low Wind Speed Turbine Phase II Development program. The goal is to develop technologies for a multi-megawatt offshore wind turbine prototype with high reliability and availability at agreed cost goals. The program will identify innovative solutions for new foundation types, construction techniques, rotor design, drive train and electrical system while optimizing the total life cycle cost of offshore wind farms. Turbine design and actual prototype will incorporate best technology practices from land-based turbines while incorporating lessons-learned from first generation offshore pilot projects to develop a new robust turbine concept optimized for offshore operations. Optimum turbine size is expected to be in the 5-7 MW range suitable for more than 20m water depth.

We’re very excited to be working on such a huge project here at Global Research. The design of a next generation offshore wind turbine will help advance the wind industry and greatly expand wind energy potential here in the U.S.