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Cisco EnergyWise – turns networks into an Energy Efficiency platforms

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As mentioned previously, buildings account for 38% of CO2 emissions in the United States, buildings consume 70% of the electricity load in the U.S and CO2 emissions from buildings are projected to grow faster than any other sector over the next 25 years.

Cisco has decided to tackle this problem, by turning its networking infrastructure kit into a platform for energy efficiency with its launch yesterday of Cisco EnergyWise!

Cisco EnergyWise is a technology for their Catalyst line of Switches which will be rolled out as a free software upgrade for existing switches and included in new Catalyst switches beginning in February 2009.

From the release:

Cisco EnergyWise will roll out in three phases to improve IT and building system energy utilization:

  • · In the first phase (February 2009), Network Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be supported on Catalyst switches and manage the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, video surveillance cameras and wireless access points.
  • · In the next phase (Summer 2009), IT Control, there will be expanded industry support of EnergyWise on devices such as personal computers (PCs), laptops and printers.
  • · In the final phase (Early 2010), Building Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be extended to the management of building system assets such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), elevators, lights, employee badge access systems, fire alarm systems and security systems

EnergyWise will allow companies to create event-based policies for energy reduction (i.e. turn off all lights in data center or hotel room unless someone swipes in – and turn off when they swipe out). It will also allow for control of the energy utilisation of everything from wireless access points, right the way up to building’s aircon systems. Policies can be grouped by tags, so you can control entire buildings campuses or geographies.

Cisco also announced the acquisition of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence Inc. to get access to the intelligent middleware to provide interoperability and integration between building infrastructure, IT applications and Cisco EnergyWise.

EnergyWise will also enable companies to report aggregated power consumption across an organisation, provide reports of current power conditions and suggests potential changes thereby reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Demand response programs will benefit hugely from systems like this being in place.

Superb to see RedMonk client company SolarWinds being signed up as the first network management partner for the program. SolarWinds told me they hope to have the integration with Cisco EnergyWise complete in 2009 and they told me that:

  • · EnergyWise policies and configurations will be managed by Orion Network Configuration Manager (NCM).
  • · Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) will show EnergyWise statistics and reports in its familiar web-based dashboard.
  • · We will also establish EnergyWise forums in thwack, to help support users as they roll out EnergyWise in their corporate environments.

Now, how long will it be before Juniper come out with a competitive offering, do you think? The more companies thinking this way and turning out products like this, the better for everyone.

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Britain readies for nation-wide Smart Meter rollout

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Smart Meter

An article in the UK’s Sunday Times recently talked about the plans for a nationwide rollout of Smart Meters in Britain.

From the article:

Telecoms giants Vodafone, O2 and BT and system integrators Logica, Accenture, IBM and Capgemini are understood to have started talks to form bidding consortiums…

The government has put smart meters at the heart of its energy policy but progress on its implemen-tation has been slow. A consensus has emerged recently between the Department for Energy and Climate Change, Ofgem, the regulator, and the big six utility companies over how it will be done.

Each utility will be responsible for fitting new meters for its customers, starting a roll-out from 2010…

To ensure transparency, a “central communications” group would be set up to electronically collect, process and distribute data and serve as the go-between for energy companies and the meters in their customers’ homes…

Ofgem is expected to run the tender for the contract, which would operate from 2010 to 2020. The winning group would likely consist of a telecoms provider and a systems integrator. There is an outside chance that the contract could be broken down regionally.

This is great news for Britain as it will allow for demand response projects to be rolled out with the consequent nationwide energy savings and the possibilities to increase the penetration of renewables on the grid. Ireland continues to drag its feet in this area with a limited pilot to begin next year. With the irish government hoping to reach 40% penetration of renewables by 2020, they really need to pick up the pace if they want to come anywhere near achieving that target.

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REALLY Smart Meters!

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Smart meter

Photo Credit yewenyi

Smart electricity meter projects are being rolled out all over the globe at this stage (here’s a map of the Smart Meter projects in the US), and with the Smart Meters, come Smart Grids and Demand Response programs whereby the utilities implement peak shaving programs (and in certain cases demand stimulation) to match demand and supply curves. This will lead to a more stable grid and therefore increase the amount of variable generators (i.e. weather based renewables) it is possible to add to the grid. Great.

However, this is not nearly ambitious enough as far as I am concerned. First off, as I have said previously, cheaper electricity typically has a higher % of renewables in the generation mix. Therefore, if I am getting a smart meter, I want it to be a very smart meter. I want my meter to be going out across the grid, checking the realtime price from all utilities and dynamically sourcing the energy from the cheapest supplier at any given time. Nothing too new there, I have written about that concept previously.

Taking that idea to the next level. Imagine if utilities were mandated to publish, not only the price of electricity in realtime, but also the generation mix. I could then have a Smart Meter which would actively chose the greenest electricity for me at any time. Or the one with the best price/renewables mix.

And if we had a SuperGrid in place, then that Green electricity might be coming from Danish windfarms, Icelandic geothermal generation or North African solar farms.

Now that would be a Really Smart Meter!

UPDATE – I have been asked the relevance of the photo above – it is subtle, anyone care to guess?

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Oracle Utilities, Smart Grids and vehicle to grid

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I was talking to Guerry Waters, the VP Industry Strategy in the Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit the other day.

Guerry was telling me about Oracle Utilities’ background and how they came about as the result of Oracle’s acquisition of SPL back in Nov 2006 and Lodestar in 2007.

We got onto the subject of Demand Response (surprise, surprise!) and I raised my concerns about utilities being too command and control. When I said that for DR to really take off consumers need to be in control of their devices Guerry said:

The idea of automatic control of your Demand Response in the home is very intriguing but very much on the edge now, so what we are doing is we are working with a number of companies, like Tendril, that provides Home Area Networks (HANs) and control of devices in the home, where there can be parameters set from signals that are being passed to the HAN about price…. and bring that down to the HAN and let the HAN respond according to parameters that have been set by the consumer themselves…. and give the consumer opt-out capabilities from that.

Guerry went on to describe scenarios where your Home Area Network can contact you via SMS, for instance if you are away from home to alert you that your HAN is about to respond to a DR signal and do you want to overide or not!

Guerry did say that there are very few utilities thinking this far out but the fact that there are any is hugely heartening!

Our conversation went on to discussing vehicle to grid technologies and it was super to see that Oracle are thinking about the challenges to be overcome and ways to roll out the technologies required to make this a reality.

With both SAP and Oracle rolling out enabling technologies in this space, the Electricity 2.0 vision is quickly becoming a reality.

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Spectacular HomeCamp feedback!

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Home Camp – What the community says from chris dalby on Vimeo.

HomeCamp was the first of what I hope will be a series of unconferences around Energy hacking or as they say on the website:

Home Camp is an unconference about using technology to monitor and automate the home for greener resource use and to save costs

The first HomeCamp was in London this last Saturday November 29th and based on Andrew Whitehouse’s write-up and Chris Dalby’s live videos, the day was a phenomenal success.

The video above also gives some flavour of what delegates took away from the day.

I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it along but I do hope to make the next one which will be in March ’09.

[Disclosure: RedMonk were sponsors of HomeCamp]

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Utilities are too top-down, command and control

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Top-Down

Photo Credit Mikey aka DaSkinnyBlackMan

Utilities are top-down.

Whenever I talk to utilities about Smart Grids and Smart Meters they always trot out the same speech. They want to use Demand Response for peak shaving and they want to implement it by having a mechanism whereby they can come in to their customer’s houses at times of maximum demand and turn down the settings on the aircon, immersion heater, etc.

Unfortunately this kind of traditional top-down, command and control attitude is more likely to turn people off Demand Response programs than to sell it to them.

I know that as a consumer I want to be able to program my appliances myself so that I decide when they turn on/off in response to price signals from the grid. The same is true for fridges/freezers and water immersions – I want them to change thermostat settings to take in electricity at times when energy is cheap and not when it is expensive by MY definitions of cheap and expensive.

I want control of my appliances. I do not want the utility deciding to come in and adjust or turn them on/off for me because it suits them.

Demand Response programs will be hugely beneficial to the utilities and consumers alike but they are complex to explain. If you couple that with the utility having control of your appliances they suddenly become a far harder sell.

Give customers more control of their electricity bill. Allow them reduce costs without reducing usage, by owner controlled, programmatic, time-shifting of consumption and suddenly Demand Response programs becomes an easy sell.

And when you couple that with how Demand Response will stabilise the grid facilitating greater penetration of variable supplies (i.e. weather-based renewables like wind and solar) and you have a win, win, win!

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Maximizing Wind and Solar Energy: Live Webinar Nov. 5!

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The Energy Collective

The Energy Collective


This coming Wednesday, Nov 5th, sees the second installment in the Energy Collective‘s Fall Webinar Series!

Up next:
Wind and Solar Come of Age: Making Renewables Full Partners in Our Energy Future – Wednesday, November 5 @ 1 PM Eastern / 10 AM Pacific, Featuring Scott Sklar of The Stella Group and Tom Raftery of GreenMonk (that’s me!).

Scale, advances in technology, and the rising cost of fossil fuels mean wind turbines and solar panels are no longer novelties. But getting the most out of solar and wind involves more than new installations. In this Webinar, we’ll examine the challenges and opportunities associated with integrating peak-load, distributed power sources in our base-load-expectant society with an electrical infrastructure built for centralized generation. More info here.

And, don’t forget the final Webinar in the Series:
Decarbonization and Nuclear Power? – Thursday, November 13th @ 11 a.m. Eastern/8 a.m. Pacific, Featuring Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, Dan Yurman of Fuel Cycle Week and Ashton Poole of Morgan Stanley’s Global Power and Utility Group

This controversial energy source appears to promise massive benefits, but also presents some serious obstacles. Our panelists will explore the possibility of a nuclear future in America, discussing the costs of adding new nuclear plants, the potential impact of carbon pricing, and whether NIMBY politics and regulatory barriers can be overcome. More info here

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Smart Grid demo at the SAP for Utilities Conference

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I attended the SAP for Utilities conference last week in San Antonio and was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the Utilities attending were thinking about rolling out Smart Grids or were already running pilot Smart Grids. There were even a couple who were well underway with their Smart Grid rollout project.

Demand Response was being discussed extensively and was cited by most as one of the principal advantages of Smart Grids.

Smart Grids and Demand Response are topics we have covered extensively here on GreenMonk.net and they are core to the Electricity 2.0 talk I gave in Berlin at the Web 2.0 Expo. The importance of Smart Grids and Demand Response cannot be overstated when it comes to energy efficiencies and energy demand management.

SAP are working closely with utilities through the Lighthouse Council, to ensure that whenever a utility wants to go from a traditional grid to a smart grid infrastructure, SAP will have the necessary software pieces in place for them (Enterprise Asset Management, Customer Relationship Management, and the newer Energy Capital Management).

In the video above, Russell Boyer demonstrates a Smart Grid in action. In this use case, Russell acts as the utility call center for a customer who is moving out and wants their power disconnected. The Smart Grid allows the agent to take a meter reading, and shut off power to the meter remotely. This isn’t the best demonstration of the potential of Smart Grids but it was the first time I saw Smart Grid technologies live in action and I have to admit to being wow’d by it.

[Disclosure – SAP covered my expenses for attending this conference]

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Electricity 2.0: Using the Lessons of the Web to Improve Our Energy Networks – the video!

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Many people have been asking me if there is a video of the presentation I gave at this year’s O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo available anywhere.

I asked the organisers but they said they hadn’t recorded it.

Then my good friend Andrea Vascellari came to the rescue. I knew he had attended the presentation but I was unaware that he recorded it.

He published the video above this afternoon so for all those who were interested, here you go…

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Electricity 2.0 – Using The Lessons Of the Web To Improve Our Energy Networks

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Electricity 2.0 – Using The Lessons Of the Web To Improve Our Energy Networks

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2expoeu08 w2eb)

I spoke today at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin and the title of my talk was:
Electricity 2.0 – Using The Lessons Of the Web To Improve Our Energy Networks

The talk was about demand response, smart grids, renewables etc. and it received extremely positive feedback so I thought I’d share the slide deck here for anyone who may be interested.