Military

General Atomics Awarded Contract to Build Hybrid Electric Warships

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published July 13, 2009 at 3:12 PM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

San Diego based General Atomics Corporation has landed a contract with the Navy to apply fuel saving technology to warships.

If General Atomic’s Hybrid Electric Drive system can be modified to work on Navy vessels, it could save up to 12,000 barrels of fuel per ship per year.

Scott Forney of General Atomics says, like everybody else, the Navy is trying to reduce its dependence on non-renewable foreign oil.

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“Same reasons why you buy a Prius,” he says. “If you are energy conscious, is why you’d put a hybrid electric drive on a ship. So when the Navy decides to go forward, they could field something within a couple of years I would think, after the technology is fully demonstrated.”

Forney says the hybrid electric drive would modify a ship’s existing propulsion system, rather than being a whole-sale replacement. He says it’s already been used on large mining trucks. More than 20 other companies bid for the energy saving contract with the Department of Defense.

Some of the $32 million contract is federal stimulus money. The jobs created will be shared between General Atomics and its partner, DRS Technologies, with operations in other Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

Military

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.