Last fall, GE Energy teamed up with NRGreen Power, an innovative Canadian power company, and brought to Alberta a new technology called ORegen. ORegen, which is ecomagination-certified, traps waste heat generated by big industrial machines and turns it into electricity. The system does not require fuel or water, and spews no emissions. The net gain is 14 megawatts of electricity out of hot air. That’s enough to power 14,000 Canadian homes.

If you pair ORegen with a conventional power station, it will boost the plant’s efficiency by 20 to 35 percent and deliver 40 percent more electricity with no additional fuel consumption. GE Energy built a website that shows how the system works. Take a look.

Over the last year, the company polled its people—the researchers, manufacturing workers, corporate managers, and others, 130,000 strong in the U.S. alone—and asked them to describe how they work GE. They said that the work they do builds, powers, moves and cures the world. The Super Bowl ads tell that story. The story how GE’s American employees work everyday to make things that matter. Amid continuing economic uncertainty, this is an optimistic story, one rooted in the passion and pride GE’s people take in their work because they know it makes a difference.

It’s a story about workers at GE Energy, and the machines they build and technology they invent to power everything, including the Budweiser breweries whose bottled goods recharge many of the 120 million Super Bowl viewers. And it’s a story about rust belt renewal, as GE Appliances brings manufacturing jobs back to its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, where GE’s people build the energy efficient refrigerators that hold all that beer.

Florence also plays an annual host to the GE Oil & Gas summit, which kicked off this morning. The meeting gives hundreds of global industry leaders and technology experts a place to share and debate ideas such as deep water exploration, new oil recovery methods, and other complex challenges facing the industry.

GE used the first day of the meeting to announce a series of deals, including a $1 billion contract to supply subsea equipment and services to Ichtys, a massive liquefied natural gas facility (LNG) run by INPEX Corporation and Total in Western Australia. GE also said that it developed a MicroLNG plant, which can produce liquefied natural gas in small batches of just 150,000 gallons per day. Unlike Ichtys or other large export-oriented LNG plants, this ecomagination-qualified technology can produce LNG locally as an alternative fuel source for heavy duty trucks and off-road vehicles. GE estimates that switching from diesel to LNG could save a truck fleet operator $1,900 per vehicle in annual fuel costs, and a total of 80,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. The company also announced new projects in the North Sea in the UK (subsea equipment), in Eastern Siberia (gas reinjection), Brazil (floating oil platform equipment), and elsewhere.

Perfection is no trifle at GE’s testing facility in Massa: Workers walk past a segment of a hydrocracking reactor.

The Oil & Gas division, which is now part GE Energy, ended last year strong. The unit reported an $11.8 billion backlog in equipment and services at the end 2011.

Supersize me: An employee inspects a segment of a centrifugal compressor.

Blowing in the wind: The answer to integrating more renewable power into the grid is power conversion.

Luckily, this does not happen. The technology that precisely adjusts the voltage and electrical frequency of renewable power, like wind and solar, before it flows into the grid is called power conversion. Last week, GE Energy launched its new Power Conversion business. The new unit builds on a century of expertise gathered by Converteam, a French expert in the field, which GE acquired for $3.2 billion last year.

At its heart, power conversion turns variable mechanical motion (think wind turbines) into useable power (electricity in your home socket), and vice versa. The technology has been around for decades, relying on mechanical systems with gears and crankshafts. But GE is replacing this machinery with high-tech electrical motors, generators, and advanced electronic convertors. Compared to its mechanical counterparts, the electrical systems are more energy efficient and reliable, and require less maintenance.



The field where power conversion finds applications is vast. It ranges from renewable power, to ship propulsion, the steel industry, mining and elsewhere.

Take ship propulsion. A ship propeller is essentially a wind turbine turned on its head and attached to the bottom of a ship. Captains use a power conversion application called dynamic positioning when they need their vessels to stay in a fixed place on heaving seas, like when they unload supplies next to an oil platform, or move along a predetermined course, like when they lay undersea cables. A suite of sensors from the compass and GPS to laser range finders and orientation sensors that track the roll and the pitch of the ship supply data to an onboard computer that creates a mathematical model of the ship. The computer sends orders to the electric engines powering the propellers and rudders to keep the ship in the right place.

Approximately 25 percent of electricity produced globally is used to power electric motors. Power conversion could help improve their energy efficiency by a third. GE’s acquisition of Converteam will help the company take a large part of the $30 billion power conversion business.

What are some of the products in high demand? Start with GE Aviation. The world’s largest and most powerful commercial jet engine, GE90, has had its most successful year in 2011. Airlines and freighter operators ordered 400 of the engines valued at $11 billion (list price).

The engine’s French-American cousins, the CFM56 and LEAP engines, also had a record year. CFM International, a joint company between GE Aviation and France’s Snecma, received orders and commitments for more than 2,900 CFM56 and LEAP engines valued at $30 billion. There is a good reason for the ecomagination-qualified LEAP to be popular. The engine can achieve double-digit improvements in fuel burn and emissions, and lower maintenance costs. The total GE Aviation backlog stood at $99 billion in equipment and services at the end of 2011.

GE Energy’s total backlog surpassed $72.7 billion at the end of last year. The unit received orders and commitments that included the new ecomagination-qualified FlexEfficiency 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant. GE invested $500 million to develop the technology. The system helps utilities efficiently incorporate power generated by renewable sources such as wind and solar farms. It can ramp up power production on a cloudy day in minutes, twice the rate of today’s energy benchmarks.

Other GE divisions that reported multi-billion backlogs include GE Healthcare ($3.9 billion in equipment), and GE Transportation ($3.3 billion in equipment).

“We feel good about where we are,” Jeff Immelt, GE chairman and chief executive, said on a call with analysts. “Organic growth looks solid with a $200 billion backlog.”

But size is not enough. The grid will also need “smarts” to improve efficiency and reliability, manage the millions of electric vehicles that will start plugging in soon, and integrate a growing number of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. These sources are scattered around the country, often away from urban centers and existing transmission infrastructure, and their output fluctuates with changes in the weather.

Together, these challenges will require new technologies that build on the existing network. “Modernizing our electric grid is a project long overdue,” said former U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. “If Thomas Edison were alive today, he might be surprised at how similar our electric grid is to when the first lines were laid a century ago.”

GE’s Digital Energy business is already playing an active part in developing solutions to make the grid more intelligent and resilient. The business is also taking part in a vibrant debate about navigating the best path forward.

Looking smart: Bob Gilligan, President and CEO of GE’s Digital Energy at GE’s Electric Vehicle Day (EV Day) for employees in Atlanta.

For example, last fall Digital Energy’s President and CEO Bob Gilligan advised the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s large study on “The Future of the Electric Grid.” The study found that the new “distributed and intermittent” energy sources such as wind and solar will present the grid with “unprecedented technological challenges” and that “new regulatory approaches may be required to encourage the adoption of innovative network technologies.”

Some of these technologies already exist today. For example, Gilligan’s Digital Energy provides utilities with advanced automation solutions to improve grid visibility and control.

In May 2011, GE acquired the Ireland-based FMC-Tech, a leading provider of real-time power line monitoring technology. The investment in FMC-Tech was part a $200 million innovation challenge, co-funded with four other venture capital firms, designed to “bring the grid into the 21st century.”

Other “smart” energy projects that GE is developing include better battery systems for energy storage, and smart meters that allow consumers to improve the management of their energy use and respond to changes in prices. Studies show that when combined with technologies such as smart appliances, smart thermostats and home energy displays, savings can jump to an average of 25 percent.

Spot on: This “Powering the Grid” infographic lays out ideas submitted during the $200 million ecomagination challenge.

GE is also teaming with utilities serving Houston, Texas, Oklahoma City, and Leesburg, Florida to allow local residents to plug into a smart grid.

Gilligan said that “while revolutionary energy technologies are developed each day, the way we apply them to modernize and nurture our electrical infrastructure is really more of an evolution than a revolution.”

“With increased reliability, efficiency and sustainability, we’ll be able to power traditional economic growth and be ready for the next generation of life-changing technology,” Gilligan said. “We can do it by taking measured, affordable evolutionary steps. However, we, as a country, must act today.”

1. Reducing the High Cost of Solar Power: In April, GE announced that its thin film solar panels made from a crystalline compound of the elements cadmium and telluride achieved nearly 13 percent efficiency. Consider that a one percent increase in panel efficiency equals around a 10 percent decrease in system costs. The thin film panels will be manufactured at a new solar panel plant near Denver, Colorado. The factory, the country’s largest, will create 355 jobs and make enough solar panels per year to power 80,000 homes. It is scheduled to open in 2013.

In October, engineers at GE’s Global Research Center reported that they developed a system that aims to cut installation costs by half, from $6.50 per watt to just $3. At that price, the savings provided would more than offset the expense of mounting them on the roof.

2. Integrating Renewable Power into the Grid More Seamlessly: Solar and wind power provide clean, renewable energy. But how do utilities and power grid operators replace lost power when the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing? Enter GE’s new flexible power technology, like the FlexEfficiency 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant. GE invested some $500 million in the R&D effort that led to the FlexEfficiency 50. The system can ramp up power production on a cloudy day in just minutes, twice the rate of today’s energy benchmarks. In November, GE announced that it would build the first FlexEfficiency 50 plant in northern France. It will produce 510 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 600,000 households. The plant is scheduled to come on line in late 2015.

3. Slashing Emissions and Fuel Costs for Jet Engines: The LEAP engine, short for Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion, is manufactured by CFM International, a joint company between GE Aviation and France’s Snecma. The engine can achieve double-digit improvements in fuel burn and emissions, and lower maintenance costs. In 2011, CFM received orders for over 2,830 engines. This brings total LEAP orders to 3,160 engines, valued at $38 billion (U.S. list price).

To explore how the innovative tech of the LEAP engine reduces costs and emissions, check out the infographic.

4. Connecting the World’s Machines: From enormous gas turbines to kitchen microwave ovens, machines are vast repositories of data. Harvesting and analyzing this information and then applying the insights can make the systems run smarter and more efficiently. That’s why in November GE announced that it would hire 400 software engineers and professionals and open a new software center in San Ramon in the Bay Area. They will be developing digital tools that gather and analyze the millions of gigabytes of data generated by controls, sensors, computers and other devices that together make the brains of industrial machines. These software tools will predict and respond to changes, and guide customers in how to best use their assets. GE already has some 5,000 software engineers on staff. GE’s software revenues are about $2.5 billion. The company expects double-digit growth in this segment from now until 2015.

5. Personalizing Medicine: GE has been focusing on technologies to help clinicians better personalize diagnoses and treatments. In short, GE provides tools that help physicians assess a disease in individual patients and pick the treatment that fits each best. For example, in 2010 GE Healthcare acquired Clarient, a California-based molecular diagnostics firm and the manufacturer laboratory tests such as Mammostrat. This test allows doctors assess the likelihood of breast cancer recurrence. “If her cancer does not have an aggressive profile, she may not need additional therapies,” said Gerard Brophy, head of new product development at GE Healthcare Medical Diagnostics.

In September 2011, GE announced that it would invest $1 billion in new cancer solutions and the company has also introduced a $100 million innovation challenge open to anyone to come up with new ideas to fight cancer. “Why?” asked GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt at a recent speech. “Because we’re a big innovator in healthcare and technology and because I know that in my lifetime we can treat major diseases, like cancer, more effectively at lower cost.”

Yet despite the energy riches, the island is still grappling with power shortages. During the week of December 11, a Russian news service reported that “almost half” of Sakhalin, including communities ringing its largest city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, remained without power due to a “disruption” at a large plant.

On Tuesday, December 13, GE delivered a dose of good news for the city’s 174,000 residents. The company announced that it would supply one of Sakhalin’s power stations with three innovative LM6000 PF aeroderivative gas turbines.

Technicians Lee Rertel and Darrell Miller at work on an LM6000 gas turbine, whose technology is derived from GE’s CF6 aircraft engine.

Think of the LM6000, and others in its family, as a jet engine afraid of heights. GE engineers have built upon its aviation roots, hence the aeroderivative appellation, and modified the technology to function in industrial power generation and marine propulsion.

Each turbine has a jet engine at its core, which has been modified to take advantage of clean-burning fuels such as natural gas, biofuels and also ethanol to make electricity. The result is fuel flexibility, and much lower emissions and resource demands. The turbines are capable of achieving over 50 megawatts of output in as little as 10 minutes after startup.

One handsome machine: the FlexAero LM6000-PH.

The LM6000 engine cores for the order will be manufactured in GE’s plant in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the turbines will be assembled at the company’s Jacintoport Manufacturing facility outside of Houston, Texas.

Over 1,000 turbines from the LM6000 family, which is ecomagination-qualified, are working around the world. The Sakhalin machinery is scheduled for delivery in March 2012 and the turbines are expected to start generating a total of 138 megawatts of power 12 months later.

Sakhalin officials said the turbines will significantly increase the reliability of the existing power supply on the island by creating a unified energy system. “And this is the way we go,” said Governor of the Sakhalin Region Alexander Khoroshavin.

Flexibility, reliability, and efficiency are the key qualities of the LM6000 family of turbines. The three aeroderivative gas turbines in the Sakhalin package will offer reliability of “greater than 99 percent and availability more than 97 percent.” That’s because the jet engine technology allows the turbine to respond quickly to fluctuations in demand without sacrificing efficiency, the same qualities you expect on an airliner powered by GE engines.

GE and its Russian counterparts are already discussing further cooperation and the possibility to develop alternative aources of energy on the nearby Kuril Islands. American jet technology in Russia has never been embraced so warmly.

This is one example illustrating GE’s innovative approach to energy sustainability. The world population just hit 7 billion people and will add another billion in 15 years. This growth is exerting an enormous strain on natural resources and the environment, with food, energy and climate change being at the top of the list.

The three are often linked. For example, deforestation to create new fields for crops accounts for some 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, more than the total CO2 contribution from the world’s transportation sector. Data from the World Bank estimate that in Brazil, which has become one of the world’s major bread baskets, deforestation and agriculture generate more than 70 percent of the country’s CO2 emissions.

“We could see a world where there could be a greater conflict between energy and food,” says Peter Evans, GE’s Director of Global Strategy and Planning.

That’s why GE has focused its engineering expertise and research efforts at finding and developing smart sustainable technologies that will help customers conserve resources better.

Some tangible results have already reached the market. For example, GE’s Jenbacher engines help farmers recycle biogas such as methane from manure and turn it into electricity. GE’s upgraded J312 gas engine can now gulp as much as 2.3 million cubic meters of biogas annually and generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

Other research is still in the lab. The company has partnered with highly specialized academic institutions like the top-ranked University of Illinois – alma mater of former GE Chairman and CEO Jack Welch – to tap their expertise and foster breakthrough research.

For example, one of the projects that GE and the university are pursuing is converting pig manure into oil. Researchers have found a way to essentially speed up nature’s process of turning dead organic matter into petroleum from tens of millions of years to 10 to 40 minutes. Another project is looking at a better way to mill corn to make the production of ethanol more efficient.

“The issues that we are going to face in both food and energy are bigger than just the population going from 7 billion today to 9 billion by 2050,” says Dan Walter, General Manager of GE Food and Beverage. “The population is moving to the middle class at a higher rate than the population growth. Anytime you have populations that are lifting themselves like that, there is an increase in demand for electricity and an increase in demand for food.” GE is working to make sure that there is plenty of both to go around.

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.

Clara Gaymard, President GE France ; Henri Proglio, EDF President and CEO ; Ricardo Cordoba, Regional President and CEO GE Energy; Yves Menat, General Manager Thermal Europe, GE Energy; Jean-Luc Cabannes, EDF Account Executive, GE Energy, in front of GE’s FlexEfficiency 50 model.

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.

GE’s 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. That’s twice the rate of the current industry benchmarks. This flexibility as well as the plant’s 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.