October 2008 Archives

Of the $1.6 billion in cleantech funding during the third quarter (a record in and of itself), $363.5 million went to firms in Southern California, according to figures from Ernst & Young.

socalTECH.com reports:

Within the clean technology industry, energy and electricity generation companies took the largest amount of funding, with $1B in investments, $990M of those in solar. Santa Monica-based SolarReserve was among the top deals in that segment, with $140M invested in a second round funding.

It will be interesting to see what effect, if any, of October's economic turmoil has on Q4's figures.

Vista, though pretty and chock full o' power management features, was a tad bloated. With Windows 7, however, Microsoft is hoping that users will appreciate it's leaner underpinnings and cloud-tastic hooks to the company's Live services.

But one overlooked aspect is how the OS makes is possible to run less power-hungry apps. Here's a snippet out of the Windows 7 Developer Guide provided by Microsoft.

Extended operation on battery power and the use of energy efficient technologies are key requirements for today’s developers. Windows 7 greatly reduces the number of activities that the operating system performs that prevent use of power-saving modes. It also supports the trigger-starting of system services to enable processors to become idle more often and stay idle longer, which decreases power consumption. In addition, Windows 7 takes advantage of the latest energy-efficient hardware, including network adapters, storage devices, and graphics cards.

Windows 7 provides the infrastructure and tools that make it easy for developers to determine the energy impact of their applications. A set of event callbacks enable applications to reduce their activity when the system is on battery power and automatically scale up when the system is on AC power. For applications that involve a background process or service, Windows 7 features new infrastructure to automatically enable background tasks when most appropriate in order to maximize energy efficiency.

Intriguing, but why not let Mark Russinovich describe some of Windows 7 power-saving features? In this Channel 9 video, Russinovich explains (around the 19:45 mark) Core Parking and the Timer Coalescing API.

Visit Channel 9 or click continue to view the video (requires Silverlight).

Solar systems are expensive, there's no getting around that. And while individuals with the means will buy solar no matter what, people trying to make an economic case for installing solar panels on their roofs may have a hard time justifying the cost and may end up putting off the install indefinitely, even if solar prices plummet.

The reason, Brad Templeton writes, is the "The paradox of cheapening solar power":

Imagine you have an energy technology with effectively zero operating cost, like PV panels. Let’s say that it’s reached the point that it can match the price of grid power over a 20 year lifetime. That means that, if it costs $10,000, it costs $72 per month or $872 per year at a 6% cost of funds. (Since $872 buys 9688 kwh at the national average grid price of 9 cents, that means you need a 4800 watt PV system to match the grid which is hard to do for $10,000 but someday it won’t be.)

But here’s the problem? Let’s say that it’s very reasonable to predict that the cost of solar will drop by more than 9% over the coming year. That’s a modest decrease, entirely doable just with increased production, and much less than people hope from new technology. That means that your $10,000 system will cost you $9,100 to buy a year down the road. Since we are talking about a grid-equivalent price system, the cost of grid power in this example is $872. So you can buy the power from the grid, wait a year, and save money. The more you expect the price of solar to drop, the more it makes financial sense to delay. (Note that at this lower price the system is now beating the grid. What matters really is whether the dollar cost reduction of the solar system exceeds the dollar cost of the grid electricity purchased.)

Makes a good point. Luckily for the burgeoning solar industry, other motivations are at play, as is a tax cut extension.

Thanks Alex!

As Halloween approaches, so do colder temperatures for much of the U.S. That means that furnaces, boilers and electrical heaters are about to take a nice little bite out of your electric bill, zombie style.

To illustrate the toll on your household budget and the atmosphere, Google has created an >energy savings calculator and has published efficiency tips to maximize your savings in what promises to be a brutal winter (economic, not weather-wize, though maybe that too).

Don't forget, you can always download the company's power management gadget for Google Desktop.

With that said, boo!

In the grand green tradition of NOT boarding a plane, renting a car and spewing more CO2 into the air, Cisco's TechWiseTV is hosting a 60-minute webinar tomorrow on virtualization (Thursday, October 23 at 10am PST).

Naturally, Cisco technology will be front-and-center, namely VN-Link, Nexus 1000V (first switch to embed a network operating system into the hypervisor -- interest piqued) and Wide Area Application Services, the latter of witch had a hand in delivering HD video for NBC during the Olympics. There will be plenty that IT folks can glean if they're in the midst of virtualization and server consolidation projects no matter which vendor carries their 1 and 0's across the network.

Here's the agenda:

Segment 1: Top 5 Obstacles Slowing the Benefits of Server Virtualization Segment 2: VN-Link: Virtual Machine Aware Software Switching Segment 3: Virtualization and WAAS: Faster, Leaner, Smarter Segment 4: Virtualization Assessment, Planning, and Design Services

You can register here. If you want a sneak peek at what's in store, a couple of YouTube videos await you after the jump.

Thanks Nicole!

Gerry Blackwell at Small Business Computing reviewed the stylish, bamboo-clad [re]Drive. Here's what to expect when you unbox the external drive...

Redrive ships with ArcSoft TotalMedia Backup software. Fabrik, the company behind SimpleTech, also makes available its Fabrik Ultimate Backup, an online solution that provides 2GB of free backup capacity. And the bundle also includes Turbo USB software. Fabrik claims it boosts data transfers over USB 2.0 connections by 20 percent.

Despite its utilitarian boxiness, Redrive even manages to look reasonably attractive with its bamboo accents and artfully molded aluminum end panels. The drive is available so far in one capacity, 500GB, which is plenty for backing up vital data in most small businesses or homes. Price: $139.99.

The verdict? Favorable, for the most part.

A home office is a green office, and mediabistro.com is doing the eco-community a service by soliciting pictures (and even a video) that are utterly devoid of cubicles and unflattering fluorescent lighting.

Choice personal palaces of productivity so far include @ericalm's little corner of the world (hello kitteh) and @AlKrueger's swank pad.

So media-savvy telecommuters, grab that digicam, upload those pics and ping @mediabistro post haste!

Update: Here's a sliver of what mine looks like. You're not missing much, honestly. I don't have a better picture handy because, ironically, I'm in our NYC offices at the moment.

HP debuted a couple of new consumer PCs that are Energy Star certified and score a silver rating under EPEAT.

Both machines, the HP Pavilion Verde Special Edition a6645f and Phoenix Special Edition a6655f pack AMD processors - a dual core Athlon X2 for the $579 Verde (only available at Circuit City) and a quad-core Phenom X4 9150e for the $659 Phoenix. Both go on sale on November 9 and with less packaging for buyers to rummage through.

As you can see from the image above, the Verde has a distinctive graphic on the tower's face (the Phoenix does too, but it's a little more subdued).

HP also showed off the w2558hc, a new 25.5-inch widescreen LCD display with a built-in 15-in-1 card reader, an integrated 2 megapixel webcam and HDMI inputs. The HP w2558hc is also Energy Star rated and is available now for $599.

While we've been glued to CNBC (oh, hai Jim Cramer, Suze Orman!) and stuffing greenbacks under the mattress (you think I kid?), Congress managed to work some pro-solar legislation into the bailout rescue bill.

Green Wombat has a nice little rundown of what it means to the solar industry. Here are two of the biggies:

The 30% solar investment tax credit has been extended to 2016, giving solar startups, utilities and financiers the certainty they need for the years’ long slog it takes to get large-scale power plants and other projects online. The extension is particularly important to those Big Solar projects that need to arrange project financing in the next year or so.

The $2,000 tax credit limit for residential solar systems has been lifted, meaning that homeowners can get a 30% tax credit on the solar panels they install after Dec. 31. That will save a bundle - especially for those who live in states with generous state rebates - and goose demand for solar panel makers and installers like SunPower (SPWRA) and First Solar (FSLR). (If you buy a $24,000 3-kilowatt solar array in California - big enough to power the average home - you can claim a $7,200 federal tax credit. Add in the state solar rebate and the cost of the system is cut in half.)

Those harnessing power from the wind only got their tax breaks extended for a year, sadly. But judging by the way turbines are sprouting out of the ground (and sea) lately, they should be OK.

Want to take a peek at the guts of the new, less toxic and more recyclable aluminum MacBook Pro? iFixit has taken one apart and snapped pics to commemorate the occasion.

The images and break down instructions should also help DIYers fix their notebooks a couple of years from now after the warranty has expired and the hipster behind the Genius Bar won't even acknowledge the ancient slab that refuses to cough up the screenplay you really should have backed up in the first place.

FYI: Someone already wrote Juno and even got an Oscar for it. Sorry.

Update: They also took apart one of the new MacBooks. Have at it!

[via Gizmodo]

Photo Credit: Broken Thermostat - Chris Campbell, Flickr - Creative Commons

We've heard it before.

Many datacenter operators are keeping their temps unnecessarily Arctic. Yahoo seems to think so and Google has also started to weigh in.

Arguably, there are few high-profile datacenter operators bigger than Google. So when they dole out advice or let techies peek behind the curtain, it pays to listen. Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge reports:

The latest company to focus attention on temperature in the data center is Google. "The guidance we give to data center operators is to raise the thermostat," said Erik Teetzel, an Energy Program Manager at Google. "Many data centers operate at 70 degrees or below. We’d recommend looking at going to 80 degrees."

Sounds suicidal, right? Not if you concentrate your cooling efforts on airflow instead.

IBM, Intel and others have been pushing the concept of optimizing airflow for a good long while now. Turn on a fan, point it at yourself and your computer and you can start to envision how it works, albeit in a simplified manner. No need to crank the AC, right?

Naturally, you'll need to conduct a more specialized analysis for your setup. However, the savings might just be worth it...

How much money can you save by raising the cooling set point in the data center? Microsoft (MSFT) wanted to find out, and tested the impact of slightly higher temperatures in its Silicon Valley data center. "We raised the floor temperature two to four degrees, and saved $250,000 in annual energy costs," said Don Denning, Critical Facilities Manager at Lee Technologies, which worked with Microsoft on the project.

But doubts persist. You're bound to run into conflicting accounts from datacenter operators (no one ever got fired for running at 60 degrees) and there are concerns about voiding hardware warranties for edging toward the toastier side of a device's stated thermal range.

However, if leading tech companies have their way (Intel, IBM, Google, Microsoft...), the days of datacenters-slash-meat-lockers appear to be numbered.

Engadget's picture says it all. The new MacBook Pro has earned a nice EPEAT Gold rating. Check out that environmental checklist. Nice!

More on the new MacBook Pro here.

Update: The Apple Store is back up and the MacBook Pro's product page now proudly displays the score card. Here are the relevant bullet points:

• Highly recyclable aluminum and glass enclosure
• Mercury-free LED-backlit display
• Arsenic-free glass
• BFR-free internal components
• PVC-free internal cables
• Meets ENERGY STAR requirements
• EPEAT Gold rating

In cars, GPS helps save fuel by getting you to your destination using the most direct route possible. The same may soon be true for airliners if a plan to overhaul worldwide air traffic systems ever gets off the ground (pun intended).

The benefits range from better airspace management and fewer delays to improved safety. But airlines have something else to consider: massive fuel savings. USA Today reports:

U.S. airlines could save $10 billion a year in fuel costs by 2025 if the FAA upgrades to a satellite-based air-traffic control system, The Associated Press reports. But, AP says that proposed upgrade "has languished in the planning stages for more than a decade" while the U.S. aviation system currently relies on "a World War II-era air traffic network that often forces planes to take longer, zigzagging routes" that cost carriers "billions of dollars in wasted fuel while."

As for the upgraded "NextGen" plan, AP says it would cost $35 billion and "would replace the current radar system with the kind of GPS technology that has become commonplace in cars and cellphones. Supporters say it would triple air traffic capacity, reduce delays by at least half, improve safety and curb greenhouse gas emissions. An Associated Press analysis of federal and industry data found that if the new system were already in place, airlines could have saved more than $5 billion in fuel this year alone."

If you want more information on NextGen, the FAA has got you covered.

Way to go, bad apples.

After reluctantly digesting those glowing reports about energy savings, improved productivity, and happier employees, management went against their instincts and finally started to loosen the leash.  But then you go do stuff like this:

24% admitting they've altered security settings

23% saying they delay security updates on devices

Now, that's mature. On the bright side, an overwhelming majority seem to be playing by the rules.  Or they at least had the sense not to admit to their foolishness.

In any case, like my colleague Chris Nerney said, STOP IT!

Because if I end up getting hauled back into the office, so help me...

The concept of green code seems to be catching on, or at least it's starting to register with IT managers.

The reason? Servers are being unnecessarily subjected to inefficient software packed with *features* that companies wind up not using. Computerworld UK reports that during the Environmental IT Leadership forum in London, panelists were put on the spot.

Matt Deacon, DPE chief architect at Microsoft, agreed that bloated software is inefficient software and explained that Microsoft has environmental sustainability in mind when designing code.

Deacon said 'sustainability' sits within Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Initiative, alongside security and interoperability. The mantra of the Initative is that products are secure and interoperable by design. By positioning sustainability within that framework, software can be "sustainable by design", according to Deacon.

Explain Vista then! I kid, I kid...

Anyway, not everyone is buying it. But one panelist had an interesting observation about some budget software and their tendency to run amok on a system's resources.

I know, the Dow just shed another 500 points. Hardly the time to fell bullish about anything. Like everyone, I might drop dead at my keyboard if I start looking at the financial damage done to me personally.

But you'll find one somewhat upbeat fellow in these times, Public Service Electric and Gas' (PSE&G) president and COO, Ralph LaRossa. PSE&G is the utility that serves New Jersey.

He feels that despite the downturn, and what's shaping up to be an extended period of economic malaise, now is the time to invest in cleantech to better reap the rewards. New Jersey & Company tells us...

"The temptation at times like this is to hunker down, to take no risks, to delay investments until the economy somehow recovers on its own. But that, in my view, would be exactly the wrong path," LaRossa said.

"When we invest in energy efficiency, homeowners and businesses can save money for years, even decades. When we invest in solar power and wind power, we create green-collar jobs and answer the need to combat climate change. When we invest in modern transmission lines, we help to contain electricity costs and improve reliability. In each case, we are building a stronger and more productive economy," LaRossa said.

Pretty interesting to read.

You see, my home state of New Jersey (go ahead, I'll let you get some knocks in) is already in a tough economic spot. Nonetheless, PSE&G is going ahead with a pretty big (for us) offshore wind project which is expected to generate more employment once a couple of hurdles are cleared. And according to his calculations, any expenditures now will result in a net positive in more ways than one.

"Statewide, we believe there is room for $2 billion in efficiency investments over the next five years," LaRossa said. "That would create 2,200 good jobs. It would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 7 million tons over that period. And it would lower bills."

Here's hoping he's right.

Todd Muirhead at Dell Tech Center went ahead and installed the free, standalone edition of Hyper-V Server that Microsoft recently released. Here his description of the setup involved:

This video shows the installation of Hyper-V server on a Dell PowerEdge R805. The installation was done through a Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC) using the Virtual CD-ROM and remote console features. This enabled the installation to be done remotely and for the entire install to be captured as video.

The whole thing took 90 minutes. Luckily he edited it down to 5 watchable minutes (if you like that sort of thing). And the funky colors? That's a byproduct of the remote desktop console.

Watch it here or catch the YouTube video by clicking onward.

Energy efficient servers are all well and good, but Google tackles the datacenter first when it comes to power savings. In an InternetNews article, Andy Patrizio examines their way of thinking.

Every hardware vendor out there, from IBM on down is frantically looking for ways to cut power and heat in their products, but the datacenter building has not gotten as much attention. IBM has tried with its green datacenter efforts, but by and large, the building remains an overlooked issue.

Big mistake, because for every watt of power used by the computers, you will spend 0.96 watts to run the datacenter - in other words, requiring 0.96 watts of power for the facility itself for every 1 watt of power for computers. Google datacenters, on the other hand, are 21 percent of the cost. In some cases, it's as low as 15 percent.

Several elements work together to achieve these results, including maximizing airflow and water management. And at the end of the day, retired servers are repurposed, scavenged for parts or recycled.

More details here.

Boy Genius Report has what it claims are spy photos of Amazon's Kindle 2. If indeed real (they do look pretty convincing) then it's a major improvement over the polarizing design of the first one.

Here are just some of the updates:

Our ninja didn’t have a pocket ruler, but he said that the size of the display is approximately the exact same as the original Kindle even though at first glance it looks a little smaller. What might be a little troublesome is the fact that the battery does not look to be user-accessible, and there’s no more SD card slot. In the top left corner of the device, it gives you a display of how much memory is left, and our guy’s unit showed 1403 MB.

Head over to Boy Genius Report for more on the device and a gallery of fuzzy cameraphone-like pictures.

[via Gizmodo]

$4.4 trillion in any headline is a scandalous amount to read, especially nowadays. It leads to automatic skepticism, nevermind that it represents an amount spread over 22 years with payback trickling in as soon as some of the plan's elements come online.

It's ambitious, there's no denying that. But now that Congress is wrestling with $700 billion bailouts -- or rescue plan, whatever makes it easier to swallow -- those amounts don't seem to put the same scare into people that they once did.

So Google, well aware of the politics and economics of the times, is proposing ways to drastically cut carbon emissions by weaning America off oil and coal. But first, it helps to have some goals:

• Fossil fuel-based electricity generation by 88%

• Vehicle oil consumption by 38%

• Dependence on imported oil (currently 10 million barrels per day) by 33%

• Electricity-sector CO2 emissions by 95%

• Personal vehicle sector CO2 emissions by 38%

• US CO2 emissions overall by 48% (40% from today's CO2 emission level)

Getting there runs the gamut of familiar methods, including expanding alternative energy production, increasing vehicle fuel efficiency and overhauling the grid. And that costs money, a lot of it. But Google's financial analysis claims that the benefits outweigh the outlay.

The financial bottom line: Although the cost of the Clean Energy 2030 proposal is significant (about $4.4 trillion in undiscounted 2008 dollars), savings are even greater ($5.4 trillion), returning a net savings of $1.0 trillion over the 22-year life of the plan.

Another topic the plan touches on is the creation of green collar jobs. It can be debated that transitioning to clean energy is likely to just shift workforces around. But coal plants won't just disappear overnight, and during the multi-year transition, widening opportunities in the energy sector will expand payrolls.

According to the US Department of Energy, an additional 293 GW of of wind in 2030 will provide 476,000 jobs in the US (equivalent in size to about 25 Googles):

• 259,000 construction jobs each year
• 217,000 permanent operations jobs
• Broken down as:
• 150,000 direct employees
• 100,000 jobs in associated industries (e.g., accountants, lawyers, steel workers, and electrical manufacturing)
• 220,000 jobs through economic expansion based on local spending

Now, is it even achievable? Who knows.

Numbers, graphs, studies and analyses, even by the best and brightest, often get ripped to shreds in the grinding gears of socio-political systems. But if it makes economic sense for a conglomerate like the newly Buffett-backed GE to get behind Google and its smart-grid vision, it shows that industry, or some players at least, are willing to give it a go.

Hard drive maker Western Digital today announced that the company has begun shipments of its second-generation Caviar Green 3.5-inch hard drives in capacities of 500GB to 1TB.  What's more, they continue to drive energy efficiency.  The new drives consume 20 percent less power than their predecessors, just 5.4W during drive activity, 2.8W during idle and 0.4W during sleep and standby.

And it looks like the company's GreenPower products have been good for business.  In the twelve first months, Western Digital's green drives have surpassed 10 percent of their 3.5-inch drive shipments and have deemed them their fastest growing segment.

Western Digital's Caviar Green 1TB (WD10EADS) drive with 32MB cache sells for a cool $220.

The New York Times has a back-to-basics article on making sure that the machine you're using to read this keeps a modest carbon footprint during its useful life.  And when a little puff of smoke out the vents signals its end, there are also ways to make sure that it keeps giving instead of spending an eternity in a landfill (and leeching toxins into the ground in the meantime).

When it comes to recycling your computer, picking the right recycling company is critical. If done right, recyclers should reuse the parts they can and manage waste responsibly, which means making sure parts don’t go to countries with poor ecological track records, like China, and that items that do get exported (like circuit boards and leaded glass) go to green-friendly sites in developed nations. In 2005, used or unwanted electronics amounted to approximately 1.9 million to 2.2 million tons of waste in the United States. Of that number, about 1.7 million tons were dumped in landfills, and only 345,000 to 379,000 tons were recycled, according to the E.P.A.

But it is hard to be sure if the recycler is not dumping your PC behind your back. “There’s no such certification program,” adds Ms. Kyle of the TakeBack coalition, which helps promote responsible recycling and green design in the electronics industry. “At least our partner, Basel Action Network, puts the recyclers through initial screenings. Will people know 100 percent? No, but it’s the best thing right now.” Electronic TakeBack’s list of recyclers can be found at tinyurl.com/5yrb9k.

Read the rest here.