Magnetisch, klappbar, superhell und dank LED-Technik trotzdem stromsparend – so sieht ein trendy Werkzeug von heute aus.

Die “Might D Light LED130″ ist wiederaufladbar. Damit man unter dem Auto, im Keller und tief in einer Maschine wirklich gut sehen kann, sitzen gleich 80 LED-Lämpchen im Gehäuse, die durch eine spezielle Polykarbonat-Linse extrem fokussiert werden. Dank einer magnetischen Rückwand lässt sich die Lampe leicht fixieren, so dass man die Hände für die Arbeit frei hat. Allerdings dürften die zwei Stunden Akkulaufzeit nicht jedem Bastler reichen. Da braucht man schon mehr als eine Lampe, was beim Preis von 45 Dollar nicht wirklich ein Problem wäre. Das flexible Ladegerät erlaube es, die Lampe ans normale Stromnetz oder auch ans Bordnetz von Auto, Boot und Flugzeug zu hängen. [Ralf]

[Might-D-Light]

[Amazon]

RealDolmen, uw rood-blauwe ICT partner, is nu ook duidelijk uw toevluchtsoord voor groen.

In een recente enquête van Datanews en Siemens vroeg men onder andere “Welke IT-dienstenleveranciers zijn volgens u het meest actief in toekomstgerichte milieuvriendelijke producten?”

RealDolmen scoort zeer hoog op deze vraag en komt in de rangschikking als eerste onafhankelijke, Belgische ICT leverancier, en algemeen op de 5de plaats na voornamelijk de grote constructeurs zoals HP, Siemens en IBM.

U kan de hele enquête lezen in het Data News nummer van 20 November 2009.

Derek Watson, in his opening presentation to the UCISA CISG Conference last week, noted that the University of St Andrews’ energy costs had risen by a staggering 53% in one year. Presumably other universities and colleges are in the same boat so the argument for green IT initiatives should be something of a no-brainer. However the conference closed with a presentation from Mark Raskino from Gartner where he observed that green IT was at the crest of the peak of inflated expectations and about to head into the trough of disillusionment.

So what are the reasons for this? One Raskino considered was that the IT department does not get the credit for savings made as a result of green IT initiatives – consequently there is a lack of kudos associated with making those savings. This is evident in a number of ways in the higher education sector. Firstly energy costs, even for distinct areas such as a data centre, are usually not charged against the IT budget. Consequently any savings the IT department delivers through, for example, virtualisation does not realise any financial benefit for the IT department. Nor do initiatives which reduce power consumption across the institution such as automated powering down of idle equipment or services that ‘wake’ systems up when they are needed. And if a more energy efficient system is procured by the IT department which is more expensive than a less efficient system, the IT department bears the cost with the savings made over the life of the system reflected in others’ budgets. So perhaps there is a need to provide incentives to the CIO to continue to deliver savings through green initiatives.

The main driver for many of these initiatives thus far has been financial – green IT initiatives were seen as a cost control measure. The current economic climate means that there are other pressures on reducing costs and so green initiatives are likely to be just some of the options being considered. Consequently it may be that options that deliver more immediate cost savings are preferred over green initiatives that deliver benefits over a longer period.

Finally, what has been achieved so far through some of the initiatives outlined above could be regarded as grasping the low hanging fruit. The challenge is to deliver a year on year reduction of an institution’s carbon footprint. This will not be easy. Further short term benefits can be delivered through changes in user behaviour – but getting individuals to change their habits is not a trivial task. Although there are tools available to help measure an organisation’s carbon footprint, there is not a good understanding by the senior institutional management that may be making carbon related decisions of how changes may impact this. IT can deliver savings through making buildings more efficient but this is likely to require a significant investment and at this time there may be other priorities for delivering short term savings. Consequently the case for such investment will have to be strong and deliver both short and long term savings.

Last Friday – in a very warm room – I attended the European Commission Code of Conduct on Data Centres Stakeholders Meeting in London. It was invitation only, and it felt like it – a real industry insiders’ pow-wow. Being more of an applications and process person, I felt a bit like an imposter – I’d been invited by Nick Bloomfield of HPES, who was one of the presenters. (Aviva has outsourced its Data Centre operation to HPES and Nick recently spoke at a Green IT Lunch & Learn I hosted in Norwich.) There was a sedate start, with an introduction from Paolo Bertoldi, the EC DG of the Joint Research Centre. Later, however, the meeting got so lively we almost had to break up a fight – between the English and the French! You couldn’t make it up. So it was illuminating and entertaining…and warm. Oh, I already said that.

 The Code has two categories of stakeholder – Participants, ie those who operate data centres, and Endorsers, which includes manufacturers and trade associations. Some organisations are engaged in both roles. Voluntary codes often seem a bit limp-wristed – especially in the face of impending doom – and one attendee suggested flippantly that a mandatory code might increase compliance! But it isn’t surprising that key players are lining up to take part. There are significant financial benefits in following the recommendations in the Code, so if a company can get the extra advantages of information sharing and being listed with the great and the good, what’s not to like, apart from a small admin overhead?

 Imposter or not, I’m glad I went. It gave me a whole new insight into something that up until recently I regarded as a bit of a black box – metaphorically and literally. This was the tin and wire, humming away in a nuclear bunker on the outskirts of town, that infrastructure architects got excited about. If the business regarded what I did as pointy-headed, what did they make of this – heavy metal pointy head?  

Of course, back in the days when the average mainframe packed about as much power as a mobile phone does today, these uneventful installations didn’t pose much of a threat to the environment. But with the proliferation of bloated software and data, and the explosion of demand, data centres are the beating heart of an industry that now belts out as much carbon as aviation. So if you want to get to grips with Green IT you can’t really put data centres to one side just because it all sounds a bit technical. 

 I have a hazy overview of virtualisation and ambient cooling, but there was more, much more – blanking plates, airflow design, and more warmth. I took off my jacket. And who would have thought co-location would have been such a big deal? I came away with two key points. Firstly, reducing data centre emissions is much more holistic than I’d imagined – components, configuration, rack design, building design, geographical location, types of data held and processing performed, all have a part to play. Secondly, the low-hanging fruit of Green IT win-wins were to be found here – £1M savings a year were typical, and payback within a year.

 I even managed to generate a bit of heat myself with the last question. Much of the discussion had been about the power needed for cooling. A colleague, who knows about such things, had told me that most of this cooling was because of overly stringent warranty upper limits on operating temperatures, eg 23 degrees – yet he had tested chips up to 100 degrees that still worked (and he wasn’t referring to fries, honest.) Not for the first time at Green IT events I had detected much effort going into a solution with no apparent focus on the cause. Well, all hell broke loose with heads simultaneously nodding and shaking, hands gesticulating and several people talking at once. I never did get a clear answer to my question, but a few points emerged:

 1. The chip per se isn’t so critical – various components are affected depending on how they are configured.

2. Allowing the temperature to rise too far would become energy inefficient for other reasons. The “sweet-point” tends to be about 26 degrees.

3. Warranties were not so hard and fast, but it was agreed (I think) that some relaxation would help.

 OK, so what was the fight about, you may be wondering. Alors, c’était Agincourt dès le début! The aforementioned Nick made the mistake of suggesting that he detected a little less enthusiasm for the Code outside the UK. At this, one of the French delegates burst forth with indignant passion at the impertinent rosbif! In loud English, and then in deafening French, he explained that ratifying a huge complex document in a tongue not of one’s mother, is no mean feat. Fair comment, but the consensus was that 23 versions of the Code was probably not the way to go. It took Paolo, an Italian, to defend the lingu franca (ouch!).

 It was just left for the effervescent Catalina McGregor to provide a Joan of Arc style rallying call – in English, although she speaks fluent French. Catalina has too many job titles and roles to list, but let’s just say she works for the UK Government and is passionate about Green IT. Climate change was the enemy – heavy metal pointy heads to the rescue! After all that heat some cooling was required. Luckily those nice men from Mace Technology invited us over to the Brass Monkey Bar for some ambient chilling.

Previously we have discussed water smart meters and the benefits that can be derived for both water utilities and the customer. Smart meters can have also been developed to measure gas and electricity consumption. Smart metering has been comparatively slow to penetrate gas suppliers however ,principally because of the characteristics and nature of gas. Utilities cannot restrict the flow through a meter (and thus limit load) as this would affect the pressure of the gas delivered to an appliance and consequently its operation and safety. Remotely reconnecting gas powered appliances would be hazardous as gas could flow out into a building from appliances that have been left on after an outage or disconnection.

Figure 1: Gas Smart Meters provide more detailed data for the Consumer & Utility Company

Gas smart meters are being used however, and the benefits of gas  smart meters are clearly defined. Gas smart meters can be polled following outages instead of utility employees having to go door to door to reenable service. The information provided by gas smart meters is also much richer and can help utilities to explain consumption patterns to their customers, for instance, the impact of cold weather on natural gas usage and the consequences for the monthly bill. A type of demand response is also possible using gas smart meters as utilities can charge customers different prices for using gas at different times of the day.

A recent report by British Gas estimates that gas smart meters can cut energy bills by about a third – UK£400 per year on average. A field trial of 50,000 smart meters undertaken by British Gas shows not only a reduction in bills but also a 40% drop in billing enquiries. 85% of triallists found that smart meters were easy to use and the display of cost information on screen encouraged households to turn off appliances when they are not being used. One issue to note however is that only 44% of participants felt that smart meters were reducing their energy consumption.

The British Gas trial deployed both gas and electricity smart meters and it is the latter which are the most well known type of smart meter. Electricity smart meters have benefits both for the utility and the customer. Demand Response which exposes customers to peak electricity prices and encourages them to modify their electricity consumption accordingly would not be possible without electricity smart meters. As there is a communications link between the smart meter and the utility, the location of outages can be identified quickly and enable the utility company to verify that outages have been resolved at every meter location. Given the richer pool of data provided by electricity smart meters, grid engineers can pinpoint bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the network by analysing the periodic data generated by smart meters. Forecasting and load balancing can also improve using this new data resource.

Figure 2: Electricity Smart Meters benefit Consumers, Utility Companies and the Environment

As well as reducing cost for the consumer by encouraging the better management of consumption, some government bodies require utlities to reimburse customers for electricity they produce on-site and feed into the grid. This is known as net metering as the utility will subtract the amount of electricity produced from the amount of the electricity taken from the grid. The consumer then pays or receives the net amount. This is becoming feasible as more and more consumers in the coming years will have their own small renewable energy facilities such as a wind turbine, solar power or home fuel cells. Net metering programs are underway in Ontario and British Columbia in Canada and are being planned as part of Amsterdam’s smart city initiative.

Of course, the chief driver for electricity smart meters is an environmental one. Being provided with information on their consumption should encourage consumers to manage and reduce their energy use. In other words, consumers are incentivised financially to reduce their electricity consumption. Energy consumption that is more spread out rather than a series of peaks and troughs means more efficient operations for the utility and less peaks and stress for infrastructure. In theory, this should also means less infrastructure being built in terms of transmission lines and new plants and distributed electricity generation using wind and solar power.  Furthermore, the previously discussed Demand Response can reduce emissions and the finer level of data generated by smart meters facilitates the calculation of a consumer’s environmental footprint. Smart meters and smart grids should also lead to smart appliances that can sense overload on the grid and reduce their own power usage accordingly.

We have now discussed the main types of smart meter. In the next article we will discuss current issues in smart metering, Meter Data Management (MDM) and the implications of smart meters for IT.

Electronics and liquids don’t mix, unless you’re Iceotope. At this week’s Supercomputing 2009 conference in Portland, Ore., the 3-year-old startup from Sheffield, UK is demonstrating a liquid-cooled server setup that has the potential to cut data center cooling costs by up to 93 percent. The firm just came out of stealth mode, 18 months after a round of financing in early 2008 from EV Group. Plans call for Iceotope to begin manufacturing this year with an eye toward getting the system to early access participants by Q1 2010, general availability sometime in the second half of 2010.

Considering that cooling IT systems is responsible for 40-60 percent of a typical data center’s yearly spending on electricity, the company is clearly betting that the energy savings alone will be enough to drum up business. Instead of supplying rack doors with chilled water to cool servers like IBM (s IBM), or affixing “water blocks” to processors and other heat-generating components of a server to siphon off heat, Iceotope dunks entire server motherboards into modules that are filled with an “inert liquid” that doesn’t short out the delicate electronics.

The concept isn’t exactly new. For years, some hardcore computer enthusiasts called overclockers have been submerging their computer hardware in substances like mineral oil or 3M’s Fluorinert product to counteract the immense heat caused by their performance-enhancing tweaks. It works because liquids are much better at transferring heat than air.

Iceotope’s CEO Dan Chester told me today that despite debuting the technology at a supercomputing event, his company’s modular system is primarily aimed at bettering energy efficiency. Another of his company’s goals — and key to the product’s acceptance — “is to make it look and feel like a liquid-cooled rack.” So Iceotope is putting data center operators at ease with familiar form factors. Taking a cue from blade servers, the liquid-filled modules slot into a chassis, which in turn fits into a standard 19-inch server rack.

As you can see in the cross section (pictured above), each module has a metal heat transfer plate in its interior that makes contact with a motherboard’s heat-producing chips via heatsinks. Heat never builds up because non-chilled, low-pressure water is pumped along channels on the outer surface of the heat transfer plate and is eventually cooled by a heat exchanger somewhere on the premises. Non-chilled water and slow, high-efficiency pumps are key to achieving the company’s goal of “free cooling at much higher ambient temperatures,” says Chester. He adds that the modules are so “thermally neutral” that servers can be packed tighter and fill in the spaces that would otherwise be occupied by air.

There are trade offs, but they shouldn’t be deal-breakers according to Chester. Extra weight from the liquid is a concern, but his company is offsetting the added heft with light, but sturdy, plastics and other materials so that standard racks don’t buckle under the added weight. And depending on a data center’s construction, some additional plumbing might be required. However, reduced costs for energy, chillers and computer room air conditioners (CRACs) makes it worthwhile, says Chester. According to the company’s figures, the system can reduce the cost of cooling 1,000 servers for three years to just $52,560 from $788,400.

As for that “inert liquid,” Chester isn’t spilling the beans. But in keeping with the company’s green IT philosophy, he claims that the synthetic coolant is better for the environment than Fluorinert and that his company has taken toxicity and recyclability into account.

Auch die Nase voll von den teuren Spezialbatterien, die Fernbedienungen so gerne fressen? NEC setzt aber nicht auf Solarenergie, sondern auf die Fingerkraft des Publikums.

Das ist mal ein völlig neuer Ansatz: Der Druck auf die Tasten wird in elektrische Energie umgesetzt, was ausreiche, um die Datenübertragung zum Fernsehempfänger zu erledigen. Damit könne die gemeinsame Fernbedienung von NEC Electronics (NECEL) und Soundpower niemals ohne Saft sein. Das Leben haucht ein solches Modell wohl nur aus, wenn zu stark/zu oft gedrückt wird, es zu viele Stürze auf den Boden gibt oder Kleinkind/Haustier dem Gerät den Garaus macht. Doch halt, noch steht die Erfindung in den Startlöchern. Bis zur Marktreife könne noch das ein oder andere Jahr vergehen. [Ralf]

[Asiajin]

NEC haut in Netbook-XP-Kerbe

NEC liefert ersten USB 3 Controller

Rupert Murdoch’s got a new partner with a Silicon Valley pedigree to help his company News Corp (s NWS) go carbon neutral by 2010: Hara. The media giant plans to announce on Thursday that’s it’s using Hara’s software to track and reduce energy and carbon emissions.

While we all know News Corp — with its vast network of film studios, TV networks, web sites and newspapers — Hara needs an intro for many. Two-year-old Hara only came out of stealth in May of this year with backing from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, and follow-on funding from JAFCO Ventures and Nth Power. Hara’s software-as-a-service product gives companies and municipalities the ability to itemize and track all of the inputs (water, electricity, chemicals) and outputs (the product, greenhouse gases, wastewater) that make up their business processes.

There are so many startups working on carbon management, it can make your head spin (see Verdantix’s report on 22 companies in this space). But Hara has been signing up a string of high-profile customers. Content delivery network Akamai told us recently that it is working with Hara as well, and announced customers include Coca-Cola, and the cities of Palo Alto and San Jose Calif., as well as Aerojet. The Verdantix report also places Hara as the only startup in it’s “leaders” section.

News Corp’s manager of Energy Initiatives, Vijay Sudan, said in the company’s release that News Corp had looked “at numerous solutions,” and chose Hara “due to the intuitive nature as well as the breadth and depth of the Hara solution.” Given the sheer size of News Corp, it’s a very big win for the small and young firm. Back in 2007 Murdoch described the impact of News Corp going carbon neutral as similar to “turning off the electricity in the city of London for five full days.”

It’s official: New TVs sold in California will be more energy efficient in coming years. The hotly debated state energy efficiency standards for televisions — the first of their kind in the nation — have just been approved by the California Energy Commission (hat tip our friends at sister site NewTeeVee). The standards say that new TVs sold in 2011 (58 inches and smaller) need to reduce energy consumption by an average of 33 percent by 2011 and 49 percent by 2013.

Many TV makers have opposed the rules, while the state’s utilities support it. Groups like the Consumer Electronics Association say that the efficiency standards will result in higher prices of TVs in California, closings of stores that sell TVs in California (because those customers will go online or out of state to buy TVs), and unhappy customers who won’t be able to find certain popular TV models in California because they won’t be economic to produce there. The CEA says that the industry has been getting more energy efficient on its own and doesn’t need regulation, which will lead to “decreased industry competition and less innovation.”

But as Amy Westervelt pointed out over on Solve Climate earlier this week, the ruling could lead to a boost in sales in the state for manufacturers that specialize in energy-efficient screens, using LCDs backlit with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and next generation organic light-emitting diode (OLED). Consumer electronics giants from Sony to LG to Samsung are working on OLED TVs and the technology is supposed to be more widely deployed by 2012 — just in time to meet Cali’s new green TV rule.

While the debate over how — or if — consumers will want to manage their home energy consumption makes a lot of headlines, commercial buildings suck up 18 percent of the total energy consumption in the U.S. and represent one of the biggest opportunities for energy efficiency improvements and carbon reduction. According to Pike Research, the market for energy management systems — stuff like wireless sensor networks, lighting controls, and heating and cooling management in buildings — will turn into a $6.8 billion-a-year market by 2020 and will generate investment of $67.6 billion between 2010 and 2020.

Startups know those metrics pretty well already. Lucid Design Group, for example, has been selling its energy management system for years to the commercial sector, as well as governments and universities. But while the company has always discussed plans to eventually work in the residential market, Lucid Design has yet to make a big push into homes. As Michael Murray, Lucid Design’s CEO, has maintained in conversations with me over the past couple of years, the energy management market for large commercial buildings is much more accessible compared to energy management in homes.

Think about it this way: Lucid can focus on selling its energy management system to companies like Yahoo (s YHOO), which is using the product for its five building offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., where more than 3,000 Yahoo employees work. That’s one deal and a custom job. Or Lucid could work on packaging its software and sensor product into a relatively low-cost (some think it has to be dirt cheap to sell to consumers), probably low-margin box to sell to a market that’s still in a very nascent stage.

Businesses are also often more eager to save money on their lighting and heating/cooling costs than consumers. The return on investment is much higher for a large building that uses a lot of energy than it is for a single family home. In addition, regulations and shareholder demands increasingly require companies to report their carbon footprints, and energy management systems will help them gather and report that data.

That’s not to say that the market for residential homes in the U.S. isn’t attractive — it’s the holy grail for many energy management firms with dreams of turning their brands into a household name. It’s just a lot more difficult.

If diplomats headed to Copenhagen this December are able to negotiate a new global climate treaty, how will the world know these countries are reducing their greenhouse gas emissions as much as they claim? Michael Woelk, the chief executive of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Picarro, believes he has an answer: build a network of monitoring sites equipped with his company’s sensors that can detect carbon dioxide and other GHGs down to single-digit parts per billion. Woelk’s grand vision got one, albeit small, step closer to reality today with the announcement that the World Meteorological Organization will be using Picarro’s sensors to verify measurements taken from hundreds of GHG-monitoring stations around the world. Picarro will lend one of its $50,000 gas analyzers to a Swiss-based research lab that conducts audits for the WMO. Woelk, in a statement, described the selection of Picarro’s technology as a “technical validation.”

Woelk told us that the deal will bring “terrific exposure” to his company’s analyzers, but the chief executive has bigger aspirations than the WMO’s program. He says the current methods used by governments (and companies) to calculate GHG emissions are often based on the amount of fuel consumed and can thus be inaccurate. Governments and companies could also be tempted to provide fraudulent data about their reductions, especially as carbon credit trading becomes a bigger and more lucrative business. Woelk think his sensors can help bring more transparency to carbon emissions calculations.

So Woelk has been shuttling to Washington, D.C., to argue his case to legislators (he’s talked to staffers of Sens. Boxer, Kerry and others) that if the U.S. is going to regulate carbon either through the Environmental Protection Agency, a cap and trade system, or some other means, then the country needs to have an accurate way of measuring changes in emissions. His idea: a nationwide network of 500 sites outfitted with Picarro sensors with a price tag of $300 million that could accurately measure in real time tiny changes in GHG emissions for the entire country.

So far scientists have been the main supporters of Picarro’s gas analyzers. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Penn State University and other research outfits have been using Picarro’s technology in their labs and out in the field. The device, a 58-pound box of sensors that’s about the size of a desktop PC, fires laser beams into the air to determine concentrations of carbon dioxide and other gases by measuring the changes in wavelength signals.

While technology has existed in labs for decades to make these measurements, Woelk says Picarro’s achievement is that they’ve stuffed all this measuring capability into a highly portable device that requires very little maintenance. “You don’t need PhD’s to run these instruments,” Woelk said.

While other systems have to be re-calibrated by technical experts as often as once a day, clients have reported to Woelk that they’re able to let Picarro’s gas analyzer go untouched for up to six months. That translates into big savings for users over competing technology, Woelk said. Other companies developing gas-analyzing technology include LI-COR Biosciences, Agilent Technologies, and Thermo Scientific.

But Picarro’s largest long-term opportunity could come from companies operating refineries or managing landfills that are required under cap and trade or some other rule to monitor and reduce their emissions. Picarro’s technology could measure emissions in the downwind plume. “If you start to apply a value to those assets, in this case emissions, than fundamentally you will want an accurate measurement of those assets,” Woelk said.  So far, however, Picarro, which was founded in 1998 and is profitable, hasn’t inked any deals with companies. But Woelk expects that to change once the “simplicity, low cost and high return becomes apparent” compared with other options.

Smart Meters and the smart grid are beginning to be talked about in the mainstream press as more and more electricity companies roll out smart meter projects. Smart Meter project are underway or imminent throughout the world in countries such as Victoria, Australia, (http://bit.ly/363G7a), Italy (http://bit.ly/1avyko) and Brazil (http://bit.ly/1YOLTn). Smart meters are typically defined as a new type of electricity meter. These types of smart meters provide two-way communication to both the consumer and the electricity utility of consumption by time of use so the days of the meter reader calling to a person’s house are fast coming to an end.. Smart Meters are replacing this old Automatic Reading (AMR) system and provide more detailed information. However, smart meters are often incorrectly assumed to refer solely to electricity measurement. The question then is what other kinds of energy usage can be measured by smart meters and what are the issues and challenges facing the deployment of smart meters not only for electricity utilties but also for organisations and domestic households? Over the next few weeks, we will examine these issues.

In essence, smart meters are designed to tell customers how much energy they are consuming on a real time basis. This data includes not only how much energy they’re consuming but also the monetary cost of this consumption and the impact the consumption is having on greenhouse gas emissions. A smart meter can’t pinpoint which appliances are consuming most energy or the cost of energy at different times of the day but a smart meter is a necessary component for facilitating Demand Response and other techniques and systems that can provide this information. Smart meters are deployed throughout a geographical area and relay consumption data back to the utility provider. This network of meters is what makes up a ’smart grid’. With a smart grid, utility companies have the capability to measure consumption on an per-area or per-premises basis.

Typically smart meters take periodic measurement of consumption during specific time periods and communicate this data to a utility or a smart meter management company, usually on a daily basis. These meters are also known as interval meters. Some meters may also provide an easy to read display to help consumers reduce consumption and monitor compliance with local laws and regulations. There are different types of smart meters for measuring different types of consumption. Currently, smart meters are provided for the measurement of water, gas and electricity consumption.

A water smart meter measures the consumption of water in a household or organisation. The data provided by this type of meter indicates the amount of water being used as well as its flow patterns and can be used to track, predict and change trends in water supply demand for organisations. For organisations and individuals in certain industries such as agriculture, water usage is a key metric and a managed water system can enable the early detection of leaks, the reduction of waste water and the early warning of fluctuating rates of water usage. While the measurement intervals of smart meters are usually either 10 or 14 minutes for electricity companies intervals of 30 to 60 minutes are more common for water utilities.

Water smart meters provide a rich pool of data to the utility company. Chief among this data are details of leaks at consumer premises.Many algorithms can be used to detect leaks but one simple rule of thumb is to ascertain where hourly usage ever drops to zero. If it doesn’t, it’s likely that there is a water leak. In many jurisdictions, consumers may be fined for not repairing a water leak so timely notification of such data would be likely to win customer goodwill. Leak or indeed theft of water from a mains can also be detected by comparing the day’s consumption for the users of the mains (e.g. residences on a street) with readings from the water mains serving the street. A water smart grid infrastructure can also detect a drop in pressure for a water main. This usually denotes a break. By pinpointing the location and extent of a water main break in a timely fashion, utilities can respond to problems in their network and service their customers in a more satisfactory fashion.

In certain parts of the world drought is a major issue. In such cases, it is essential to identify outdoor watering or non-essential water use during daylight hours. Up to now, it has been difficult to enforce restrictions on such behaviour but individual smart meters that would detect such over-consumption and violation of restrictions make compliance much easier to enforce.

While smart meter programs are expensive to implement, they do provide consumers with better service at a cheaper cost once they are installed. For example, it is possible to determine final meter readings and issue final bills for customers leaving an area. Water flow can be remotely disconnected or restricted where appropriate. This means that utilities no longer have to send service engineers to customers who have requested a disconnect or are being disconnected for non-payment. Meters can also be tested remotely to check that they are working. Similarly, theft of a meter can be remotely detected.

Like electricity and gas meters, water smart meters ensure that bills are based on actual readings rather than on estimates. This minimises disagreements and conflict with the consumer and the water utility, reduces calls querying and/or complaining about bills to the utility and improves customer satisfaction. Water smart meters can also help control electricity costs for the utility itself. Many utilities pump water to a high point during off peak hours when electricity prices are lower. To avoid turning on these pumps during periods of high electricity prices the utility can develop water rates that track electricity rates. This reduces peak water consumption.

Figure 1: Smart Meters are a key component of Water Conservation Programs

In the case of water, the most important benefit of smart meters are the role they can play in conservation. Water conservation programs are being undertaken in many parts of the world and smart meters are enabling these programs. The real-time data provided by water smart meters allow residents and businesses to identify where most water is being used and where behaviour modification or the installation of a water efficient fixture may be appropriate. Water conservation programs have been undertaken on a trial basis by the New South Wales government in April this year and in Dubai International Academic City. The cornerstone of any water conservation program is understanding where, when, how and why water is used. Such data can only be measured using a smart meter. Leaks should be identified when they occur and water consumption should be actively managed. This management requires the data that smart meters provide.

One issue that should also be considered is the granularity of measurement. Often, one water smart meter records the water consumption for a premises even if this premises is a large site. To obtain a better quality of data, individual it may be necessary to also install meters at high use areas like cooling towers, iririgation systems, food preparation areas or at a rainwater supply tank. This finer level of measurement will lead to a more effective water management system where will not only enable overuse at a business premises be detected on a timely basis but also the exact location of the problem.

The management of water smart meters is a key issue as the data generated is used for fault and operations management as well as billing purposes. As we will discuss in the next few weeks, the lack of standardisation is hindering the capture of this data. Vertoda can not only capture data from smart water meters but also transform that data into meaningful information for reporting leakages and providing details of revenue generated as well as acting as a bridge between the water network and the software and Information Systems of the utility.

Je participe à un tour de France organisé par Cisco à destination de ses clients où je présenterai lors d’une session de 90mn le panorama des Eco-TIC (le contexte, comment construire un plan d’action, les pistes, etc).

Le tour de France passera par:

Aix-en-Provence le 18 novembre

Lille le 25 novembre

Lyon le 3 décembre

Nantes le 9 décembre

Strasbourg le 7 janvier

Paris les 2, 3 et 4 février

Information et inscription sur http://www.cisco.com/web/FR/events/ExperienceDays/index.html

J’espère vous y retrouver!

Olivier.

J’ai vu sur le site de Greenpeace international (http://www.greenpeace.org/international/assets/graphics/ict-solutions-chart)  un tableau synthétisant de manière très complète les divers apports des technologies de l’information pour réduire notre impact environnemental.

Je ne résiste pas au plaisir de le recopier:

Ce tableau s’intègre dans une initiative de Greenpeace intitulée “Cool IT challenge” destinée à pousser les industriels du secteur des technologies de l’information à s’engager plus fortement autour de l’écoresponsabilité.

Olivier.

Data center managers aren’t the only ones suddenly charmed by solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing storage needs. A growing number of VCs are also warming to the green, high-performance potential of the storage technology (GigaOM Pro Research, subscription required).

With no moving parts to speak of, a solid-state drive is far and away more energy efficient than its disk-based counterpart, the hard drive. Generally speaking, it also delivers better performance, resulting in a combination that’s proving increasingly attractive to data center operators. That edge helps IT shops overlook storage capacities that fall short of hard drives and helps justify the lofty price tags attached to SSD-based storage systems. It’s also an edge that’s attracting VC investment.

The latest news comes from XtremIO. This week the company announced that it had scored a Series A funding of an undisclosed amount from two Israeli venture firms, Giza and JVP. Heading up this early-stage storage player is CEO Rokach Ehud, with over a decade of experience in the telecommunications industry, including a stint as the CEO of Corrigent Systems, a carrier Ethernet switching provider. Details are scarce (the companies web site says it’s in stealth), but the company’s announcement makes clear that XtremIO has enterprise IT ambitions for its storage systems.

XtremIO is just the latest in what’s been a string of SSD-related funding activity. Also this week, Cupertino, Calif.-based SandForce, a maker of SSD control chips that boost SSD performance, scored $21 million in funding from TransLink Capital, UMC Capital, Darwin Ventures and others. Founded in 2006, SandForce is banking on SSD controllers that can coax 30,000 IOPS (which stands for input, output operations per second, and is a benchmark for storage — 30,000 is high) out of NAND flash memory and can reach both read and write speeds of 250 MB per second. Typically with SSDs, data is fetched (read) faster than it can be stored (write).

And earlier this month, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Link_A_Media Devices (yes, underscores and all), a system-on-a-chip producer for storage devices, secured $18 million in Series C funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Chris Schaepe, managing director of Lightspeed, singled out one of the technologies that makes the company an attractive investment, specifically “error correction technologies which can now be applied to flash memory.”

Last month SSD chip and drive maker Samsung poured millions into Fusion-io, a company that’s no stranger to soaking up funds despite operating in one of the tightest VC environments in recent history. Prior to Samsung’s investment, Fusion-io cashed a $47.5 million check from Lightspeed and Dell Ventures, among others. Fusion-io manufactures PCI Express-based storage modules that slot into standard servers. The company counts MySpace and Wine.com among its high-profile customers.

If you’ve noticed Lightspeed pop up more than once in these SSD fundings, there’s a reason. The VC firm seems to be making a concerted effort to back SSD startups. Apart from Fusion-io and Link_A_Media, Lightspeed also backs Pilant Technology, a maker of enterprise-grade SSDs, and Unity Semiconductor, a startup working on high-density flash memory storage chips.

Want to transform urban transit? Take a cue from Google (s GOOG), and invent a better algorithm. Service-based transportation networks offer a key for cities to address urban traffic congestion, encourage adoption of alternative transit and slash greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, says Ryan Chin, a PhD candidate in the Smart Cities research group at MIT. And it will likely be the company with the best algorithm for managing fleets of cars, bicycles, scooters and other transit options, and up to millions of users, that finds a way to cash in on the “Mobility on Demand” trend.

As Chin explained to me for an article on GigaOM Pro this week (our subscription-based research service), the MoD concept involves a comprehensive system in which city residents would be able to rent an electric car, scooter or bicycle when and where they need it in order to bridge the “last mile” gap in many public transit systems (e.g. getting between the subway station and your final destination).

Rather than having to return a vehicle borrowed from a car-sharing network to the station where you picked it up (two-way car sharing, which is what ZipCar offers), you’d be able to drop it off at a station close to your destination (one-way car sharing), and likewise for bikes.

Daimler (s DAI) has a pilot program called car2go in Germany and Austin, Texas, in which registered members can rent a Smart Fortwo car by the minute, hour or day, and then return it to any unoccupied parking space within a set operation area, and there are also examples of MoD-type services run by advertisers through public-private partnerships, explained Chin.

But we have yet to see a company do for MoD, what Zipcar, U-Haul, Hertz and other companies are now doing for 2-way car sharing: build a lasting business out of it, and push it toward the mainstream.

Here’s where the algorithm comes in: Google won the search business by building a better engine than anyone else. The company that outperforms competitors in MoD — always having a vehicle available within a reasonable time, using the least number of vehicles for the largest number of users — said Chin, will be the one that “builds a better engine based on historic and current data than anyone else.”

As we move into the era of Car 2.0 — in which vehicles are connected to the power grid as well as communication networks — an unprecedented amount of data will be collected regarding about where, when and how we drive, fuel up and get around. The trick is to analyze and manage that data, and turn it into something useful.

With processing power in the arsenal, a company could find itself holding a valuable technology for not only consumer transit networks, but also, we’ve explained over on Pro, corporate fleet managers, electric vehicle charging infrastructure providers and even smartphone app developers.

At this point, the number of creative ways that companies have developed to help home owners monitor and manage their energy consumption, seems to far surpass the volume of consumer interest. That’s OK, though, because the home energy management market is so new, and it’s still unclear which services and technologies will be the most successful. Here’s another new startup which had some funding news this morning: PowerHouse Dynamics, a year-old Newton, Mass.-based company, which has built the energy management tool “eMonitor.”

According to VentureWire, which chatted with the CEO Martin Flusberg at the GreenBuild conference this week, the company is in the process of raising $2 million from undisclosed investors. PowerHouse Chairman and CMO Dan Kaplan confirmed the planned funding with us this morning, and according to a regulatory filing, the company has already raised $225,000 out of a planned $750,000 round.

eMonitor seems to be focusing on the higher end of the home energy market. Kaplan told us that the product, which includes a gateway, monitors attached to circuits, and an smart outlet product, will cost $600, in addition to a $12-per-month subscription. While that’s not as high as some of the expensive luxury home automation systems, it’s clearly above a $100 or $200 dashboard. PowerHouse isn’t focused on utilities (Kaplan called the utility an enabler rather than a customer) but is working with distribution channels like solar installers.

There’s also two differences between the eMonitor and some of the other energy management tools out there (here’s 10 players). The company says the eMonitor enables the home owner to measure each appliance or outlet (more information) and the eMonitor also works with or without smart meters in place. Those aren’t huge differentiators — the Energy Detective and software like Microsoft’s (s MSFT) Hohm also work without smart meters, and Tendril makes smart plugs to monitor each plug load. But the product could find a market with home owners that want more detailed analysis per plug.

The company says the eMonitor takes “under an hour” to install — a sophisticated DIY-er could do it, but most will need an electrician, says Kaplan — and is available now, but in limited supply. Kaplan tells us that the product will be more widely available next year. Co-founder Flusberg was previously the co-founder and president of Nexus Energy Software, an energy and carbon analysis tool, which sold to ESCO Technologies (s ESE) in 2005. And co-founder Dan Kaplan, who’s also chairman and chief marketing officer, was a co-founder of LowerMyBills.com, now owned by Experian.

On Friday Microsoft (s MSFT) plans to announce that its energy management online tool Hohm is now live and available to utility Xcel Energy’s 3.4 million customers. Troy Batterberry, Microsoft’s product unit manager of its Energy Management & Home Automation division, plans to break the news at an event tomorrow at the Microsoft Fargo campus, which is supposed to host the likes of North Dakota Governor John Hoeven, U.S. Congressman Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Tony Clark, and Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker.

While Microsoft announced that Xcel Energy was one of its utility partners — in addition to Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Seattle City Light, Puget Sound Energy, and a “half a dozen” utilities in the queue — back when Hohm was revealed in June, the fact that the utility’s large customer footprint can now test out Hohm is a big step for the computing company’s energy tool. The news is also important because it shows how companies are building ways for customers to start monitoring and managing energy consumption before smart meters get installed in larger numbers.

Xcel Energy’s customers can now opt-in to the free Hohm service (via the Hohm site), and then look back at their energy consumption history, see a breakdown of their energy consumption, and receive recommendations for how to curb home energy consumption. For Xcel Energy, it’s an easy way to connect with their customers, as Rajeev Purohit, manager of the eBusiness division of Xcel Energy, explained in a release.

Separately Xcel Energy has been working on “SmartGridCity,” a $100 million project to install smart grid technology in Boulder, Colorado, which was partly switched on in September (the technology is powered by Accenture (s ACN), Current Group, GridPoint, OSIsoft, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, SmartSynch and Ventyx. The utility has said that in the fourth quarter of this year it will roll out an in-home energy management web portal courtesy of GridPoint for the Boulder SmartGridCity, which seems like it will be a competitive product to Hohm.

Through early pilot projects in SmartGridCity, Xcel has been learning that the more communication it has with customers, the better, given the inevitable hurdles with emerging technology. As Alex Laskey, founder and president of energy efficiency startup OPower, explained to me during an interview on Wednesday, utilities are now facing a sea change in how they have to communicate and build relationships with their customers. The whole debacle with PG&E (s PCG) and the suit over smart meters, seems first and foremost like a communication problem, rather than a technology issue. Hohm can help with that communication and relationship building, beyond the more obvious goal of getting customers to curb energy consumption.

It’s interesting that customers have to opt-in to Hohm, via Microsoft’s web site, rather than being automatically enrolled. It shows that the utility is probably looking to give its customers a choice. Given Xcel Energy’s relationship with GridPoint (which acquired the energy management tool from Lixar) and other players that have built energy management web tools as well, it looks like consumers will have access to a healthy competitive market. On the flip side of that, Hohm will face competition from a variety of online and dashboard home energy management tools (here’s 10 energy management players).

Finally, I am seeing and reading about a policy change that needs to happen. Since compensation plans drive behavior (I know this very well coming from the sales arena) I fully support the notion of tying “facilities” compensation incentives to the actual power efficiencies that they deliver to the enterprise. Now – before you freak out – these incentives should be positioned above and beyond normal pay expectations to really reward these folks for taking a green step in the right direction. The article that triggered my post was discussing the new MSFT $500-million data center and Mike Manos made the comment:

The demand and costs for Microsoft have resulted in policies such as facility managers seeing their performance incentives and bonuses linked to power efficiency. “If I’m going to go spend $500 million on a data center and 82% of the cost is wrapped up in my power bill, I want to make sure I get every dollar of my 82%,” says Manos.

This really make sense. It’s a change that should be welcomed, embraced and executed upon by every organization. But, it needs to be done in a way that motivates and rewards folks beyond normal pay expectations so it is viewed as a complete upside. In the end, the savings help to finance the incentives so the next/net for the enterprise is nil or minimal. Imagine having really excited people, making great things happen in a company (and most of these steps and actions are corporate  “firsts” ) need to be rewarded for stepping up and creating change. Take care of them, and they will take care of you. Nuff said!

TI Verde

TI Verde, ou computação verde é o estudo e a prática da utilização eficiente dos recursos computacionais.

O principal objetivo deste programa é o de uma conta para o triple bottom line, um espectro expandido de valores e critérios de medição organizacional (e social)de sucesso.

Os objetivos são:

* Reduzir o uso de materiais perigosos para o meio ambiente.
* Maximizar a eficiência energética durante a vida útil do produto.
* Promover a reciclagem ou biodegradabilidade dos produtos.
* Extinguir a fabricação de resíduos poluentes ao meio ambiente.

Modernos sistemas de computação verde dependem de:

* Pessoas
* Redes
* Hardware

Como tal, uma iniciativa de computação verde deve ser de natureza sistêmica, e abordar os problemas cada vez mais sofisticados.

Elementos de tal solução incluem itens como:

* Satisfação total do usuário final
* Reestruturação de gestão
* Cumprimento regulamentar
* Disposição de resíduos eletrônicos
* Tele trabalho
* Virtualização do servidor de recursos
* Utilização de energia
* Soluções thin clienT
* Retorno sobre investimento (ROI).

Saiba mais sobre TI Verde:

Despite attempts by companies and industry groups to paint the wireless standard Wi-Fi (the one commonly used within buildings for Internet connections) as a winner for smart grid rollouts, it’s looking like Wi-Fi will end up taking a back seat for the next generation of the digital power grid. This morning the trade group the Wi-Fi Alliance looked to drum up attention for the use of Wi-Fi for the smart grid, and announced the publication of a white paper called “Wi-Fi for the Smart Grid.

While the paper provides interesting information for potential Wi-Fi power grid communication applications, here’s five reasons why Wi-Fi will play a lesser roll for the smart grid, both within the home and further out on the power grid.

1). ZigBee in Da House: Wi-Fi’s most valuable role in the smart grid will be found within the home, given the bulk of home wireless networks are based on Wi-Fi. But most device makers building energy management tools and smart appliances, as well as utilities, are concentrating first and foremost on transmitting energy information via the low-power, low-data wireless standard ZigBee.

ZigBee might not be the perfect technology for home energy applications, and in fact Wi-Fi could be a better fit for energy info in the home. But the reality is that ZigBee has started to receive a critical mass of vendors and developers leaning on it for home energy. Wi-Fi will clearly play a role in home energy management as a connection layer (connecting to the ZigBee network and the broadband connection via a gateway), but Wi-Fi chips will likely be embedded in less home energy gear and fewer smart appliances than the Wi-Fi industry would like.

2). WiMAX for Wide Area: Wi-Fi companies, like Tropos, are touting the wireless standard for wide area applications, like connecting smart meter information to the utility back office. The companies and the Wi-Fi Alliance say that because Wi-Fi is an open standard, and has a large ecosystem of vendors involved, the cost to deploy the technology is very low. While that is definitely true, utilities are more quickly turning to the open wireless standard WiMAX for those benefits.

Over the past few months utilities like San Diego Gas & Electric and Australia’s SPAusNet have chosen WiMAX as the wide area network of choice for their smart grid deployments, and have been encouraged by the growing ecosystem of players including Intel (s INTC), GE (s GE), Motorola (s MOTO), and startup GridNet. While that ecosystem isn’t as mature as the Wi-Fi ecosystem (and thus far more expensive) WiMAX players say the costs will start to drop in the near future.

3). The Way of Muni Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi has already been tested in a wide-area setting: as a third option (in addition to cable and DSL) for Internet access in cities. But oh wait, that didn’t work at all. While the technology works great in buildings and homes, when it gets outside in a large network customers found that the network quickly got impacted, suffered from interference and just plain wasn’t reliable. That’s one reason why companies like former muni Wi-Fi maker Tropos are now targeting the smart grid, because the bloom just plain fell off the muni Wi-Fi rose.

4). Interference!: That brings me to a major problem with Wi-Fi: interference! The technology runs over an unlicensed spectrum and is commonly used throughout cities for home broadband connections. Utilities, which will be transmitting important information about the health of the power grid, energy consumption and generation information, won’t be too keen if their signals clash with the many Wi-Fi networks scattered around the place.

5). Security Concerns: While Wi-Fi can be pretty secure with software and encryption these days, utilities, which have higher security requirements and harbor many fears about security, will have major doubts about the security of Wi-Fi. SDG&E’s Director of Network & Communications Services, Jeff Nichols, told me that the utility decided to use WiMAX for a third of its network partly because WiMAX offered a very secure connection over licensed spectrum (Wi-Fi is unlicensed).

Image courtesy of the Wi-Fi-Alliance.

Het proefschrift over de verhoging van het rendement van zonnecellen is nu ook digitaal beschikbaar.

Het proefschrift maakt deel uit van het Joint Solar Programme (JSP) van de Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie FOM welke financieel gesteund wordt door de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). Het JSP wordt medegefinancieerd door het gebied Chemische Wetenschappen van NWO en Stichting Shell Research.

Proefschrift Linda Aarts: ‘Downconversion for Solar Cells with Lanthanide Ion Couples’ (pdf, 153 pag., let op: bijna 39MB).

[Bron: www.energieraad.nl]

One technique that is gaining recognition in the area of green energy and the more effective management of the Electricity Grid is Demand Response (DR). The goal of DR is to manage consumer consumption of electicity in response to supply conditions. An effective DR policy will result in consumers reducing their electricity consumption at critical times or in response to rising prices. DR differs from Dynamic Demand as the latter entails the use of devices which passively switch themselves off when the grid is overloaded. Devices with DR switches by contrast respond to explicit requests to switch off. DR can involve the reduction of power used and differs from energy efficiency schemes which implies the using of less energy to perform a particular task.

We know therefore that DR is a distinctive technique. The overriding rationale of DR would appear to be of societal benefit rather than of economic benefit for the utility companies. By managing consumer consumption, DR improves the reliability of the electricity grid and reduces peak electricity prices by decreasing peak demand. In essence, it is a set of actions that are taken to reduce load on the grid when congestion that threatens the supply-demand balance occurs or when market conditions raise the price of the electricity supply.

There are two types of DR. The first category of DR is triggered in response to emergencies and is referred to as interruptible DR. This DR category is activiated by utilities in cases of local system emeergices. The second category is prices responsive and is activated by utilties in the case of high wholesale electricity prices. DR is typically managed as a program consisting of participating (and volunteering) customers. Under the energy-only DR payment option, participants receive payment only for curtailment during a DR event. With capacity-payment DR, on the other hand, participants receive regular payment or a discount for being available for DR events.

Savings estimates for implementing DR for energy conservation and curtailment are in the billions of dollars. Customers benefit from availing of energy at cheaper prices. The question regarding DR is why utilty companies would implement it if it ostensibly reduces profits. Is DR something that will be regulatory driven rather than adopted voluntarily by utility companies?

If one looks beyond market price the benefits of DR can be seen for utility companies. Emergency DR programs are designed to relieve grid reliability issues. Extremely high demand for electricity, shortages of generation and significant transmission contraints can all be alleviated by DR. This ensures a smoother operation for utility companies and reduced maintenance issues and operational fire fighting.

Unsurprisingly, there is a high level of research activity in the area of demand response. The Pier Demand Response Research Center (http://drrc.lbl.gov/pier-drrc.html) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California are undertaking projects for the development of demand responsive technologies in buildings and the use of Critical Peak Pricing (CPP) as a form of price responsive demand response. The demand response and smart grid coalition (DRSG – see http://www.drsgcoalition.org/), a trade association for companies that provide products and services in the areas of demand response, smart meters and smart grid technologies, have developed policy recommendations advocating the use of DR as part of any solution to America’s environmental problems. DRSG count IBM, Oracle and the Zigbee Alliance among their many members so, clearly, DR has the attention of significant industry players.

DR is gaining credence among utility companies, particularly in the US. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (http://www.pge.com/demandresponse/) have a demand response program that offers incentive for business owners who curtail their facility’s energy use during times of peak demand while Puget Sound Energy (http://www.pse.com) in Washington state began a residential DR pilot program in October 2009 to evaluate how water heating and central air conditioning customers can voluntarily manage their electric demand during peak periods.

Demand Reponse, then, can be a key driver in the development of a green energy strategy for a country. As well as societal benefits both the consumer and the utility companies can benefit from the adoption of a DR policy.