AllThingsD » smart grid

IBM Offers Its Cloud To Watch The UK's Electrical Grid

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:00:09 +0000

Computing giant IBM and the British telecom concern Cable & Wireless say they’re collaborating to build a cloud computing system that would monitor the power usage of some 50 million smart electrical meters in the UK.

The idea, they say, is to use cloud computing to monitor and analyze power use at British homes and businesses, as part of an overall plan to reduce the country’s energy use and therefore its carbon footprint.

Several existing wireless players have tossed their hats in the ring to build smart meter systems, including BT, Telefonica and Vodafone. They all want a piece of a big UK government contract that could be worth as much as $14 billion to install smart meters in every home by 2020 as part of a wider plan to reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050.

IBM and C&W say their plan, which they call the UK Smart Energy Cloud, will gather data many times a day from smart meters around the country and store it in a cloud hosted in the UK. The data would then go to power utilities for analysis, to make sure customers are billed according to their usage.

IBM is also involved in a nationwide smart grid project in Malta and has a hand in a pilot project in Denmark. C&W has more than 1,000 network sites, and many, it says, are located at electrical substations. IBM and C&W would essentially become a middle man, saving UK power retailers from having to make huge investments in computing and communications infrastructure.

The Not-Marc-and-Ben GP–aka John O'Farrell–at Andreessen Horowitz Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:04:01 +0000

He’s not Andreessen and he’s not Horowitz, the pair of brand names of the high-profile Silicon Valley venture firm that just announced a new $650 million fund to add to their $300 million already at work.

But as quiet as John O’Farrell has been, he is the third general partner–and there are only three for now–of what seems to have turned into the hottest VC outfit of late.

Launched in mid-2009 by Netscape Founder Marc Andreessen and his longtime business partner Ben Horowitz, both have since made a series of splashy investments, written splashier blog posts and served on the splashiest–well, controversial–of boards.

O’Farrell just arrived to the party in late June.

But he had worked closely with Andreessen and Horowitz at Opsware executive, through some decidedly rocky times until they pulled off a remarkable recovery for the software company and sold it in 2007 to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion.

The Irish-born O’Farrell–who has an interesting background in the cable business too–moved onto Silver Spring Networks, a smart grid start-up. He assumed he would remain an operating exec.

But when he got the call from Andreessen and Horowitz, he said he could not resist the offer.

Here is O’Farrell talking about the firm in a video interview BoomTown did earlier this week.

In it, note at the end how he is deftly answering–but not–a question I had about an investment it might make in Twitter:

[ See post to watch video ]

Foreigners Vie to Upgrade China Grid

Shai Oster — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:00:56 +0000

China’s plan to upgrade its electricity network has sparked intense competition among General Electric Co. (GE), Siemens AG (SI) and other foreign companies seeking a foothold in what will soon be one of the world’s biggest markets for advanced power transmission and distribution systems.

GE estimates China will spend $60 billion over the next decade to upgrade outdated infrastructure, using digital technology and other advanced equipment to make a “smart grid” that can distribute power more efficiently and flexibly. Other estimates put the spending as high as $100 billion over 10 years. The sums are comparable to estimates of what the U.S. will spend on similar improvements.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao elevated smart-grid construction to a national priority in March, when, for the first time, he mentioned it in his closely watched annual work report to China’s legislature. Officials say they want to finish the renovations by 2020.

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Cisco Diversifies Again as Chambers Discusses Rivals

Ben Worthen — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:49:23 +0000

Cisco (CSCO) on Monday announced an initiative to sell high-tech gear to utilities, a market the company says could be a $20 billion-a-year market by 2014.

Political junkies may have heard the term “smart grid,” which is one of the areas that the Obama administration has targeted with its stimulus package. The government is committing billions to facilitate building a next-generation electrical grid that’s more energy efficient.

Cisco looks at all this talk about green and sees, well, green. In order to improve their networks, utilities will need to buy routers and switches and other gear that Cisco just happens to sell. Cisco introduced energy-management software in January, and it will no doubt come out with other products that it will package together for utility companies.

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The Winklevoss Variations

John Paczkowski — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:57:28 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Google: We're Gonna Turn It On. We're Gonna Bring You the Power.

John Paczkowski — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:20:58 +0000

When Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in 2005, “We are moving to a Google that knows more about you,” he wasn’t kidding. Just four years later and the company is learning about us from a host of online services that extend far beyond the simple search application at the center of Google’s business: email, chat, video, news, books, calendaring, location and now, personal energy usage patterns as well. This morning, the company announced Google PowerMeter, an application that will let consumers to track their electricity consumption.

Integrated into Google’s iGoogle platform, PowerMeter works with the so-called “smart grid” to show a granular, real-time view of electricity-consuming devices–the theory being that seeing your energy usage makes it easier to reduce it.

“Our lack of knowledge about our own energy usage is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity for us all to save money and fight global warming by reducing our power usage,” the company explains. “Studies show that access to your household’s personal energy information is likely to save you between 5–15% on your monthly bill, and the potential impact of large numbers of people achieving similar efficiencies is even more exciting. For every six households that save 10% on electricity, for instance, we reduce carbon emissions as much as taking one conventional car off the road.”

Like many Google (GOOG) initiatives, PowerMeter is giddy with change-the-world altruism. And change the world it may. But like many Google initiatives, there’s a trade-off: the disclosure of increasingly more information about our predilections, our interests and habits to a company that’s amassing a vast data set about customer behavior.