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Green Numbers round-up 09/18/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Reflections on Logica’s analyst day

Logica Portugal

I attended a Logica Analyst briefing earlier this week in Logica’s recently opened International Utilities Competence Center (pictured above).

The days was chock full of talks from both Logica staff and also from João Torres, President & CEO EDP Distribuição – the Portuguese DSO, and a Logica customer.

Most of the talks were very interesting but two that stood out for me were the ones given by João Torres where he discussed EDP’s smart grid project, called InovGrid and the demo of RMS (Renewables Management System) by Jose Antunes and Rita Burnay. RMS is Logica’s software for managing remote windfarms.

In discussing InovGrid João explained that despite the costs of rolling out a smart grid, EDP felt that the benefits outweighed the costs. The main benefits João saw from smart grids were:

  • increase intelligence, supervision and control of the network
  • improve the efficiency and quality of the electricity supply
  • facilitate the maximising the amount of micro and distributed generation on the grid
  • enable smart metering and smart energy management

InovGrid is one of the most advanced smart grid projects in Europe. EDP now has 3,000 micro-generators on its grid and expects to have 200,000 smart meters installed by the end of 2010.

João was extremely open during his presentation. When asked which communication protocol was best for a smart grid, he said he felt PLC was best but he admitted that it had issues. EDP, he said, have a team assessing protocols and that a lot of the details are still to be decided.

Jose Antunes and Rita Burnay gave a demonstration of Logica’s windfarm management software RMS. The software is designed to manage large numbers of remote wind turbines and allows for quick and easy drill down on information. In the demo, we were shown RMS’s live feed from over 2,000 wind turbines all over the Iberian peninsula. The software collects and stores 300-400 data points from each turbine in realtime simultaneously.

As Jose said, wind turbines typically cost in the order of €1m per MW so one of the main functions of RMS is to minimise downtime of turbines. However, because it also stores all the historical data for turbines, it is able to plot performance of each turbine against the manufacturers SLA’s. I can see this being a popular screen!

Jose also told us that Logica are taking over the management of all of EDP’s wind turbines in Europe and the America’s. This will mean they will increase the current portfolio they are managing from 2GW to 10GW (though I don’t imagine all 10GW will be under one instance of RMS!

Logica’s Chris Beard gave a fascinating talk on a new Logica offering called Smart Office but I’ll come back to that in a separate post.

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GreenMonk news roundup 09/18/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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GreenMonk news roundup 09/12/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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If you go down to the woods today, you are in for a big surprise…

The dramatic footage in the BBC video above documents on of nature’s great spectacle’s – hungry Grizzly bears feeding on the some of the hundreds of millions of salmon who return from the Pacific Ocean to the mountain streams where they were born. This amazing event has occurred every year without fail since time immemorial. Except this year.

Reports are starting to emerge out of the Pacific Northwest that this year the nears haven’t shown up.

According to reports:

Ian McAllister, Conservation Director of Pacific Wild, a non-profit conservation group on Denny Island, near Bella Bella, said he’s heard similar reports.

“I’ve talked to stream walkers [who monitor salmon runs] who have been out for a month and have yet to see any bears,” he said. “There are just no bears showing up. I hear that from every stream walker on the coast.”

Mr. McAllister said it used to be easy to visit salmon streams in the Great Bear Rainforest, a large area of protected forest on the central coast, and see 20 to 30 bears a day feasting on salmon.

“Now you go out there and there are zero bears. The reports are coming in from Terrace to Cape Caution … the bears are gone,” he said.

“And we haven’t seen any cubs with mothers. That’s the most alarming part of this,” Mr. McAllister said.

He said the problem is that chum salmon runs in the area have collapsed.

While there are strong runs of pink salmon into rivers on the central coast, chum, which are much bigger fish that spawn later in the year, are the key food item for bears preparing for hibernation.

Without an adequate supply of big salmon late in the year, said Mr. McAllister, bears do not have enough fat to survive the winter in their dens.

“The lack of salmon last fall, coupled with a long, cold winter, is what’s at the root of this,” he said.

“River systems that in the past had 50,000 to 60,000 chum have now got 10 fish,” he said. “The chum runs have been fished out. We’ve seen the biological extinction of a [salmon] species, and now we’re seeing the impact on bears.”

If these initial reports turn out to be accurate, there is absolutely no doubt that this is a man-made disaster. The salmon have been completely over-fished leading directly to the deaths of thousands of bears over winter in their dens.

There is very little we can do to fix this in the short-term. In the longer term, fishing and bear hunting in this part of the world needs to be seriously re-thought.

On a more personal basis, if you want to help, avoid eating pacific salmon – this will reduce the demand and hopefully help the numbers recover. A great resource if you like to eat fish but are concerned about global fish stock collapse is the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. This is an online searchable database of sustainable seafood. It also has sustainable seafood recipes, downloadable pdf pocket guides and a sustainable seafood iPhone app!

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Green Numbers round-up 09/11/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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GreenMonk news roundup 09/10/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Why electric cars are the future

Tesla Roadster

Photo credit Djof

I was talking to an American friend the other day who had recently taken delivery of their new Tesla Roadster. He was really enthused about it. What was the thing which impressed him most?

He took the car for a spin over the weekend. He went over 100 miles on the journey. When he got home, he plugged it in to recharge it (the car is rated at over 200 miles on a single charge so it would have done the 100 miles very comfortably). When he entered the cost per kWh from his utility, it turned out that the 100 miles had cost him $3.50!

Now with gas prices currently averaging around $3.20 in California, and his previous car averaging around 18mpg, a similar journey would have cost him around $17.50! As well as that electric cars do not require routine oil changes, they do not have any tailpipe emissions and therefore do not require any muffler or exhaust system work, and they do not require replacement spark plugs, pistons, hoses or belts.

Electric vehicles are still in their infancy but when they deliver demonstrable savings on running costs as above, and produce no tailpipe emissions, you start to see that they really are the future

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GreenMonk news roundup 09/08/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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September 7th GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability show

This is the video from today’s GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability show – see below for the chatstream:

03:30 Tom Raftery: Do we have audio/video?
03:31 MikeTheBee: I weren’t
03:31 MikeTheBee: Video and Audio
03:31 iangb: i can see and hear
03:31 MikeTheBee: Yep
03:32 MikeTheBee: Bank Hol Last week in UK
03:33 Tom Raftery: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/sep/03/arctic-temperatures-climate-change
03:33 MikeTheBee: The more the merrier
03:35 Tom Raftery: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/15234166.html
03:36 Tom Raftery: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6821896.ece
03:36 MikeTheBee: increasing from the 1900’s by the look. the start of coal usage
03:38 Tom Raftery: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8240406.stm
03:39 Tom Raftery: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/04/drax-protesters-sentenced
03:41 Tom Raftery: http://www.youtube.com/talkingenergy
03:44 Tom Raftery: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/BP-announces-giant-oil-find-apf-2273328778.html?x=0&.v=1
03:45 Tom Raftery: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/09/03/bps-tiber-find-fodder-for-oil-optimists-or-pessimists/
03:46 Tom Raftery: http://www.mnn.com/technology/research-innovations/blogs/uranium-the-new-foreign-oil
03:47 Tom Raftery: http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=1983
03:48 Tom Raftery: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8241016.stm
03:49 Tom Raftery: http://tcktcktck.org/stories/campaign-stories/when-it-comes-climate-change-londons-dropping-10-10
03:50 dahowlett: Was that Tara Aso or Tara Asshole?
03:50 Tom Raftery: http://www.1010uk.org/
03:51 Tom Raftery: http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/690868
03:52 liveireland: getting solar heating this week myself!! 🙂
03:53 Tom Raftery: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/09/03/duke-leaves-coal-trade-group-over-anti-climate-bill-stance
03:55 Tom Raftery: http://www.ecofriend.org/entry/eco-tech-metal-reflector-to-make-concentrated-solar-power-affordable
03:57 Tom Raftery: http://www.ecofriend.org/entry/eco-gadgets-uganda-telecom-debuts-their-first-solar-powered-cellphone
03:58 Tom Raftery: http://www.idc.com/EI/research/UtiliQ.jsp
03:58 dahowlett: Screw solar heating, I want solar air con
03:59 Tom Raftery: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/defense-contractors-pursue-the-smart-grid
03:59 monkchips: bah missed the start of the show
03:59 Tom Raftery: Coolerado
04:00 dahowlett: Got it: http://www.coolerado.com/
04:00 monkchips: low energy aircon? talk about a global necessity!
04:01 Tom Raftery: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/gps-systems-real-time-traffic-data-save-drivers-carbon-emissions-four-days-per-year.php
04:02 monkchips: that is BOLLOCKS
04:02 monkchips: if everyone use it the bottleneck moves. this model wont scale
04:02 monkchips: this from GPS marketing board?
04:02 liveireland: ntl acting up here will have to watch repeat
04:02 cminion: @monkchips yeah i was just wondering if it would scale
04:03 monkchips: wanna cut carbon – cycle instead.
04:03 Tish Shute: Tom what do u think about the Plug Alliance in the US pushing Zigbee
04:03 MikeTheBee: from TomTom or GarmIn?
04:03 cminion: or move closer to your work
04:03 monkchips: we spoke to ford
04:03 monkchips: the other day though and they are all over zigbee right?
04:04 MikeTheBee: Did you discusss the Aussie Oil Slick
04:04 monkchips: ******* GREAT call.
04:04 dahowlett: I sue Google Maps on my Nokia N96 for GPS data
04:04 Tish Shute: Google Power Meter were making a case against the Zigbee and Plig Alliance approach
04:04 liveireland: I’ll plug you into the liveireland next week Tom..missed u this week
04:04 monkchips: “eevees”
04:04 dahowlett: use…not sue…doh!
04:04 Tish Shute: not Plig Plug hehe
04:05 dahowlett: I”ve doubled my distance for working…10 yards instead of 5 yards
04:05 monkchips: hey tish- interesting. the car people, part of the smart grid, atre definielt talking zigbee
04:06 monkchips: not a bad audience for the show this week, considering its a public holday in the US. well done tom.
04:06 cminion: Cheers for the show, time for home i think
04:06 Tish Shute: Google P M were making “you own your own data ” argument hehe!
04:06 dahowlett: TTFN
04:06 liveireland: slan
04:06 Tish Shute: bye thanks Tom!
04:06 MikeTheBee: Cheers Tom, and all
04:06 Tom Raftery: Thanks evertonre for interest, contributions & time