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INDUSTRIAL
<br />MANAGEMENT &
<br />TECHNOLOGY
<br />
<br />microturbinc, a miniaturized, cheaply pro-
<br />duced cousin of the turbine-powered electric
<br />generators tucked into the tails of thousands
<br />of airliners worldwide. In urban areas, where
<br />microturbines are a much better bet for fill-
<br />in power than other nonconventional sources
<br />likc solar cells and windmills (see boxes), the
<br />littlc machines could help hold down the elec-
<br />tric bills of consumers and businesses alike.
<br />Says Daniel Rastler of the Electric Power Re-
<br />search Institute, a utility-supported entity in
<br />Palo Alto: "Utilities that see a market for
<br />standby power could be buyers and distribu-
<br />tors of tens of thousands of these units."
<br /> A microturbine takes up less space than
<br />your office desk. It can make electricity from
<br />a variety of fuels--natural gas, kerosene, die-
<br />sel oil, even gasoline. If designers get things
<br />right, the little dynamos will require almost
<br />no upkeep. Your power company might in-
<br />stall bevies of them at regional substations, or
<br />even ()ne or two right up your street, if you're
<br />in an outlying neighborhood. Don't worry:
<br />The turbines run so quietly that they'll be
<br />hardly more intrusive than the big transform-
<br />ers already commonplace in residential areas.
<br />Distant computers will switch the turbines on
<br />and off as needed, and you won't even notice.
<br /> Despite its puny size, the microturbine has
<br />a couple of big-lcaguc supportcrs: Capstone
<br />Turbine Corp., a Tarzana, California, startup
<br />financcd by the Sevin-Rosen and Canaan Part-
<br />ners venture capital funds, and the aerospace
<br />division of AlliedSignal in Torrance, Califor-
<br />nia, which has long experience in turning out
<br />those airplane generators. Already testing pro-
<br />totypes, developers expect the microturbine to
<br />play a host of roles besides supplementing the
<br />electric company's output. In highly polluted
<br />areas, it might be a more acceptable and af-
<br />fordable alternative to batteries as a power
<br />plant for cars. Microturbines could also re-
<br />place diesel generator sets, those widely used,
<br />growling pallets of portable kilowatts.
<br /> They could supply emergency power to
<br />hospitals, for example, or keep lights burning
<br />at isolated logging camps. Mounted on trucks,
<br />microturbines could supply juice for welding
<br />equipment, say, or churn out electricity at
<br />filmmaking locations, upstaging diesel gener-
<br />ators that need elaborate acoustical muffling
<br />in such situations. Although the microtur-
<br />bine's capital cost would be higher than a die-
<br />scl's, at least in the immediate future, it has
<br />attracted the attention of the power industry
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<br />Your power
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<br />because of diesel's many
<br />drawbacks. "The diesel
<br />generating set is noisy
<br />and polluting and needs
<br />a lot of maintenance,"
<br />says Edan Prabhu, man-
<br />ager of technology trans-
<br />fer at Southern Califor-
<br />nia Edison, the electric
<br />utility unit of Edison In-
<br />ternational, which is eval-
<br />uating microturbines as a
<br />power source.
<br /> Deregulation, which
<br />electric companies are just beginning to
<br />taste, could send them on a microturbine
<br />shopping spree. Says Oliver Yu, director of
<br />energy and utility systems at SR| Interna-
<br />tional, a Menlo Park, California, research
<br />and consulting firm: "This is a revolutionary
<br />time for utilities. When they operated as re-
<br />gional monopolies earning a fixed return on
<br />their investments, it used to make sense to
<br />have central power stations." That time is
<br />long past, says Yu. Even before deregulation
<br />threatened, power companies had become re-
<br />luctant to spend billions on big, new generat-
<br />ing plants and the long, high-voltage trans-
<br />mission lines radiating from them. Instead,
<br />they'd started squeezing more kilowatt-hours
<br />out of their existing investments.
<br />
<br />company might
<br />install bevies of
<br />microturbines in
<br />outlying neigh-
<br />borhoods. But
<br />don't worry;
<br />they're quiet and
<br />unobtrusive.
<br />
<br />OW, as federal and state au-
<br />thorities get ready to open
<br />electricity markets to competi-
<br />tion, the utilities have an
<br />added impetus to serve cus-
<br />tomers at the lowest possible
<br />cost. In the first stage of deregulation, likely
<br />to occur first in such states as California and
<br />New Hampshire, industrial users will be able
<br />to choose among power suppliers; homeown-
<br />ers may have that option in the future. In this
<br />new climate, microturbines can in theory
<br />both hurt and help the utilities. Fiercely inde-
<br />pendent customers may be tempted to install
<br />them as do-it-yourself power plants in their
<br />backyards. But the power companies, by set-
<br />ting up microturbines of their own, could re-
<br />lieve customers of this chore and thereby
<br />keep their allegiance.
<br /> Weighing in at a mere 165 pounds and re-
<br />sembling a beer keg wrapped in a silvery
<br />space blanket, Capstone's microturbine
<br />could be seen running in a test cell recently.
<br />The machine, no noisier than a vacuum
<br />
<br />cleaner when you stand
<br />beside it, is simplicity
<br />itself. Just one mov-
<br />ing part, a spinning
<br />shaft whose 96,000-rpm
<br />speed lights up on a red
<br />LED display, serves si-
<br />multaneously as com-
<br />pressor, turbine, and
<br />electric-generator rotor.
<br />Air bearings support the
<br />shaft, eliminating the
<br />need for a lubrication
<br />system. The goal of the
<br />engine's designers is operation on demand
<br />for months on end without maintenance.
<br />Customers, including several electric utili-
<br />ties, expect to gain experience with 35 of
<br />these generators in field trials beginning in
<br />early summer. Capstone is tooling up a pro-
<br />duction line scheduled to begin operating
<br />later this year.
<br /> Capstone's turbine generates 24 kilowatts,
<br />enough to run the central air conditioner of
<br />a big house. The output is puny compared
<br />with that of the big gas turbines, typically
<br />turning out 160,000 kilowatts, that utilities
<br />have been installing in recent years at central
<br />power plants, not to mention the giant coal-
<br />powered units in the 500,000-kilowatt league
<br />that power companies have quit building in
<br />many areas because they sop up too much
<br />capital. (It's been years since they built new
<br />nuclear units, which are even bigger.) Paul
<br />Craig, Capstone's vice president of engineer-
<br />ing, says the 24-kilowatt size was picked with
<br />an eye to a second and potentially gigantic
<br />market: low-polluting automobiles.
<br /> A microturbine of this size would be pow-
<br />erful enough to propel an electric car. Though
<br />it packs the equivalent of only 32 horsepower,
<br />a "hybrid" power train that couples the
<br />turbine-generator with a battery or flywheel
<br />energy-storage device could draw on them for
<br />extra oomph when passing or climbing hills.
<br />Hybrid cars would be more fuel efficient than
<br />conventional models; air-pollution levels
<br />would be low enough that California author-
<br />ities might classify them as "zero emission"
<br />vehicles under proposed future standards.
<br />And unlike cars powered solely by batteries,
<br />which must stop for recharging after running
<br />a few hours, hybrid cars could travel hundreds
<br />of miles on a tank of fuel.
<br /> Detroit's Big Three, aided by federal dol-
<br />lars, are seriously pursuing hybrid-car re-
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