Here are some highlights from today’s announcement:

1. Cool Technology Combinations – One advantage GE enjoys is the breadth of its advanced tech offerings, which enables creative solutions using different products in tandem. For example, GE announced today it will support the Queensland Gas Company’s major Australian coal seam gas-to-LNG project with a mashup of Waukesha engine tech and Jenbacher Gas Engines that will together provide on-site power for another of GE’s offerings: advanced membrane and thermal water treatment tech (used to desalinate water produced during the extraction process). Similarly, in Italy, GE will combine Clean Cycle™ waste heat recovery tech and Jenbacher gas engines to help European power customers maximize output and minimize consumption of fuel, part of which is biogas from pig and cow manure, corn and other crops.

2. Brazil is Hot – More than a third of today’s announced total dollar amount comes from projects in emerging powerhouse Brazil. GE won 40 percent of the total amount of energy auctioned by the country’s National Electric Power Agency: 378 megawatts (MW) of wind power to be generated by GE’s 1.6 wind turbine tech and one whole gigawatt of natural gas power generation using its 7FA gas turbine combined-cycle tech. GE was also awarded a major subsea and surface contract for drilling and production equipment by OGX.

3. Making a Move in LNG – GE will supply steam turbines and compressors for the world’s largest Floating Liquefied Natural Gas platform, the Shell Prelude project, which is located 200 km off Western Australia’s Kimberly Coast. Including this new project, GE has won a total of $1 billion in global LNG contracts.

4. Wind at its Back – GE’s 1.6-100 wind turbine will be flying off the shelves. Today the company announced it has earned more than $1.5 billion in new commitments for 750 turbines for wind farms in North and South America over the next two years, bringing total orders for the 1.6-100 to nearly 2 gigawatts and $2.7 billion.

5. Helping Power Egypt – GE will supply six advanced F-technology gas turbines and related services for two new combined-cycle power plants near Cairo that will add ten percent of capacity to Egypt’s power grid, helping support the country’s rapidly growing energy needs. At $300 million, it’s the largest power generation order ever between Egypt and GE.

Those five highlights are just some of the major customer agreements announced today, which also include: enhanced oil recovery operations and tech and service support to an independent power producer in Iraq; GE Energy’s first foray into providing manufacturing solutions to drive energy efficiency and water savings in the food and beverage sector, with Anheuser-Busch InBev facilities in China; the largest smart grid project in Latin America, with Electrica de Guayaquil in Ecuador; and water treatment and recycling using GE’s patented evaporative tech, with Grizzly Oil Sands ULC’s Algar Lake project in Canada.

In Santiago, Chile, the local water treatment plant just announced that GE’s ecomagination Jenbacher engines will soon be taking the methane-rich biogas created by the digestion of sewage sludge and converting it to electricity. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the first landfill gas power plant in the country to feature Jenbachers was just inaugurated in a ceremony yesterday.

Sludge hammer: Located near the capital city of Santiago, the project is part of Chile’s efforts to clean up the city’s municipal water supply and protect the region from the environmental impacts of continued population growth.

The three GE engines in Chile will supply enough renewable electricity to meet 60 percent of the requirements of water utility company Aguas Andinas at its ‘Mapocho’ Wastewater Plant, seen above.

In the process, the waste is circulated and anaerobic, or oxygen-free, digestion takes place. Microorganisms break down the organic waste, ultimately producing gas — mainly methane with some carbon dioxide. This gas can be burned just like natural gas, thus generating energy.

Meanwhile in the Philippines, four Jenbacher engines will take the methane generated by the San Pedro landfill and turn it into electricity that will be fed back into the local grid. The project will reduce the landfill’s methane emissions by about 70 percent.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program, in the U.S., existing landfill gas projects have helped eliminate the combined equivalent of CO2 emissions generated by 14.3 million automobiles.

Bubbling up: The Philippines project was inaugurated December 2 in a ceremony attended by City Governor ER Ejercito, City Mayor Calixto Cataquiz and State Undersecretary of Energy Loreto Ayson.

* Read “What If All of the (Other) Turkey Leftovers Didn’t Go To Waste?”
* See videos in which Wisconsin farmers explain how the manure digester works
* Learn more about the world’s largest chicken biogas plant in China
* See how Jenbacher engines are burning landfill gas in Michigan

Their ecomagination Jenbacher engines can run on biogas and one of the best ways to tap into the powerful and clean burning resource is through cow, pig, chicken — and yes, turkey — manure.

So, as our Thanksgiving gift to GE Reports readers, we asked the energy team to give us the, ahem, straight poop on a tough question: “What if every turkey in the U.S. did the right thing by using an outhouse that fed a Jenbacher?”

The answer: You could power Minneapolis!

About 300 million turkeys are reportedly raised in the U.S. and it’s estimated they produce 11.3 million tons of waste each year. The GE Energy team conservatively estimates that if all of that were used in digester systems in which a fermentation process captures the gas; the rest of the waste is used as an odorless fertilizer; and the biogas itself is used by Jenbacher engines to produce electricity, it could power almost 92,000 homes for a year — which is a town of roughly 368,000 people. That’s about 11.8 million metric tons of CO2 that would be avoided, compared to the amount released if a traditional coal plant was producing the electricity.

That’s enough power for Cincinnati (pop. 330,000), New Orleans (350,000), St. Louis (350,000) or Minneapolis (385,000) — which fittingly makes the list as Minnesota reportedly raises more turkeys than any other state, with about 45 million turkeys.

Do your duty! One day this little fellow, known in poultry circles as a turkey poult, may step up to the plate (the energy plate, that is) and help power hundreds of thousands of homes. Photo: Kristie Gianopulos, via Wikipedia Creative Commons license.

(Sorry if we spoiled your appetite — but it’s for a good cause! As Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White said, “There is no doubt about it, the basic satisfaction in farming is manure.”)

Happy Thanksgiving!

* See videos in which Wisconsin farmers explain how the manure digester works
* Learn more about the world’s largest chicken biogas plant in China
* See how Jenbacher engines are burning landfill gas in Michigan