News

GE Energy Receives DOE Power System Contract

August 16, 2005 by Jeff Shepard

GE Energy (Atlanta, GA), a supplier of power generation and energy delivery technology, announced that it received a 10-year, $83 million contract from the US Department of Energy (DOE, Washington, DC) to develop a fuel-efficient power system using hybrid technology. The company will develop an "integrated gasification" fuel cell system, which converts coal into a cleaner-burning fuel, and will design a 100 MW power plant to achieve better than 50-percent efficiency from coal; a conventional pulverized, coal-fired, power plant operates at about 35-percent efficiency.

The system will use a hybrid solid-oxide fuel cell and gas turbine as the primary power generation unit. The three-phase agreement begins in October 2005. GE Energy's hybrid power-generation systems business, based in Torrance, CA, will lead the program's development.