New Heat Capture Technology for Gas Turbines

With the average industrial turbine operating at only about one third efficiency, a new GE technology can come close to doubling that.

Clay Dillow at Fast Company.com reports:

"General Electric has devised a way to generate energy from a unique kind of waste: the excess heat from its own gas turbines. An innovative system based on a process understood for decades but previously too expensive to implement can capture waste heat from any industrial gas turbine and return it to the energy cycle without any additional emissions or water consumption.
The Department of Energy recently granted GE and Idaho National Laboratory $2 million to further develop the technology, which could potentially increase the efficiency of industrial engines--which often run at only 35% efficiency--by 20% to 40%." See full article.

New York City Icon Goes Green

The Empire State Building is going green. Energy retrofits are a major way to cut green house gases and save costs in older high-rises.

Reuters and MatteR Network report:

"Today the building is still iconic, but is has also become symbolic of New York City's unbelievable consumption of energy and the fact that buildings contribute almost 80% towards the city's total Greenhouse Gas emissions.

In April, the owners of the building announced a major undertaking- the Empire State Building is going green and earning back its previous reputation for modernity and technological progress. The project will cost $25 million, but the investment will be recouped by savings on energy bills within 5 years. The fifth floor of the building is being turned into an on-site "factory" where the original windows will be taken for thermal-resistant glazing. The radiators will all be altered to ensure that heat stays trapped in the building, rather than being released into NYC." See full article.

New Power Line Technology to Reduce "Leakage" 75%

A certain amount of generated electricity simply oozes out of power lines during transmission (about 8%) but a new technology may cut that by 75% or more and make a smart grid more lean too.

MorningStar.com reports:

"German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG (SI) expects new technology to reduce the amount of power lost in transmission grids to around 1%-2%, from an average of roughly 8% currently, [according to] Wolfgang Dehen, chief executive of Siemens' energy.

Traditional lines typically lose around 8% of power during transmission, leading to higher costs and weaker earnings potential for the energy companies. But with Siemens' new technology, called high-voltage direct current, the amount of power lost will shrink and the associated costs will be "significantly reduced," Dehen said at a climate and energy conference in Stockholm arranged by Swedish peer Vattenfall AB." See full article

Smart Grid Vision Catching On With Power Companies

Electric utilities are welcoming the smart grid as a technological breakthrough in energy management.

The Associated Press reports:

"The "smart grid" has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says it's essential to boost development wind and solar power, get people to use less energy and tackle climate change. What smart grid visionaries see coming are home thermostats and individual appliances that adjust automatically based on the cost of power, and water heaters that can draw power from a neighbor's rooftop solar panel. They see a time when, on a scorching hot day, a plug-in hybrid electric car charges one minute and a few moments later sends electricity back into the grid to help avert a brownout.

Also coming are utilities that get instant feedback on a transformer outage or shift easily among energy sources from wind turbines to coal-burning power plants and back to the turbines when the wind begins to blow again." See full article.

Home Insulation Made From Mushrooms

New energy-saving material may turn up in unexpected places. Even the woods.

PopSci.com reports:

"Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre want to line the walls of your home with mushrooms. The young entrepreneurs have created a strong, low-cost biomaterial that could replace the expensive, environmentally harmful Styrofoam and plastics used in wall insulation, as well as in packaging and a host of other products. Wind-turbine blades and auto-body panels aren't out of the realm of possibility, either." See full article.