In July 2000, the United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) was one of five recipients of a US Department of Energy contract under the Advanced Microturbine System (AMS) program managed by the Office of Distributed Energy (DE). The AMS program resulted from several government-industry workshops that recognized that microturbine systems could play an important role in improving customer choice and value for electrical power. That is, the group believed that electrical power could be delivered to customers more efficiently and reliably than the grid if an effective distributed energy strategy was followed. Further, the production of this distributed power would be accomplished with less undesirable pollutants of nitric oxides (NOx) unburned hydrocarbons (UHC), and carbon monoxide (CO). In 2000, the electrical grid delivered energy to US customers at a national average of approximately 32% efficiency. This value reflects a wide range of powerplants, but is dominated by older, coal burning stations that provide approximately 50% of US electrical power. The grid efficiency is also affected by transmission and distribution (T&D) line losses that can be significant during peak power usage. In some locations this loss is estimated to be 15%. Load pockets can also be so constrained that sufficient power cannotmore » be transmitted without requiring the installation of new wires. New T&D can be very expensive and challenging as it is often required in populated regions that do not want above ground wires. While historically grid reliability has satisfied most customers, increasing electronic transactions and the computer-controlled processes of the 'digital economy' demand higher reliability. For them, power outages can be very costly because of transaction, work-in-progress, or perishable commodity losses. Powerplants that produce the grid electrical power emit significant levels of undesirable NOx, UHC, and CO pollutants. The level of emission is quoted as either a technology metric or a system-output metric. A common form for the technology metric is in the units of PPM {at} 15% O2. In this case the metric reflects the molar fraction of the pollutant in the powerplant exhaust when corrected to a standard exhaust condition as containing 15% (molar) oxygen, assuring that the PPM concentrations are not altered by subsequent air addition or dilution. Since fuel combustion consumes oxygen, the output oxygen reference is equivalent to a fuel input reference. Hence, this technology metric reflects the moles of pollutant per mole of fuel input, but not the useful output of the powerplant-i.e. the power. The system-output metric does embrace the useful output and is often termed an output-based metric. A common form for the output-based metric is in the units of lb/MWh. This is a system metric relating the pounds of pollutant to output energy (e.g., MWh) of the powerplant.« less