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A little “Healthy Competition” for the In Vivo Molecular Imaging Lab

This year GE is focusing on health more than ever! With the recent launch of HealthAhead, there is a lot of “healthy buzz” going around GRC. People are talking about how they are eating healthier, and ways to fit exercise into their busy work schedules. Just yesterday, as I was leaving work, I saw 6 other employees walking to their cars and every single one of them was carrying a water bottle (re-useable at that!). It’s energizing to see co-workers taking charge of their health and knowing you’re not in it alone!

Manager of IMILab in Biosciences, Kathy Bove, has sparked a competitive health challenge amongst her lab members. Watch the video to learn what it’s all about.

The cool thing about this competition is that after performing the healthy tasks for one week, it almost becomes habit and easily fits into your schedule for the next week. Take, flossing your teeth twice a day for example (Who does that?!?!) but when there are points and prizes involved it’s easy! This week we are parking our cars by the helipad (trust me, it’s a looooong walk), no unhealthy snacks between meals, and performing one random act of kindness (for emotional health) to name a few.

If you work here, you should stop by the 5B hallway and see what we’re doing for next week. If you don’t work here, download Morsel on your phones and keep track of your own points!

April 23rd, 2010 | Biosciences

TAGS: Biosciences, competition, employee activities, healthymagination

Celebrating Earth Day with Rare Earths: Focus on Materials Sustainability at GE

Kristen Brosnan, editor
Ceramic And Metallurgy Technologies
Niskayuna, NY USA
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Today marks the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day, established to promote global environmental awareness. As we each celebrate Earth Day in our own way by conserving electricity, reducing our waste, eating sustainably, or planting trees, I thought I would share with you steps GE is taking in materials sustainability. GE uses 70 out of the first 83 elements found on the periodic table in at least one of its products, and keeping a sustainable pipeline of materials is integral to GE and the planet’s future.

In March, the United States House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing on Rare Earth Minerals and 21^st Century Industry, in which GE’s own Steven Duclos (Chief Scientist and Manager of Materials Sustainability in Ceramic and Metallurgy Technologies) gave congressional testimony for GE. The purpose of the hearing was to discuss the global supply of rare earth elements and their presence in many critical technologies – especially renewable energy technologies, such as wind turbines and hybrid electric vehicle batteries.

Steve discussed GE’s strategy on managing shortages of materials critical to manufacturing. Development of material technologies plays a critical role in developing solutions to these sustainability issues. In his testimony, Steve discussed the strategies that GE implements in reducing risk of elements deemed “high risk”: improving the global supply chain, reduction of manufacturing waste, developing recycling technologies, redesigning the material to use less of the high risk element, or redesigning the entire system with another technology. He outlined one example for the last strategy, LEDs for lightning, which use 70x less rare earth elements than flourescent lighting.

A video of the hearing can be found here.

April 22nd, 2010 | Ceramic & Metallurgy Technologies

TAGS: Earth Day, ecomagination, holidays

For a few trees more…

What’s the thread that links 50 odd amateur gardeners getting their hands dirty on a warm afternoon, and the inhabitants of Lokkere, a hamlet about 200 km from Bangalore and the quest for the 1412th tiger? And will this help make our carbon footprint any lighter?

To connect the dots one needs to travel to the fringes of Bandipur tiger reserve, near Bangalore, India where the lush dense forest thins out into a scrubland. The scrubland outside the confines of the core protected forest extends all the way up to Nilgiris, a range of mountains in southern India, and then to the Eastern Ghats, a mountain range along India’s eastern coast, making it a vital buffer for tigers and a migratory corridor for elephants. Life is hard for the people who live amidst the forests. The crops they cultivate in tiny strips of land is a dinner invitation for wild boars and elephants. Life is probably as hard for the wildlife that have called this region home for centuries. A walk in the park could mean getting electrocuted by the electrified fences that have sprung up around resorts. And land sharks have been on the prowl, trying to persuade inhabitants to sell away the land, disrupting the delicate harmony that the locals have maintained with nature.

The transition from being a concerned citizen to action on the ground started with our association with a voluntary organization called Junglescapes. Protecting this buffer forest is critical. Our volunteering efforts began by helping one such individual start a home-stay, allowing him to hold on to his land. Our involvement with the community and local ecology helped us understand how we could contribute to environmental protection. The breakthrough came with Lokkere, a small hamlet inhabited by about 25 families. The residents had formed a Village Forest Committee along with the forest officials to afforest about 300 acres of land. We were given 50 acres of degraded forest to afforest.

The strategy was simple – we used the help of ATREE, a well known environmental NGO to help us map the trees that grow naturally in the region. We identified sources for the saplings through nurseries in the forest department, and began growing seeds collected from the forest on GE’s JFWTC campus in Bangalore. On maturing we would transport them to Lokkere and plant them just after the onset of monsoon. A key aspect of this is to understand the terrain of the land, to build in small pits and trenches to aid water harvesting so that the freshly planted saplings have a better chance of sustained growth. Much of this would be done from April to June, when the first summer showers would soften the ground, while post June there would be 4 months of monsoon. The community stands to gain as this generates employment, when the jobs are most scarce. There are other benefits as well: as the forest cover improves it would mean more food for the wild boars, elephants and deer giving these animals less reason to raid the fields. Well-fed tigers& leopards would mean the cattle are safe too. The forest is rich in non-timber produce. Honey extracted from beehives can be sold, medicinal herbs harvested and fallen branches could serve as fuel. Moreover, the forest would act like a sponge that slowly releases rain water improving the water table. Today, the project has the support of a GE Foundation grant.

Last year, we planted 400 saplings close to a rain fed stream. We made 2000 seedballs of local species and disbursed them and we pooled in resources and dug two water holes to help wildlife. A dozen stoves (called chulhas) that use 60% less firewood and cooks twice as fast were installed. And this year we have plans to plant at least ten thousand trees – in time for the monsoon. And here is a thought I would like to leave you with.. Each tree when fully grown sequesters at least 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide over 20 years; and 10,000 trees? – that would neutralize at least 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide which approximately equals what a 2 MW power plant emits per year., The earth needs you and your ideas. For now I have my feet and trees firmly planted on the ground I’ll sign off & say “ Just Plant It”.

From the green brigade: Anand, Anbarasan and Sathisha

April 22nd, 2010 | Ceramic & Metallurgy Technologies

TAGS: Bangalore, carbon, ecomagination, GE Foundation, trees, volunteer

BYOB: Bring Your Own Bag

Andrea Howard, editor
Edison Engineering Development Program
Niskayuna, NY USA
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Hey all, a friend recently forwarded me this link to a few slides that offer some statistics around bringing a reusable bag vs.. using plastic carrying bags for groceries. I have been bringing my own canvas tote bags to the grocery store for the past few years now. Are you still using plastic bags? Maybe these stats will change your mind. BYOB. Bring your own bag.

http://lee.ifas.ufl.edu/FYN/FYNPubs/TheDangersofPlasticBags.pdf

April 21st, 2010 | Edison Engineering Development Program

TAGS: ecomagination, EEDP

How solar power is integrated into the grid

My name is Kathleen O’Brien – I am an engineer here at GE Global Research and I study photovoltaic (PV) power systems and the integration of these systems into the power grid. We recently announced an exciting new project funded by the US Department of Energy that will help us to better understand the issues arising from the application of a large amount of solar electricity generation to the US power grid.

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.

April 21st, 2010 | Electrical Distribution, Energy, Power Conversion Systems

TAGS: integration, smart grid, solar