The iPod of thermostats is sold-out until 2012. Nest Labs, makers of the connected, smart, “learning” thermostat, say on their website that the hot thermostat is “sold out through early next year.” In the meantime, the company has closed its online store. Read more »
Both mobile and high performance computing are placing huge power efficiency and performance demands on chips, but the real $64,000 question is how long until such extreme computing use cases hit the server mainstream. Asked another way, how long till Amazon adopts ARM-based servers? Read more »
You might have heard of the SuperNAP data center before because of its military-grade security, more-than-400,000-square-foot footprint and roots as Enron’s attempt to build a bandwidth exchange, but the cutting-edge facility is also home to some very interesting customers. Read more »
My organization, The Carbon War Room, has put together a consortium to tackle, as was reported this week: “one of the nation’s biggest energy problems — waste in older buildings — without new money from Washington.” Read more »
Last week Google disclosed the details of its energy consumption, and its data center engineers argued that the leading figure cited to assess how energy-efficient a data center is, power usage effectiveness (PUE), must be continuously measured and averaged over a twelve-month period. This was a ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Despite the seemingly downward short-term trend for cleantech investing, corporations and investors continue to back the green building sector. On Wednesday San Francisco–based energy-efficient building company Project Frog announced that it has raised $22 million from GE and a group of investors. Read more »
Getting to next generation systems in high performance computing has inspired technologies that we now use everyday in data centers, but as the drive for exascale computing continues, it seems ingenuity is coming to an end. But is power consumption the real hurdle for bigger systems? Read more »
Remember that whole debate over whether moving to cloud computing is a greener option? Well, data center monitoring startup Sentilla is introducing an analytics tool that can predict whether embracing cloud computing (both private and public) is a smart play from an energy bill perspective. Read more »
The latest idea from Facebook on how to revolutionize the data center is elegant in its simplicity: put a switch on hard-disk drives that slows their speed when their data is no longer hot. I wonder if Facebook will take up the cause and build it. Read more »
Achieving the ultimate in green building badges — the LEED platinum certification — is pretty rare and is particularly unusual for data centers. But on Thursday GE showed off its new LEED platinum-certified data center in Louisville, Ky. Here are some photos from the green facility. Read more »
As the digital world and connected devices take over more and more aspects of people’s lives large Internet companies are becoming more and more conscious of the need to invest in clean power and alternative resources. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Federal regulators canceled three ocean power project permits in California because the permit holder, located in Sonoma County, couldn’t come up with the money to carry out the projects. Read more »
Android cell phones are notoriously bad at battery drain. But recently I discovered the single app that has smartly and simply solved many of these battery life problems for me: the PowerMax Android app made by Volt-Up. Read more »
There has been a lot of talk about consolidation lately because federal agencies have until Oct. 7 to present their plans for slashing data center footprints by 38 percent by 2015. But how exactly the government will pull this off is still up for debate. Read more »
A report from data center energy expert Jonathan Koomey, published on Monday morning, gave a rare glimpse into some educated estimates for how many servers and how much electricity Google uses, and how energy-efficient those custom servers are. Read more »
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 ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There are several data-center-efficiency metrics you will need to know to figure out how to differentiate green-cloud-marketing hype from reality. Read more »
A report, created by research firm Verdantix and sponsored by AT&T, estimates that cloud computing could enable companies to save $12.3 billion off their energy bills. That translates into carbon emission savings of 85.7 million metric tons per year by 2020. Read more »
Initially, I was excited to see that someone else sees Las Vegas as the green data center hotspot it should be. But pair Networks’ new Las Vegas data center that runs entirely off the grid does so with relatively little solar power. Read more »
Dynamic windows are being manufactured by innovative companies like Soladigm and Sage. But what if you could get these smarter windows without buying a new one? A startup called US e-Chromic, which is a semi-finalist at the Cleantech Open 2011, has a plan cooking for that. Read more »
Fusing solar technology with buildings is an area that tends to invite creative ideas. An intriguing design caught our attention at Intersolar in San Francisco this week: It’s a solar panel with a honeycomb structure that replaces the glass facades of a building. Read more »
Set-top boxes aren’t energy-efficient, and cost U.S. residents more than $3 billion annually in energy bills, according to a new study. More importantly, about two-thirds of those energy costs come at times when no one is even watching TV or using the devices. Read more »
Cleantech investing may not have produced many big exits and returns so far, yet it keeps attracting investors who believe they can do better. Here comes the Cleantech Syndicate, a group of 11 families that plan to invest $1.4 billion over the next five years. Read more »
Calxeda, the startup building servers using the same kind of ARM chips used in cell phones, has launched its partner program. Companies such as Eucalyptus, Gluster, Canonical and Opscode lined up Tuesday behind the server company to show their willingness to work with its specialized hardware. Read more »
Online dating service eHarmony is using SeaMicro’s specialized Intel Atom-powered servers as the foundation of its Hadoop infrastructure, demonstrating that big data applications such as Hadoop might be a killer app for low-powered micro servers. Read more »
Atlanta-based data-center-efficiency startup JouleX has raised $17 million from Sigma Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Target Partners and TechOperators. As energy prices rise, energy generation facilities are stretched and hyperscale becomes normal, companies like JouleX should find it easy to spread their message. Read more »
California regulators on Thursday approved changes to residential electric rates for customers of Pacific Gas and Electric that could have a major impact on whether consumers will readily sign up for solar and energy efficiency products and services. Read more »
GoGrid CEO John Keagy wrote on his blog yesterday that when it comes cloud computing, things such as cheap hydroelectric power and massive-scale data centers are overrated. His theory doesn’t make sense for every cloud provider, but he does make some good points. Read more »
While Google has been at the forefront of cutting-edge green data center technology, with experimental projects like its seawater-cooled data center, Google’s big message at its second data center efficiency summit: There’s no magic involved with greener data centers. Read more »
Swiss power gear company ABB has made another investment in tech that can make data centers more energy-efficient: ABB has acquired controlling interest in Validus DC Systems, a company that makes power systems for data centers that utilize direct current (DC). Read more »
The advent of Web 2.0 and its principles of scaling out and designing to fail have brought about something of a sea change in how companies buy servers. For evidence, one needn’t look any further than Dell, which is making a killing selling micro servers. Read more »
Greenpeace’s got a lot of press last week for its A-to-F grades for the green data center efforts of Facebook, Google, IBM and other IT giants of the world. But what’s behind the grades? Read more »
When it comes to clean-energy investing 2.0, venture capitalists are beyond looking for the silver bullet — or the magic battery –- they spent the last decade hunting and hoping for. Today, VCs are more likely to invest their dollars in slightly less ambitious energy-efficiency projects. Read more »
There’s a significant opportunity for companies that are looking to connect the often siloed systems that manage the energy used to run servers as well as the gear used to cool, ventilate, back up and convert power for data centers. Read more »
Cisco today took the covers off a new Allen, Texas, data center that will serve as the foundation for Cisco’s private cloud computing effort, which it calls Cisco Elastic IT Services. The new data center is designed for maximum efficiency and to withstand tornado winds. Read more »
It’s a cliché you inevitably hear in any discussion about building energy efficiency retrofits: It’s the “low-hanging fruit” of cleantech. But the market hasn’t taken off quickly, and good money to be made will come from the commercial, rather than the residential, market. Read more »
Cleantech is losing its mojo to upstarts peddling coupons. These days, it’s not hard to find tech companies, investors and market analysts comparing cleantech to Groupon, which generated a lot of buzz when it turned down a reportedly $5-6 billion offer from Google late last year. Read more »
According to a survey by AFCOM, cloud computing is on the rise among data center operators, more than doubling since last year and expected to reach 80-90 percent in the next five years. The survey also shows that energy efficiency is driving data center decisions. Read more »
Last week, Intel announced its plans to produce an Atom processor designed for use within servers, but company’s road map — which doesn’t have the server-ready Atom available until 2012 — raises the question of how serious Intel is about pushing an alternative to its flagship Xeon architecture. Read more »
OPower, the startup that gets homeowners to cut energy use with out in-home dashboards and gateways, is looking at home energy automation devices. What are the pros and cons of high-tech automation versus smart behavioral science? Read more »
