A unit of General Electric (GE) has developed a new natural gas-fired 50 MW generation turbine that operates without water. GE claims its FlexAero (LM 6000-PH) turbine is highly efficient and provides a faster, more flexible source of electricity to businesses and communities alike with onsite power generation needs. It is aimed at both utilities and large industrial/commercial customers, a GE spokesperson told NGI. FlexAero represents a multi-million-dollar investment in research and development by GE, the spokesperson said. GE also said that it has passed the $1 billion mark in orders received for both aeroderivative and heavy duty gas turbines for projects in North America. GE touts its new turbine as “leveraging” the use of clean-burning natural gas in a quick-start context.

It likely will be some time before a complete explanation of last Thursday’s power blackout in southwest Arizona, North Baja California, Mexico and the southern end of California (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12) is fully known. State, regional and national grid reliability, operations and regulatory entities are conducting detailed investigations, and some of San Diego Gas and Electric Co.‘s major natural gas-fired power plants were still offline on Tuesday. It was “business as usual” on the California Independent System Operator system Monday, a Folsom, CA-based spokesperson told NGI. The analysis of the event, which so far is traced to transmission maintenance work by Arizona Public Service employees at a substation northwest of Yuma, AZ, will drill down to 1/10th of a second measurements, the spokesperson said.

©Copyright 2011Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.