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FlexEfficiency* 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant

The FlexEfficiency 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant is GEs latest innovation in gas turbine technology, engineered to deliver cleaner, more efficient energy onto the power grid and into our homes. The first product in GEs new FlexEfficiency portfolio, the FlexEfficiency 50 plant will enable the integration of more renewable resources onto the power grid by combining efficiency and flexibility to rapidly ramp up when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, and to efficiently ramp down when they are available.

Demand for renewable energy is growing. As additional renewable sources join the grid, reliable power generation and stress on the grid both become larger issues. GEs new natural gas-driven plant can accelerate the widespread adoption of renewable power generation around the world. Its flexible, jet engine-based technology addresses variability, reliability, and the need for lower fuel use and operating costs. The ecomagination-qualified FlexEfficiency 50 plant does this while simultaneously helping utilities take advantage of the growing trend to use abundant, cleaner-burning natural gas for power generation.

* Trademark of the General Electric Company

ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS

When compared to GEs current technologies, a typical plant that varies its output depending on conditions will save approximately $2.6 million dollars per year under a typical operating profile of 4,500 hours per year at a natural gas price of about $10 per million btu. Under the same profile, the plant would have annual fuel savings of 6.4 million cubic meters of natural gas, equivalent to the annual natural gas consumption of more than 4,000 EU households. It would also have annual CO2 emissions reduction of more than 12,700 metric tons - equivalent to removing more than 6,000 cars from EU roads. Each plant also avoids 10 metric tons of NOx annually.

OPERATING BENEFITS

The FlexEfficiency 50 plant using GEs advanced 9FB Gas Turbine is rated at 510 megawatts with greater than 61% efficiency, significantly reducing the amount of fuel needed to create power. The plant achieves a ramp-rate of more than 50 megawatts per minute, twice the ramp-rate of todays industry benchmarks. The technology allows the plant to turn down to 40% of its load while maintaining emissions guarantees and it starts in less than 30 minutes. It can be integrated with a concentrated solar power field to achieve more than 70% efficiency and it offers a 10% smaller footprint than existing combined cycle power plants with equivalent output. (A combined cycle plant uses gas and steam turbines working in tandem to make efficient use of fuel.)
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Planning for a Rainy Day: GEs Innovative Flex Plant to Power National Grid for the First Time
Renewable energy projects such as solar and wind farms have been pumping increasingly more electricity into the grid. For example, data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency show that the output of American solar farms grew 16 times over the last decade. But challenges remain. One of the largest is making sure that customers have enough power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. To keep electricity flowing, GE invested $500 million in the development of the innovative FlexEfficiency 50 power plant. The plant can quickly ramp up and ramp down power output and deliver electricity when it is needed. Yesterday, GE and the large French utility Electricite de France announced that they will jointly develop the first FlexEfficiency power station to be connected to a national grid. The project will be located at Bouchain in northern France. It will produce 510 megawatts of electricity, enough electricity to power 600,000 households. The plant is scheduled to come on line in late 2015. The ecomagination-qualified technology also aims to spur a broader rollout of renewable energy projects by giving utilities the flexibility to quickly switch on a drizzly, windless day from solar and wind power generation to gas.

GEs flex technology is radical because it allows the gas turbine to respond to surges and fluctuations in electricity demand in as fast as 30 minutes. Thats twice the rate of the current industry benchmarks. This flexibility as well as the plants 61 percent efficiency will allow EDF to burn less gas and reduce CO2 emissions. When combined with renewables, the plant can reach efficiencies approaching 70 percent. GE will also roll out the flex technology in Turkey, China, Japan and elsewhere in Asia.

How Loud is a Wind Turbine?

Because wind turbines are such a great source of clean, renewable energy, theyre usually greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm. But some complaints have been made that they can cause too much noise for residents living within a mile of the blades. So just how noisy are these turbines? The closest that a wind turbine is typically placed to a home is 300 meters or more. At that distance, a turbine will have a sound pressure level of 43 decibels. To put that in context, the average air conditioner can reach 50 decibels of noise, and most refrigerators run at around 40 decibels. At 500 meters (0.3 miles) away, that sound pressure level drops to 38 decibels. In most places, according to Keith Longtin of GE Global Research, background noise ranges from 40 to 45 decibels, meaning that a turbines noise would be lost amongst it. For the stillest, most rural areas, Longtin says the background noise is 30 decibels. At that level, a turbine located about a mile away wouldnt be heard. For a complete run down of louder-than-a-fridge but quieter-than-a-blender context points, check out the graphic below. Because wind turbines are such a great source of clean, renewable energy, theyre usually greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm. But some complaints have been made that they can cause too much noise for residents living within a mile of the blades. So just how noisy are these turbines? The closest that a wind turbine is typically placed to a home is 300 meters or more. At that distance, a turbine will have a sound pressure level of 43 decibels. To put that in context, the average air conditioner can reach 50 decibels of noise, and most refrigerators run at around 40 decibels. At 500 meters (0.3 miles) away, that sound pressure level drops to 38 decibels. In most places, according to Keith Longtin of GE Global Research, background noise ranges from 40 to 45 decibels, meaning that a turbines noise would be lost amongst it. For the stillest, most rural

areas, Longtin says the background noise is 30 decibels. At that level, a turbine located about a mile away wouldnt be heard. For a complete run down of louder-than-a-fridge but quieter-than-a-blender context points, check out the graphic below.

GE Genius Hall of Fame: Dr. John Schenck, MRI Pioneer

Congratulations to Dr. John Schenck, the first inductee into the GE Reports Genius Hall of Fame, which recognizes the most seasoned innovators at work creating world-changing technology at GE. Dr. Schenck was a member of the GE research team that first developed the clinically viable Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. Unlike x-ray or CT scans, which use ionizing radiation, MRI employs a powerful magnet to induce hydrogen atoms in the human body to emit radio signals, which it then interprets to construct a diagnostic 3D image of virtually any part of the body. Since then, more than 500 million MRI images have been made. Dr. Schenck spoke with GE Reports about his experiences on the pioneering team, and shared his perspective on the role of medical imaging technology in the future.

A brave volunteer participates in a test conducted by Dr. Schenck and a colleague in 1983. GE: What was your role in developing the first MRI scanner? In the 1970s, and early 1980s, computed tomography (CT) had just become a very major business. GE had come from pretty far behind in that new modality and was just starting to take a leadership position. Once I finished medical school, my main opportunity at GE was with a new modality, magnetic resonance imaging. It did sort of the same thing that CT did in that it made cross-sectional images of the human body, but using a completely different technology. It was considered very far-out because it required putting large magnets, which didnt even exist at the time, into hospitals. After some initial evaluations, we proposed buying a magnet that would be operated at 1.5 tesla, which is about 30,000 times as strong as the earths magnetic field and at least five times as high as anyone had previously used for whole-body human imaging. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) had been done in test tubes by chemists for a long time before we got involved, and so our job really was to scale it up to be used on entire human beings. It wasnt obvious at the beginning that it was going to be possible to do at a price that anybody could afford. We went through a lot of back-and-forth as to whether we should try to do research at this high field strength, or work at a much lower field strength, where the risks were a lot lower but where the NMR signal was much smaller.

GE: The risk of damage to the patient, you mean? Oh no the risks of trying a much higher, and unproven, field strength. There was a belief at that time that if we went to this high field strength 1.5 tesla that would mean we would be trying to take signals out of human beings at 63 MHz which is a high frequency. Some theorists said that signals that high would not pass through the human body, so we wouldnt be able to get a signal from inside of people at this frequency. But there are many advantages to going to high-field strength if it will work. With support from GE, management, we went out and contracted for a one-of-a-kind magnet from a magnet supplier in England, who built the magnet over a period of 1.5 years. When we got it back, we found that the early theory that it wouldnt work at this field strength was wrong. GE: So you were the first team to use those huge magnets for MRI? Yes, we were the first team. There were technical difficulties, but we finally got it all to work in the middle of the night one night. I was the first person to be imaged with this device. We took an image of my brain as a first step. We expected there would be a big black spot toward the center of my head where this absorption we had theorized about was going to occur, but there wasnt any the whole image was there. Subsequently, 1.5 tesla became the gold standard field strength for all of MRI from about 1983 until the present. GE: What were you thinking at the time? Were you scared? Oh no, I was trained as a physician and I approached the magnet slowly to see if any problems occurred. Also, a nurse had come down the first day I went into the magnet, and she had taken my blood pressure and pulse rate and everything seemed to be working fine. So I wasnt afraid. GE: Youve also worked in the emergency room. For something like 10 years I worked as an ER doctor. I treated several thousand patients on the weekends and nights, but I was able to keep my full-time job at the GE lab during those years. It kept me in contact with patients and kept my clinical skills sharp, and allowed me to have valuable experiences with my medical colleagues. GE: What are you most interested in at the moment? My personal enthusiasm right now is for the new applications in brain imaging. Right now I would guess that we are only making medical use of a fraction maybe 30 percent of the information that is in our brain images. This is particularly true of functional MRI (fMRI), where you can actually see the brain going through the thought processes and see differences between different people and their responses. Were mostly interested in it in terms of its impact on disease, but there are all sorts of other potential uses of fMRI. There is neuro-marketing imaging peoples brains and seeing how

they respond to various advertising approaches. There is talk about using it in legal systems to evaluate whether someone is telling the truth or not using fMRI. GE: Do you think the implementation of technology can help ease Americas health care woes? Its true that medicine is about a lot more than technology. But yes, I think theres still a lot of opportunity for technology to contribute to health care. If you look around and say whats our hope for treating depression? Whats our hope for treating stroke, or Alzheimers, or schizophrenia? Then I think its technology. One key to advancing this is in making the MRI more available by reducing the cost of the scans and the scanners so there are more scanners in more locations more readily available to doctors and patients. Smaller, specialized scanners for specific regions such as the head only will lower the barriers to using MRI.

The Sun Motor: GEs Solar Power at the 1939 Worlds Fair
A key goal in solar energy is to make it available and affordable on a large scale. Last week, GE hit a major milestone on that path, having achieved the highest-ever reported efficiency for CdTe thin film solar panels. The research that led to the breakthrough built on decades of discovery some of it from the space-age labs of today, and some of it from the same technology that was within reach of the millions who came to the 1939 Worlds Fair and saw GEs Sun Motor, a device that used photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight to electricity. During his presentation at the Fair which focused on The World of Tomorrow and drew over 44 million people during its two-year run GE publicist and amateur magician William Gluesing said: Many of our present-day developments are, in reality, outgrowths of dreams of the past. For centuries men have dreamed of deriving power directly from the sun. Now, after years of research, our engineers have found a way to convert the rays of the sun directly into electricity enough to drive a small motor. Gluesings presentation was given at the GE House of Magic, which served to exhibit futuristic inventions that might one day change the world. Joining the Sun Motor were The Inductotherm a device that used a magnetic field to share electricity and The Levitator a device that used magnets to levitate a subject. The Sun Motor was a simple contraption, but it served as the foundation of a larger vision held by GE scientists a hope expressed by Gluesing that some daywe may be using photovoltaic cells to heat our homes and provide us with power and light. While GEs newest breakthrough is a major step toward widespread use of solar power, Gluesing, sounding like GEs present-day scientists, knew over a half century ago that true energy innovation doesnt come easily. It requires long and painstaking study and research by hundreds of scientists to make these new discoveries, he said. It takes years of development by engineers and skilled workmen to put these discoveries to work to make life easier, healthier, and

happier for everyone.General Electric, as one of the leading scientific organizations of the world, recognizes its responsibility to promote progressto make this world a better place in which to live, not only for this, but for future generations. Quotations excerpted from GEs House of Magic Booklet (published in 1943) and courtesy of the Schenectady Museum. Unfortunately not available online.

A diagram of the Sun Motor from the House of Magic Booklet. Image courtesy of the Schenectady Museum.

William Gluesing demonstrating the Sun Motor at GEs House of Magic at the 1939 Worlds Fair. Photo courtesy of the Schenectady Museum. It wasnt just the 1939 Worlds Fair that looked to tomorrow. Famed sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov used the astounding GE exhibit at the 1964 Worlds Fair as a launching point for a terrific review of the Fair and essay. It looks into the far away future the year 2014 and imagines what might be in store based upon what he was seeing at the GE exhibit. See if he got it right (well, theres still three years to go) by clicking here to read it in The New York Times. Its part of our story on GE Reports, Six Degrees of GE: Our Random Links to Luminaries.