GigaOM » Jeff St. John Archives

Want a green cloud? Learn the metrics

Jeff St. John — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:00:45 +0000

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

The metrics we need for a green cloud

Jeff St. John — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:00:22 +0000

“Calculating the subscription costs of cloud computing is easy. But how can IT directors compare this to the cost of existing operations? They must analyse costs across the IT estate, including support staff, electricity and supporting infrastructure to make a financial case for cloud computing.” – Janet Lin, Verdantix Senior Manager in the New York office

Last week’s Verdantix and AT&T report on the energy and carbon emission savings to come from cloud computing is the latest in a long line of studies stating the obvious: Shifting computing from inefficient, dispersed data centers to highly efficient, centralized cloud data centers should save everyone energy. But there are several data-center-efficiency metrics you will need to know to figure out how to differentiate green-cloud-marketing hype from reality.

For example, there has been a lot of talk about power usage effectiveness (PUE) and data center infrastructure efficiency (DCIE); but equally important is the Uptime Institute’s corporate average data center efficiency (CADE), which measures utilization of both IT and data center facility assets across the enterprise. No doubt, cloud-computing providers can offer far better PUE, DCIE and CADE measures than the data centers they’ll replace. Just compare the 2.0 PUE industry average to hyper-efficient cloud data centers from Facebook, Google, Cisco, Amazon and Microsoft with PUEs that approach the perfect figure of 1.0. In my weekly update at GigaOM Pro, I detail these and other metrics, illustrating how they could help the IT industry understand the true energy footprint of cloud computing, and how more transparency could change the industry.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

How China’s troubles are affecting greentech

Jeff St. John — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:00:00 +0000

The second quarter brought a slew of greentech developments: We saw near-record investment in utility-scale clean energy projects but falling valuations for clean-energy stocks; big investments in solar thermal projects but struggling markets for solar photovoltaic systems; and rising private equity green investment while green VC took [...]

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

China’s role in 2nd quarter greentech figures

Jeff St. John — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:00:30 +0000

While China remained the biggest investor in clean energy projects, its funding fell 11 percent to $12 billion from the first three months of the year, according to Angus McCrone, the chief editor at BNEF in London, who said this year is likely to be another promising one for clean energy investment — both for new capital and wider funding, such as refinancing and M&A. However, 2011 will “need to be a strong performer” and see a ramp up in small-scale clean energy projects if it is to exceed the $243 billion in total investment last year, he said.

What to make of the second quarter’s schizophrenic greentech activity? We saw near-record investment in utility-scale clean energy projects but falling valuations for clean energy stocks; big investments in solar thermal projects but struggling markets for solar photovoltaic systems; rising private equity green investment while green VC took a slide.

That’s a lot of conflicting information to work through, but there’s a common thread running through it all: China. The country that has provided the world’s key growth engine for clean energy and green technology over the past few years has begun to see some weakness, and that’s causing ripple effects through the global green economy. In my weekly update at GigaOM Pro (subscription required), I delve into some of the second-quarter figures and related news that point to a slide in China’s preeminence in big greentech investment, and what that may mean for the sector as a whole.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Silver Spring’s IPO and the 2011 smart grid landscape

Jeff St. John — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:00:48 +0000

Silver Spring Networks’ technology is inside 8 million deployed connected devices and another 9 million under contract, and the company has benefited from the $4 billion U.S. federal smart-grid stimulus.

The company’s recent plan to raise up to $150 million in an initial public offering is the biggest news the smart-grid sector has seen since it landed $4 billion or so in federal stimulus grants. Of course, it’s also coming at a time when that funding is running dry, leaving many industry observers wondering what comes next. In my weekly update at GigaOM Pro (subscription required), I take a look at the smart-meter-networking champion’s future possibilities and challenges as it seeks to expand — and examine what that means for the industry as a whole.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

California utilities lay out smart grid roadmaps

Jeff St. John — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:00:57 +0000

No wonder Google and Microsoft dumped their home energy portals — utilities have that market sewn up. All three California utilities are under mandate to deliver energy and pricing information to customers, and plan beefed-up Web services to do it. SCE, for example, will spend $54.6 million by 2014 on SCE.com, and make the site’s energy and price data, rate signup options and efficiency and forecasting capabilities to its customers — all for free.

How can Google or Microsoft, let alone startups, compete with that? Helping utilities extend those portals’ functionalities, rather than trying to replace them, will be key. And given that the big three utilities are planning to spend more than $5.6 billion on their smart grid efforts over the next decade or so, the roadmaps released last week could be considered about the closest thing to a detailed plan of attack that smart grid companies could ask for. For more details on those rules and other smart grid deployment issues, see my weekly column at GigaOm Pro (subscription required).

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

How vehicle-to-grid technology could get past the pilot stage

Jeff St. John — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:00:18 +0000

UPDATED: Vehicle-to-grid technology — using parked electric vehicles as grid batteries — could help stabilize the grid, while offering electric vehicle owners a profit stream to help cover plug-in cars’ extra costs. But tapping into plug-in batteries also presents a host of technical, regulatory and warranty-related challenges that have kept the V2G idea strictly one for pilot projects — until now, that is.

In my Weekly Update at GigaOM Pro (subscription required), I delve into the new V2G plans of Nuvve, the U.S.-based startup that’s taking technology developed at University of Delaware and applying it to markets outside of the U.S. The startup’s first target is Denmark, where it’s seeking to deliver the aggregated capacity of 30 plug-in car batteries to grid operator Energinet.dk to help it balance grid frequency.

Nuvve’s technology stems from the work of CTO and University of Delaware professor Willett Kempton, and has been tested out in a project with utility Pepco, mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM and electric drivetrain maker AC Propulsion. Nuvve now holds the license to commercialize that technology outside the U.S., and hopes to have its Danish project up and running by this fall.

Thirty cars won’t provide a massive amount of power. Kempton told me in an interview that the average amount of power available from each vehicle battery will be about 10 kilowatts. Still, adding them all together equals 300 KW of power, and that happens to be the minimum amount allowed for frequency regulation services bidding into Denmark’s power market, he said.

“We’re selling a service that’s going to be of value to a grid operator,” he explained. “The car owner, instead of being our customer, is really our supplier.”

Still, car owners will have to be enticed to allow their cars to be tapped for frequency regulation. Nuvve is considering several methods to do that, including paying owners a flat per-hour fee for keeping their cars plugged in, or offering them a percentage of the monthly payment Nuvve will receive for their portion of power provided to the grid operator. All in all, the company estimates the value should add up to about $10,000 per customer over the life of their EV or plug-in hybrid battery.

Tapping those batteries without decreasing their lifespan is a critical aspect of Nuvve’s plans. Kempton said that frequency regulation — adding or absorbing small increments of power into the grid — should only require two to four minutes of access at a time, keeping discharge cycles low. Even so, Nuvve’s technology is built to interface with software and hardware installed on the vehicle itself, which can be programmed to refuse any request it determines could harm the vehicle or its battery.

One big barrier between Nuvve and scaling up of its V2G plans is getting automakers to participate. UPDATE: Right now, the Nuvve project ~~is featuring~~ can work with EVs with bi-directional drive trains, such as those from Luxgen, which are made via a joint venture of Taiwan’s Yulon Motor Co. and long-time Nuvve technology partner AC Propulsion. Nuvve and other startups that have set their sights on V2G commercialization are going to need more compatible vehicles out in the world to get off the ground.

Image courtesy of Zen via Creative Commons license.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

The broadband smart energy home grows stronger

Jeff St. John — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 07:00:51 +0000

Who needs smart meters when you’ve got broadband? Last week saw two announcements that shed some light onto the future of using broadband for home energy management. In my weekly update at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), I outline some of the reasons why broadband-based home energy management tools could leave smart meter–based efforts in the dust.

The two announcements aren’t linked in any way, at least not yet. The first was startup EcoFactor’s announcement that it’s been able to cut average household power bills by 17 percent with an Internet-connected smart thermostat. The second was the launch of Comcast’s Xfinity Home Security service with startup software partner iControl.

Wait a second, you’re saying, what does home security have to do with home energy management? Well, security-minded services, like turning lights on and off, can deliver direct energy savings, while networked door locks or video cameras can help home automation systems turn off light and heat in unoccupied rooms and perform other energy-related functions.

That’s important, because consumers have proven that they’ll pay something for home security but not necessarily for home energy tools. Even now, broadband providers like Comcast and rival Verizon are busy offering home security add-ons to lure more customers, usually with some kind of basic, smart thermostat–centered energy management freebie thrown in as well.

Thus there’s the potential for a company like EcoFactor to come in. EcoFactor’s cloud-based software uses masses of data — weather reports, home building permits, past energy use data and the like — to adjust each thermostat to save energy while keeping home temperatures in people’s comfort ranges. What’s more, it does it with little input from the homeowner, beyond the initial presets (for example, “home versus away”) as well as any manual overrides of the thermostat.

Automating thermostat-based energy saving could be a big improvement over most smart meter–style energy management concepts, which tend to rely on punishingly high peak power rates to pilot customers to encourage them to cut peak power use. But it’s not yet clear whether utility regulators will allow many utilities to price residential peak power so high, since some reports have raised the concern that doing so could hurt certain segments of the population, like the low income, the elderly and the unemployed.

EcoFactor’s hands-off, subtle thermostat-tweaking approach could be far more popular approach with homeowners and regulators alike. But because it relies on cloud computing, it may require broadband connections — rather than the lower-bandwidth, less-frequent communications permitted by smart meters — to get the job done on a mass scale.

Will broadband supplant smart meters as the route for linking homeowners and their energy use? It’s unclear whether broadband–home automation offerings will catch on en masse or whether energy management will ever become a focus of those customers who do invest in it. One interesting model might be for utilities to offer their broadband-enabled customers special rebates or other incentives to install an EcoFactor-like, automated energy-saving system and at the same time move forward with smart meter–enabled programs. And because broadband offers far faster and higher bandwidth digital connectivity than most smart meter systems, utilities might be able to get far more control and visibility into people’s homes using broadband than they ever hope to with smart meters.

Image courtesy of Tekneco via Creative Commons license

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

The battle heats up for California’s energy privacy rules

Jeff St. John — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:00:57 +0000

California’s groundbreaking attempt to protect, and also open up, energy data has come under further scrutiny this week. The first deadline for interested parties to comment on the state’s new proposed rules comes this week, and there seems to be a lot of worry that the rules could nip the state’s potential home energy management market in the bud. At the same time there’s also still plenty of confusion over the fine print.

While we’ve looked into many of the questions that last month’s proposed ruling from the California Public Utility Commission has raised, in my weekly update at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), I lay out some of the key points of contention suggested in the recent comments from smart grid industry players.

Chief among them is the fear that some of the CPUC’s definitions lack clarity, and that this vagueness could cause uncertainty and a delay in rolling out products and services to link homeowners and business owners to their energy use. The CPUC’s definition of “locked” versus un-”locked” home energy management devices is particularly troubling for the commenters. In fact, the the Consumer Electronics Association believes the distinction “threatens to dictate technology standards through regulatory favoritism.”

Other disagreements include a dispute over standards for connecting smart meters to in-home devices using wireless technology. The CPUC’s rules demand that California’s big three utilities make plans for piloting such meter-to-home connections within six months, but the rules don’t address how they’re supposed to do it.

The question around standards, in turn, brings up the question of whether it’s better to use the existing ZigBee standard, or wait for the next-generation of the ZigBee standard, which will be compliant with Internet protocol and able to be used via Wi-Fi and HomePlug devices as well as ZigBee. Pacific Gas & Electric wants to wait for the next-gen ZigBee standard to be developed, but that could take more than a year, given the current struggles over the standard.

The Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition trade group, on the other hand, wants the CPUC to demand that it happens now. That’s not surprising, perhaps, given that its members include companies like Comverge, Tendril, Control4 and others using the first generation of the ZigBee standard in deployments today, not to mention the ZigBee Alliance itself.

Finally, amid all these confusions, it may seem that defining just who a utility “customer” is should be pretty simple, but that’s not always the case. For example, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out in their comments that the CPUC’s rules could leave residential and commercial tenants in an unclear position. Tenants might not be paying the bills and also might not be due the same protections and disclosures when it comes to their energy usage data.

Image courtesy of Portland General Electric via Creative Commons license

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

How Federal Legislation Could Change Digital Energy Data

Jeff St. John — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:00:12 +0000

Will utility customers across the U.S. be legally entitled to access their own energy usage data? And if so, how hard will it be for utilities to deliver that data to customers? We’ve already seen how California is planning to tackle that tricky subject, and now a Senate bill would bring the same issues to a national stage.

In my latest Weekly Update at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), I cover the implications of the Electric Consumer Right to Know Act, or e-KNOW act, which was introduced by Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) last month. While the current gridlock in Congress makes passage of any bills uncertain this year, it’s likely that e-KNOW will serve as a template for some kind of eventual federal regulations on energy data.

So what’s in the bill? On many points, e-KNOW seems to echo the California Public Utility Commission’s recent proposed ruling (PDF) on the subject. For example, it mandates that utilities must provide their customers their own energy data in whatever format it’s available, as soon as possible.

It also makes it clear that customers own their own energy data, and are entitled to share it with third parties of their choosing. There’s good reason for smart grid companies to be pleased by a bill that would mandate broad consumer access to energy data, since they’ll need that data to deliver energy control and saving services to customers.

At the same time, e-KNOW follows the lead of the CPUC in requiring that utilities turn over customer data in a way that “provides adequate protections for the security of the information and the privacy of the electric consumer.” Just how utilities are to simultaneously open data to customers and keep that data secure — and how smart grid companies’ plans to use energy data might come into conflict with consumer data privacy policies — remains to be seen.

At the highest level, however, the significance of the e-KNOW Act lies in its move to nationalize a utility regulatory process that now goes on mainly at a state-by-state level. While California is among the first states to lay out such broad proposals for how to balance utility customer energy data access and privacy, other states such as Texas, Pennsylvania and Colorado are also busy working on their own rules. By placing nationwide oversight in the hands of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, e-KNOW would create a nationwide set of regulations — a development worth keeping an eye on.

Image courtesy of flickr user steakpinball

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.