ENERGY EFFICIENCY -- Doing the Texas two-step . . .

A prototype energy system now being field tested in Austin, Texas, may revolutionize how businesses power and cool their buildings. The integrated energy system, implemented through a partnership between DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Austin Energy, the municipal utility, and developed by Burns & McDonnell, combines on-site electricity generation with cooling and heating to save energy. The system generates electricity from a natural gas-fired turbine, and that electricity is fed into the local power grid. At the same time, the turbine's exhaust heat fuels the world's largest absorption chiller to be fired only by "waste" heat. This "fuel free" chilled water cools one-million-square-feet of building space at a mixed use site. The cooling, heating and power system is expected to operate at 70 to 80 percent efficiency, compared with 55 percent efficiency in the best central power plants. The system will be monitored over the two-year demonstration by the ORNL-Austin Energy-Burns & McDonnell team and the University of Texas at Austin. [Contact: Bill Cabage, 865-574-4399; cabagewh@ornl.gov]

COMPUTING -- Seeing is believing . . .

Stellar explosions, protein structure and global climate models come to life in 1 billion vivid colors as scientists study their data and view simulations on a giant screen at the Center for Computational Sciences. The 8-by-30-foot power wall makes possible detailed study and collaborations in astrophysics, chemistry, climate, combustion, fusion, high-energy physics, life sciences, material science, nanotechnology and engineering sciences. "Visualizing and sifting through the incredible amount of information generated from massively parallel compute
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Contact: Bill Cabage
cabagewh@ornl.gov
865-574-4399
DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
10-Nov-2004