Is 3-D Printing the Answer to AI’s Gas Turbine Crunch?
Markets, when allowed to work, work wonders. Why? Because the market will balance great ideas, with economic constraints, with customer needs, with efficiency, with risk taking, with creativity, all while feeling the pressure of competition. It’s all here in this one story.
“Parallax founder and CEO Carl Schoeller said the idea isn’t to attempt to replicate the highly efficient turbines that major manufacturers build for power plants and aircraft. Instead, he wants to make something smaller that could generate about 10 megawatts of electricity, be manufactured faster with cheaper materials and be transported in shipping containers.
Schoeller said a traditional gas turbine core has more than 2,000 parts, while Parallax’s design would use 3-D printing to simplify manufacturing down to a handful of parts. The Parallax turbine would operate at lower combustion temperatures, which reduces fuel efficiency but allows the company to use more common materials and tap in to many broad supply chains, including those of the aerospace industry, he said.
“That’s really our key differentiator,” Schoeller said. “We don’t have to design for a utility. We don’t have to design for aircraft. We get to design for this customer.””
Consumer Regulated Electricity (CRE) will open the door to even more market wonders. Contact us to learn more.
