Author: GEreporter

GE, Europe’s major utility RWE, the German National Aerospace Institute, and other partners today announced the start of a development program called “ADELE,” which has the potential to revolutionize the way energy can be efficiently stored on a large scale. In the simplest of terms, the idea is to store inexpensive power generated during off-peak periods in the form of compressed air — as if in a giant battery — and then deliver this power at a later time during peak demand. “It’s very exciting news,” says Matthias Finkenrath, a research engineer working on the project with GE Global Research in Germany. “GE today took an important step in bringing the future of large scale energy storage closer.” The animation below explains how the complex system would work, which involves compressing air into underground caverns — likely in regions with geological salt structures, such as those currently used for natural gas storage — and then extracting it later to drive turbines to generate electricity.

With the use of renewable energy sources such as wind power on a sharp rise, there’s a growing need for solutions that ensure a non-stop, continuous electricity supply to consumers and businesses when the wind isn’t blowing, or the need at a particular hour is low. Unlike other compressed air concepts, this one stores and then uses the immense amount of heat that’s generated during the air compression process to later help produce the electricity. With temperatures soaring to over 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit in the process, a key challenge for the GE team will be to develop compressor technologies that can withstand the high demands.

ADELE gets its name from the German acronym for “adiabatic compressed air energy storage” — which is the technical name for the system.

GE Global Research Europe in Munich will be responsible for the overall system optimization and will be working jointly with GE Oil & Gas in the development of the advanced compressor and turbine — which are critical elements of the concept.

The three-year project is a direct follow-up activity of a successful feasibility study between GE and RWE in 2008 and 2009.

* Read today’s announcement
* Read Matthias Finkenrath’s blog post about ADELE
* Learn more about the concept on the GE Global Research blog
* Read more Global Research stories on GE Reports
* Read more Oil & Gas stories on GE Reports
* Read “New York powers up with new GE battery plant” on GE Reports

Brazil’s federal energy company, Petrobras, is using sugarcane-based ethanol in a gas turbine system to produce electricity on a full commercial scale — the world’s first such project. They marked the occasion with a celebration today at the plant, which uses two GE gas turbines — one of whose combustors has been modified by GE to enable the use of ethanol.

Sweet spot: The Juiz de Fora Power Plant is located about 110 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. The sugar-based ethanol it uses is one of Brazil most efficient biofuels in terms of energy balance and carbon emissions.

In late 2009, Petrobras announced an agreement with GE to convert and test an LM6000 gas turbine system at its Juiz de Fora power plant for sugarcane-based ethanol operation. Demonstration of the newly developed GE conversion kit began in December 2009 and was divided into three phases — the first evaluating engine performance, the second examining reduction of environmental impact and the third investigating impact on the equipment, which had been running on natural gas. This project marks the first time that sugarcane-based ethanol has been used to generate electricity.

There will be five months of demonstration runs to validate the use of ethanol as an alternative fuel, as well as to ensure that emissions are within the expected limits. GE is providing the conversion technology, engineering and field support during conversion and commissioning.

As the world’s second largest producer of ethanol and the world’s largest exporter, Brazil is eager to benefit from incorporating ethanol into its energy profile because it’s so abundant. The country produced about 7.3 billion gallons of ethanol in 2008, according to data provided by Brazil’s government.

Between now and 2013, Petrobras intends to invest heavily in renewable energies and biofuels, with the goal to increase its use of renewable fuels for power generation and demonstrate the feasibility of these fuels, while also increasing fuel supply assurance.

* Read today’s announcement
* Read “The sugar-land express: Brazil orders 50 locomotives” on GE Reports
* Read about GE Aviation’s recent deal with Brazil’s Azul airline
* Read about GE’s other gas turbine technologies on GE Reports

GE’s presence has been growing significantly in Africa in recent years — and part of that has been in the form of medical aid to communities in need. This week, a GE team made up of leaders in GE’s African American Forum traveled to Africa to meet with government officials and business leaders — and to visit healthcare facilities where GE has provided solutions that include healthcare equipment and support with water, energy, communications and infrastructure development.

Doctor’s orders: The first stop was a 105-bed facility in Ghana where GE has partnered to donate products, technology and knowledge to improve access to healthcare for the Apam district under the Developing Health Globally program. Mike Barber, Vice President of healthymagination, is pictured in the center and Dmitri Stockton, President & CEO of GE’s Global Banking business, is in the foreground.

In the audio clip below, Mike Barber — who called in during his Africa trip — describes how the clinic he visited is making use of donations such as baby warmers, incubators, ultrasounds, and basic x-ray equipment. “What we’ve learned in Developing Health Globally has really enabled us to understand what some of the needs are [throughout the region] and how we can provide solutions for hospital systems all over the world,” he said.

The Developing Health Globally program offers solutions using products and expertise from a variety of GE businesses including Water, Energy, and Healthcare to address critical gaps in developing-world clinics. It directly impacts 4.8 million people globally through its $40 million commitment in 14 countries throughout Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Staying connected: To promote long-term self-sufficiency at completed sites, the GE African-American Forum engages in ongoing relationships with local leaders. In this photo, Deborah Elam, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at GE, is seen with Mike and Dmitri at the clinic in Ghana.

* Learn about GE’s donations for Haiti earthquake relief
* Read “Helping 101 babies & counting in Cambodia’s hospitals” on GE Reports
* Read “GE commissions first hospitals in Cambodia” on GE Reports
* Read about GE’s work with International Medical Corps in Africa
* Read “Making rural healthcare exponentially more effective” on GE Reports
* Learn more about GE’s Developing Health Globally program
* Learn about our healthymagination work in Bangladesh
* Learn more about the partnership with Grameen Healthcare Trust
* Read “Helping the docs at the nation’s largest free clinic”
* Learn about GE’s healthymagination strategy
* Read about GE’s work with clinics in India

The radical concept of “Reverse Innovation” — which GE introduced in the article, “How GE is Disrupting Itself,” in October’s issue of the Harvard Business Review — continues to reverberate through the R&D world. This month, with the first decade of the 2000s officially over, the Review’s editors looked at the past ten years of management thinking and chose 12 of what they dubbed the “most influential management ideas of the millennium (so far).” Reverse innovation made the critical cut, they said, because globalization is fundamentally changing when it comes to emerging markets. GE’s concept, put simply, is this: Rather than follow the historical route of developing high-end products and adapting them for emerging markets, reverse innovation focuses on developing local technologies in these regions and then distributing them globally.

Going forward in reverse: GE Global Research, which is the company’s technology development arm, operates research centers in New York, Germany, China, and Bangalore, India, pictured above. “Why India? It’s very straightforward,” Guillermo Wille, the center’s managing director, tells The Financial Times. “There are few other countries where you can hire such large numbers of engineers so quickly. China is comparable but after that, nothing comes close.”

Reverse innovation in action can be seen in GE’s research center in Bangalore, India — a city that is nicknamed “India’s Silcon Valley” and is helping to transform the entire country into a major center of global innovation. As The Financial Times’ Joe Leahy writes in an in-depth story this week about India’s technology metamorphosis: “Walk into [GE’s] John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore and you could be forgiven for thinking you have strayed into Q division — the laboratory dedicated to inventing new gadgets — from a James Bond film.”

For example, at one end of the million square foot center, you’ll find scientists “testing a special ‘pedestrian-safe’ bumper bar for cars, which can hit people at speed without maiming them,” the paper notes. Elsewhere, researchers are “working on locomotive engines that run on methanol extracted from grass growing alongside India’s railway lines, and on super-compact medical equipment that costs a fraction of the price of similar products in the west.”

Professor Vijay Govindarajan of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College — and chief innovation consultant at GE – co-authored the Harvard Business Review article with GE’s Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. Explaining the concept of reverse innovation, VG, as he is known, tells the FT: “We are at the cusp of a new paradigm in which innovation will happen in India and China first and then it’ll go to the rich countries. Companies, if they don’t realize it, will be toast.”

The FT notes that it’s not just GE that sees Bangalore as a bright spot. Today, 200 multinationals have R&D centers in India, and household names such as Microsoft, Intel, Google, and IBM are all opening facilities there. Although GE’s Bangalore center mostly develops global products, “it has begun to focus on innovations suitable for the developing world,” the paper observes. “The best-known such product is a handheld electrocardiogram unit that costs about $1,000 to make — about one-tenth of the cost of a standard machine. This suits rural India, where poverty and weak transport links make it virtually impossible for many people to get to hospital… But these technologies are now also making their way back to developed markets. The electrocardiogram is being sold in the US” – which is exactly how the reverse innovation model is designed to play out.

Innovation engine: GE’s Bangalore research center, pictured above, opened in 2000 with 275 scientists and engineers and today employs 4,300. To learn about one of the technologies that has jumped from GE’s lab in India to the marketplace, read “New Technology to Trap Killer Sparks” on IEE Spectrum, which features the work being done by T. Asokan, senior scientist at GE’s research center in Bangalore. The team’s work resulted in an arc flash absorber innovation. It’s practical application can be seen in a video in our GE Reports story, “Shock and awe: GE unveils arc flash explosion blocker.”

* Read HBR’s ranking, “The decade in Management Ideas,” and comment on their blog
* Read Part 1: “Reverse innovation: How GE is disrupting itself” on GE Reports
* Download a free full copy of GE’s HBR article: “How GE is disrupting itself”
* Read Part 2: “Reverse innovation: Building GE’s local growth model” on GE Reports
* Read Joe Leahy’s full story, “India: A nation develops,” in The Financial Times
* Read “Cheers! To a decade of innovation at GE’s labs “ on GE Reports
* Hear more from VG in our story, “Winning micro customers in mega markets”
* Read our follow-up VG story, “Localized breakthroughs go global”
* Sign up for VG’s newsletter and read his blog at: vijaygovindarajan.com

Electronic Medical Records, known as EMRs for short, usually work behind the scenes in hospitals and clinics. But as their use rapidly expands, they’re now literally ready for primetime. The computerized systems, which create comprehensive digital patient records, got the glittering Hollywood-treatment on last night’s episode of NBC’s The Biggest Loser, which is leaving the inefficiency of paper records behind when documenting medical results for the contestants.

‘Losers’ win! Throughout Season 9 of The Biggest Loser, the show’s doctor, Robert Huizenga, M.D, will access the health records of contestants using GE’s Centricity EMR.

While the broadcast exposure in front of millions of viewers is certainly fun, GE’s Centricity EMR team says that using the system on the popular show can play an important role in helping to elevate awareness among patients and doctors about the power healthcare IT has in improving care.

The technology, which is already used by thousands of clinicians every day, will show how going digital can help reduce costs, increase access and improve care — all of which are goals of GE’s healthymagination initiative. For example, EMRs do more than simply replace a doctor’s paper chart. These systems check for drug interactions, flag health protocols when it comes to procedures and health maintenance, and they track a patient’s condition over time. And for clinics such as the ones featured in our recent story about Collier Health Services in Florida, EMRs are helping to connect doctors in 10 different clinics. The technology allows patients in the system to access care from multiple locations — and it provides other practical benefits, such as letting the doctor electronically transmit prescriptions to pharmacies, which dramatically cuts wait times.

High tech for low pounds: The Biggest Loser challenges and encourages overweight contestants to shed pounds in a safe manner through comprehensive diet and exercise. The series has become a worldwide hit airing in over 90 countries and produced in 25 countries.

* Learn more about GE’s Electronic Medical Records
* See a short clip of the EMR on the show

Read about GE’s EMRs and healthcare IT work in these GE Reports stories:
* “Forging a ‘triangle of care’ with EMRs in Plano, Texas”
* “Inside the revolution at Intermountain Healthcare”
* “GE launches eHealth unit to better connect clinical info”
* “Flu fighters: CDC picks GE Healthcare to track H1N1”
* ”GE tests technology to boost CDC’s rapid-response”
* “GE’s EMRs: Connecting the docs in 10 communities”

One of the most innovative projects underway at GE Capital is the $250 million fund it launched two years ago with NBC Universal. As we described in our video yesterday, the Peacock Equity fund invests in digital media companies in the venture capital space — such as in video game developer Trion World Network, which has teamed with NBCU’s Syfy for a breakthrough TV and game collaboration. Today, we take a closer look at the fund, which invests in four primary sectors: advertising, content, gaming, and technology. Lauren Zalaznick, head of NBCU’s Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, explains in the video below that when it comes to investment choices, the fund assesses the growth potential of each company and then comes to NBCU to “see if there’s a direct fit — a direct value — into one of our businesses, and in that way, have a mutual co-creation of value.” Adds Michael Chen, President and CEO of Media, Communications & Entertainment for GE Capital: “The question has always been: Are you trading analog dollars for digital dimes? We’re trying to figure out how do you break the mold? How do you invest in digital media and make money in that space?”

In case you missed the first installment, below is our look at Peacock’s work with Syfy and Trion.

* Read “Peacock Fund fuels Syfy & game guru Trion venture” on GE Reports
* Read about the Peacock Fund’s investment in BlogHer
* Read about Peacock’s investment in EveryZing
* Read “What’s On? A new Comcast/NBCU media venture” on GE Reports
* Read updates about the recently announced deal between NBCU and Comcast
* Learn more about GE Capital in our recent GE Reports stories

NBC Universal’s Syfy network and California-based game development company Trion World Network are about to revolutionize the way you watch TV shows and play video games. Spurred on by an investment from NBCU’s and GE Capital’s Peacock Equity fund — which invests in digital media companies in the venture capital space — the two are developing an online video game in tandem. As Lars Butler, CEO of Trion, says in the video below about the project, which has the working title One Earth: “In this unique set-up, we can do things that other people would never even dare before: create a video game world and a television show… They not only promote each other, they literally depend on each other and co-evolve.” Rob Hill, the senior producer for Trion, adds: “This project, in collaboration with Syfy, in and of itself, is completely different from anything I’ve worked on …Usually you have a game that’s based off of a book or television show or movie, or a movie that’s based off a game…. Some of the implications of what we are trying to accomplish here are to really be able to broaden the audience,” by bringing viewers from the show into the game and vice versa.

Tomorrow, we’ll bring you Part 2 of our video series — “Peacock Equity: Investing in Next-generation Media” — which will take a closer look at the unique collaboration between Trion and NBCU by examining the Peacock Equity fund itself. In that video, we’ll hear strategy from Michael Chen, President and CEO of Media, Communications & Entertainment for GE Capital, and we’ll hear about some of the fund’s recent investments from Lauren Zalaznick, who heads NBCU’s Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks.

* Read about the Peacock Fund’s investment in BlogHer
* Read about Peacock’s investment in EveryZing
* Read “What’s On? A new Comcast/NBCU media venture” on GE Reports
* Read updates about the recently announced deal between NBCU and Comcast
* Learn more about GE Capital in our recent GE Reports stories

The Dallas Cowboys will be in the spotlight tomorrow night when they take on the Philadelphia Eagles in a do-or-die NFL Wild Card playoff game. And shining that energy-efficient lighting in their new billion-dollar football stadium is GE.

Light touch: The Cowboys stadium is the largest NFL venue ever built. “Our stadium has capacity for as many as 100,000 people and our football games are some of the most watched in the NFL, so making sure our field has effective lighting is imperative to our business,” says Jack Hill, general manager, Cowboys Stadium. “We needed a proven and robust solution that could enhance and sustain the viewers’ experience and GE delivered.” Photo: James Smith/Dallas Cowboys.

At the onset of the project, GE laid out a photometric design that took into account the complex problem of maintaining uniform lighting and light levels on the field that would eliminate shadows and glare for fans — as well as for all of the High Definition TV cameras positioned throughout the stadium.

GE’s solution combines 764 complete lighting fixtures, known as “luminaries,” to light the entire field including the sidelines and end zones. Ninety-six of the lights feature a “hot re-strike” capability that lets them come back on almost instantaneously during a temporary loss of power. That’s especially important during stadium events – as standard sport lighting requires 11 to 15 minutes to cool down and come back on after a momentary loss of power. “Having thousands of fans sit in the dark for 15 minutes is not acceptable,” says Jack Bohner, GE’s commercial director for sports and entertainment. “GE’s technology solves this problem efficiently and really enhances the quality of light in the Cowboys stadium.”

The designers and architects who created the suites and club space at the stadium also turned to GE, using advanced LED lights. “We wanted to make the spaces feel warmer,” said Stephanie King, principal designer with the design lighting firm CRA. “It imparts a more residential feel while respecting the contemporary design and functionality of the stadium.”

I saw the light: Since sustained power in a stadium is imperative, GE also developed a solution for the Cowboys that includes 70 substations, 15 switchboards and a variety of other electrical distribution products to provide emergency power during an outage or surge. Photo: James Smith/Dallas Cowboys.

* Read today’s announcement

Learn more about GE’s lighting business in these GE Reports stories:
* “From geothermal power to LEDs: Two ‘firsts’”
* “Starbucks gets a ‘green’ light; Pop. Sci. picks a winner”
* “Hey, what’s your sign? At AT&T it’s GE’s LEDs”
* “GE’s LEDs: A greener sign of the times at Holiday Inn”
* “GE’s OLED research: I saw the light — and it bends!”
* “Introducing the zero energy home”