post

JouleX Energy Manager – I’m impressed!

JouleX Energy Manager Dashboard

After I mentioned in this post that JouleX had recently updated their Energy Manager product to version 2.5 and all the extra functionality that brought, I was curious to find out a little more about them.

I talked to Tim McCormick, JouleX’ VP Marketing and Sales and Mark Davidson, their Sustainability Officer.

I was intrigued to discover that the company was founded in 2009 by former execs from Internet Security Systems, a security company which had been bought by IBM.

Having moved on from ISS, instead of building another app to scan networks looking for threats and vulnerabilities, they created software to go out over the network and sniff out the power consumption information of all devices on the network! They call their solution JouleX Energy Manager (JEM).

What exactly does JEM do? Well, this is where it gets interesting.

JEM pulls in energy information from all kinds of devices. In the office environment, it grabs energy data from computers, printers, VoIP phones, hubs, switches, access points, you name it – anything with an IP address. Similarly in a data centre environment. However, where it really starts to stand out on its own is when it hooks into facilities’ machinery. JEM can grab energy utilisation figures from access control systems, PDU’s, video cameras, CRAC’s, lighting, even HVAC systems.

Even more interestingly, JEM can harvest all this energy utilisation data without needing to install any software agents, or to deploy any smart IP devices/PDU’s or wireless sensors. Nor does it require any changes to be made to the network, or the security of the network. Quite an achievement.

So what does JEM do with all this information?

Joulex Mobile settings screen

Joulex Mobile settings screen

Well, as you’d imagine, JEM has quite a comprehensive analytics engine which slices and dices that info by energy cost, energy usage, CO2e, device, manufacturer, date, time, location, business unit, any way you want to look at it. Also what-if analyses allow you to check out the savings from policies before rolling them out, and JEM can even calculate the energy ROI for new buy equipment versus legacy allowing you to validate purchase decisions before buying.

Finally, JEM also has an events-based policy engine which looks at data feeds and implements policies based on events or thresholds. With their JouleX Mobile phone app – the event could be turn off all the devices in Tom’s office (printer, scanner, VoIP phone, computer, lights, wireless access point, etc.) when Tom is more than 500m from the building (using the phone’s inbuilt GPS), and turn them all back on when Tom returns.

In data centres, under utilised servers can have the power reduced to their CPU’s, cutting their energy consumption (JouleX call this Load Adaptive Computing) and organisations can even take advantage of JouleX’ ability to interface with ADR and OpenADR to reduce energy use and sell the unused electricity back to their utility.

In the next version of JEM JouleX will roll out Load Adaptive Networking – this will scale back the power utilisation of routers, switches and other networking equipment when they are not in use – an area which, to-date, has been very poorly addressed.

JouleX have a very comprehensive application here. They have stellar customers and partners. I have a feeling this is a company we’ll be hearing a lot more about.

Photo credit Tom Raftery

post

Green bits and bytes for Jan 13th 2011

Green bits

Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

  1. Invensys IMServ, a UK-based carbon and energy solution provider has launched a new programme to help UK schools increase their energy efficiency, reduce their carbon footprint and save money on their energy bills.
  2. SAP Americas was named 2010 Smart Grid Integrator of the Year 2010, North America by The New Economy.
  3. Enterprise energy management company JouleX has upgraded its network-based agentless product JEM to version 2.5. The new version supports a broader set of IT infrastructure devices, improves energy measurement and accuracy, JouleX Mobile allows employees to become more engaged in company’s sustainability initiatives, “load adaptive computing” allocates computing resources based upon system and application utilisation and has significantly upgraded its reporting capabilities.
  4. Tropos Networks, a company which sells wireless broadband network infrastructure, announced the other day that they were selected by more utilities as the company of choice for their smart grid communications infrastructure than any other vendor. Tropos’ CEO Tom Ayers, whom I video interviewed previously here, said

    I expect that 2011 will be a banner year of growth for our company and smart grid deployments globally.

    Good for them!

  5. UK based Greenstone Carbon Management made me aware recently that Asian-based investment bank Nomura have selected Greenstone’s Acco2unt carbon accounting software to help measure, manage and report its carbon emissions across the Bank?s operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
  6. After a successful pilot, ARRA recipient Burbank Water and Power (BWP) has selected energy management company Trilliant to implement its smart metering communications infrastructure. Trilliant is partnering with GE for meters, eMeter for Meter Data Management, and Siemens for integration. BWP will utilise Trilliant?s solution to help manage service requests, customer inquiries, meter reading and service interruptions.

Photo credit lissalou66

post

Green bits and bytes for Dec 16 2010

Green bits & bytes

.

Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

  1. We have written previously about the savings made possible by rolling out Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System (ILS) in a high-bay environment – well they have done it again! Their latest sale is to United States Cold Storage Inc., who deployed the ILS in its Hazelton Pa facility.

    USCS installed the lighting system in their recently built, 88,000-square-foot addition, and they can now light their facility for 3.5? per square foot per year, compared to 46? per square foot with traditional alternatives. USCS expects a return on investment of 14.6 months.

  2. SAP and PlaNet Finance’s joint project to help improve the incomes and living conditions for rural Ghanian women engaged in the Shea nut harvesting and Shea nut butter business posted a nice piece of good news during the week. Stanford University published a case study [PDF] which uncovered significant improvements in nut and butter quality. It also mentions how the women involved have organised into a network so they have a stronger negotiating position and they are achieving higher prices for their produce.
  3. JouleX is a company which helps organisations to monitor, analyse and manage the energy use and waste of IT systems connected to its internal network. JouleX announced this week that its JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) software has been accepted into the Cisco EnergyWise partner program – this enables Cisco to offer JEM as an energy management solution to its customers.
  4. Viridity, a data centre energy resource management software solution provider announced the appointment of Arun Oberoi to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately.
  5. According to a news release from Tropos Networks, Silicon Valley Power (SVP), the City of Santa Clara?s municipal electric utility, has selected Tropos? GridCom as the distribution area communications network for its smart grid program, SVP Meter Connect. SVP serves over 50,000 customers and it expects the SVP Meter Connect project to increase reliability of the utility?s distribution system and finally
  6. ERP software company Epicor announced [PDF] the release of their on-demand carbon accounting solution, Carbon Connect. Carbon Connect is a SaaS delivered carbon accounting solution which allows companies to identify, analyze, audit, track, manage, benchmark and report on their carbon emissions /environmental impact and energy consumption.

Photo credit .faramarz