Specialized skills and instruments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are helping the world's leading manufacturer of microturbines make products expected to set new standards for performance and reliability. Capstone Turbine Corp. of California credits ORNL and the High Temperature Materials Laboratory for playing a key role in developing the C200 microturbine with a generating capacity of 200 kilowatts. The unit boasts 33 percent efficiency and meets stringent California emissions requirements. While most of the microturbines sold by Capstone are used in land-based distributed generation applications, the company recently received a significant order for microturbines to be used in hybrid buses with double the fuel economy of a traditional diesel bus. This research has been funded by the Department of Energy's Advanced Microturbines Program.
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