More than 2,000 Microgrids to be Deployed by 2015

January 26, 2010

Microgrids, which are “islanded” power generation and distribution zones that can operate autonomously from the larger electrical grid, are an increasing area of focus for institutions, governments, corporations, and utilities.  According to a recent report fromPike Research, a variety of trends are converging to create significant growth potential for microgrids, and the cleantech market intelligence firm forecasts that more than 2,000 sites will be operational worldwide by 2015, up from fewer than 100 in 2010.

“The distinguishing feature of a microgrid is the ability to separate and isolate itself from the utility’s distribution system during brownouts and blackouts,” says managing director Clint Wheelock.  “This degree of localized control is compelling for many microgrid proponents during this time of increasing concern over grid reliability.”

Out of the 2,000, one microgrid will be at the Ewing Industrial Park in Columbia, MO, the site where the Open Source Data Center Initiative ideas will be tested.

There is a lot of information in the report which you can buy here.

Key questions addressed:

• What is a “microgrid” and what are its key components and features?
• Why are inverters the key advance enabling microgrids to develop today despite opposition from many electric utilities?
• What are the key market drivers at the policy level – and why does the United States have the best near-term market opportunity?
• Why are microgrids inevitable if investments in a smart grid are accompanied by a paradigm shift from central station to distributed generation supply sources?
• Who are the big players – and new technology vendors – in the microgrid space, and what is their key role in developing this new energy market?

Who needs this report?

• Microgrid Developers
• Smart Grid Hardware and Software Providers
• Venture Capitalists
• Communities, institutions, and corporations interested in building their own microgrid
• Distribution Utilities worried about worker safety and market share issues
• Policy Makers examining new business models for renewable generation

Even though we could buy a copy of the report.  Our first preference is to develop things from scratch with an open source approach, then publish the results.  I would assume if we bought a copy of the report, we can't republish anything from it.  And, any ideas we come up with potentially could be limited given we bought a research publication.

Which means we most likely will not be buying any other research as it would limit our ability to publish.

In software engineering, a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.

I was reading Google's Warehouse Scale Computing document which can be daunting with its 120 pages of dense topics.  One of the points made which is an example of a design pattern is under the following conditions.

Key pieces of Google’s services have release cycles on the order of a couple of weeks compared to months or years for desktop software products. Google’s front-end Web server binaries, for example, are released on a weekly cycle, with nearly a thousand independent code changes checked in by hundreds of developers— the core of Google’s search services has been reimplemented nearly from scratch every 2 to 3
years.

This may not sound like your environment, but it is common in agile dynamic SW development at Google, start-ups and other leading edge IT shops.

Agile methods generally promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices intended to allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals.

The old way of purchasing IT hardware to support an application's SLA is a lower priority.  The new way is to add hardware capabilities to support the rapid innovation in SW development.

A beneficial side effect of this aggressive software deployment environment is that hardware architects are not necessarily burdened with having to provide good performance for immutable pieces of code. Instead, architects can consider the possibility of significant software rewrites to take advantage of new hardware capabilities or devices.

BTW, immutable in SW means which applies to many legacy systems.

In object-oriented and functional programming, an immutable object is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created. This is in contrast to a mutable object, which can be modified after it is created.

Problem: How to improve the performance per watt  in IT efficiencies with data center infrastructure and hardware?

Options:

1. Improve data center efficiency, aka PUE.
2. Buy more efficiency IT HW.
3. Improve HW utilization with virtualization and server consolidation.
4. Add new hardware capabilities that support the future of software.

Solution: even though 1 - 3 are typical, the efficiencies from #4 could be sizeable larger.  Some part of the data center and IT hardware should be designed for the future applications vs. making the future applications run on what the past applications require.

Examples of technologies are NVidia's GPU, solid state memory, startups with new hardware designs like www.tilera.com, and complete re-architecture of the data center system.

People are working on the complete re-architecture of the data center system as the performance per watt gains are huge.

How many data centers are designed for the current hardware vs the future? 50%, 75%, 90%, 95%, 98%

Should data centers be designed for a 5 year lifespan vs. 20 - 30 to support more rapid innovation?  Then, be upgradable?

Here is video by MSNBC.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here is the newly launch Navy Seal web site with twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and forums to improve the social networking connection.

And, a written interview with the Navy Seal command.

"The new site was created to improve the information that is available online about Naval Special Warfare careers so that young men who might be interested in joining have as much information as possible to help them make informed choices and prepare," Navy SEAL Cpt. Adam Curtis, director of Naval Special Warfare Recruiting, told OhMyGov. "We want young men in our target audience to interact with us. Social networking sites provide a platform for that interaction. We can post information on Facebook, and our audience can let us know, in real time, what they think of it."

Another benefit to social networking is the ability to ask questions and hear thoughts from not only recruiters, but people going through the same decision making process. This interaction keeps people "engaged" as Cpt. Curtis said, helping those interested to decide better if a career as a Navy SEAL is for them.

Also included on the site is a PDF attachment of the SEALs Physical Training Guide, including nutrition information, and strength guides for swimming, running, and injury prevention. Plus, you can take the SEALs PST calculator to see if you could really hack it through basic training.

All of these Web features are designed to help young men understand more about the SEALs program, and how to prepare for the training better than ever before without knowing a SEAL personally.

I am sure there are many ex-Seals who question the next approach, but the Navy Seal command recognized it needed to grow faster. The old way was too slow.

How can you get 400 megawatts?  Here is a summary of the power sources available.

In Summary, Ewing Business Park is within 50 miles of about 2500 MGW of redundant power generation capacity including Thomas Hill Coal(1153MGW), Ameren Fulton Nuclear at reform Missouri( 1159MGW), Ameren Hydro at Bagnell Dam(215 MGW), City of Columbia coal/biomass(39MGW), City of Columbia /Ameren natural gas(140MGW), and Associated natural gas(60MGW).  The Ewing Site has numerous redundant feeds and suppliers to this power supply.

Thomas Hill Coal power.

Thomas Hill Energy Center key to providing low-cost energy

Thomas Hill Power Plant

Plant statistics

Unit 1 - 1966 General Electric turbine
Net capacity of 180 MW
Coal burn rate of 2,325 tons/day

Unit 2 - 1969 Westinghouse turbine
Net capacity of 303 MW
Coal burn rate of 3,476 tons/day

Unit 3 - 1982 Westinghouse turbine
Net capacity of 670 MW
Coal burn rate of 8,660 tons/day

The Thomas Hill Energy Center is comprised of three electrical generating units, built from 1966 to 1982 and totaling 1,153 megawatts, and a coal mine that is actively being reclaimed after closing in 1993.

AECI employs about 260 people at the Thomas Hill Energy Center, which has received national recognition for its efficiency and successful conversion to low-sulfur coal that significantly reduced sulfur dioxide emissions.

AECI also will achieve a system wide nitrogen oxides emission rate reduction of nearly 90 percent with completion in December 2008 of its $424 million environmental controls project at Thomas Hill to meet the Clean Air Interstate Rule.

Ameren Callaway Nuclear

Plant Profile

Location

The plant is located 10 miles southeast of Fulton, Missouri, in Callaway County; 25 miles northeast of Jefferson City, Missouri; 40 miles southeast of Columbia, Missouri; 100 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri; and 120 miles east of Kansas City, Missouri.

Plant Design

Standardized Nuclear Unit Power Plant System (SNUPPS), using a Westinghouse four-loop pressurized reactor and a General Electric turbine-generator.

Generating Capacity

1,190 megawatts (net)

Bagnell Dam

Bagnell Dam impounds the Osage River in the U.S. state of Missouri, creating the Lake of the Ozarks. The 148-foot (45 m) tall concrete gravity dam was built by the Union Electric Company (now AmerenUE) for the purpose of hydroelectricpower generation as its Osage Powerplant. It is 2,543 feet (775 m) long, including a 520-foot (160 m) long spillway and a 511-foot (156 m) long power station. The facility with eight generators has a maximum capacity of 215 megawatts.

Here is more information about the site providing the Ewing Industrial Park engineering team.

The background on the availability is actually quite simple. Ewing Business Park is served electric by the city of Columbia Missouri. They are a member of MISO which is the Midwest independent transmission service operator.  The city has purchase/supply transmission agreements with Associated Electric and Ameren.  The city also generates some of their own power.  Currently Ewing Business park  is bisected by a 345 kV line, and served by Numerous 161 kV lines, and numerous 69kV lines.   Ewing business Park is directly adjacent to a large city owned regional substation called the Bolstad Sub station. The city has indicted that the Bolstad could serve immediate 100 MGW right now to the Ewing Park with their own infrastructure and purchase arrangements up to 200 MGW if planned.  There are 4 other regional substations owned by the City and Central Electric ranging from ½ mile to 4 miles. These substations are tapped to ameren feeders in some cases. This Bolstad substation is directly adjacent to a 140 MGW natural gas fired power plant. (1) This power plant is referred to as the Columbia Energy Center or CEC.  This power plant is currently operated as peaking plant that can fire up to 90% capacity quickly.  The ownership of this plant is the city of Columbia and Ameren energy.  The city has taken the recent steps to acquire total remaining ownership of the power plant.  The city has a 39 MGW coal/wood biomass fired plant about 5 miles away.  (2) .  Associated Electric has a large Coal fired power plant just 40 miles away. It is a 1153 MGW coal fired facility.    The Bolstad connection to this power plant is a direct 161 kV transmission line with no other taps.  This line is 50 % owned by the city of Columbia and 50% by Central Electric (the wholesale transmission provider for associated). Todd Culley with Boone Electric and Ralph Schulte with Central Electric stated that Associated can serve “ 200 MGW without a phone call to the city of Columbia Ewing site ”. They said they could easily provide 400 MGW with some notice. (3)

Let me further explain

In addition to this transmission line directly from Thomas hill, there is another redundant 161 kV line that comes from the Kingdom city Substation 16 miles away which is directly fed by the Thomas Hill 345 kV line that serves that Kingdom City Substation.  In addition, to these two large independent transmission line feeders, Thomas Hill has another independent 69 kV transmission line that comes from the power plant that serves the city and Ewing from the large Prathersville substation that is 2 miles away from Ewing. (4)  Associated has a natural gas fired power plant Called the Chamois Plant ( 60 MGW) about 40 miles away.  It feeds Columbia by way of one 161 kV line and 2 -69 kV lines.  All but one of these lines land at the Central/ Columbia Boone Sub on the south side of Columbia.  This sub is about 12 miles from Ewing but the interesting thing is that the City has a 161 kV and a 69kV that both run around the east side of town and come to the Bolstad Substation directly from this Main transmission Tap. (5) From the Chamois plant the independent pathway 161 kV hits the Same Boone sub but from an independent pathway from the east. 

Ameren UE has the 345 kV line that bisects Ewing.  It does not have a substation off of it at Ewing but lands on the west side of Columbia at the Overton Substation about 19 miles away.  There are 161 kV and 69 kV lines that then extend to Bolstad that are considered independent feeders.  Ameren Would not state their capcity to serve publically from this line but currently they did say they could serve 200 MGW easily from the 345 kV line. (6)  Ameren has Bagnell dam hydro electric power plant 50 miles away.  It is rated at 215 MGW.  The main services form this plant are through Associated’s  69kV line and Ameren’s 161 kV line that also goes to the overton sub.(7) Ameren has a Nuclear Power Plant 30 miles away at Fulton mo. .  It is 1159 MGW.    Bolstad serves the Fulton area by a direct  69 kV line. (8).

The Orbiting Carbon Observation (OCO) satellite developed by NASA/JPL was supposed to do this, but it crashed after launch on Feb 24, 2009.

Scientists to NASA: We Need A Reliable Way to Track Global Emissions - 07.31.2009

By Keith Johnson

Forget all the haggling with China, India, and parts of the U.S. Congress—the real obstacle to a global climate-change treaty might be accurately measuring greenhouse-gas emissions in the first place.

That’s the warning from the National Academy of Science’s National Research Council to the head of NASA. The upshot? Without a sophisticated satellite that can track global emissions, it will be hard to know what everybody is really up to: “[C]urrent methods for estimating greenhouse gas emissions have limitations for monitoring a climate treaty.”

NASA had such a sophisticated satellite—the Orbiting Carbon Observatory—which failed to reach orbit in February. The space agency is considering trying again—thus the letter from the NAS pointing out just how useful such satellites can be.

The monitoring in OCO was simple.

The satellite carried a single instrument that would have taken the most precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide ever made from space. The instrument consisted of three parallel, high-resolution spectrometers, integrated into a common structure and fed by a common telescope. The spectrometers would have made simultaneous measurements of the carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen absorption of sunlight reflected off the same location on Earth’s surface when viewed in the near-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, invisible to the human eye.

Here is a video that gives you background on the OCO satellite

The Economist discusses the issue of monitoring greenhouse gases in length.

Monitoring greenhouse gases

Highs and lows

You might think that measuring the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would be a priority. If you did think that, though, you would be wrong

Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN NEGOTIATIONS on nuclear weapons the preferred stance is “Trust but verify”. In negotiations on climate change there seems little opportunity for either. Trust, as anyone who attended last year’s summit in Copenhagen can attest, is in the shortest of supplies. So, too, is verification.

Barack Obama was asked when he was in Copenhagen whether a provision by which countries could peek into each others’ assessment processes was strong enough to be sure there was no cheating. He answered reassuringly that “we can actually monitor a lot of what takes place through satellite imagery”. That statement conjured up thoughts of the sort of cold-war satellite system that America used to identify and count Russian missiles. But the president was being a bit previous; at the moment, no such system exists, because America’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), a satellite that would have fulfilled the role, was lost on launch this time last year. The purpose of OCO was to work out the fate of carbon dioxide that is emitted by industrial processes but does not then stay in the atmosphere—about 60% of the total.

The Economist author points out the problem with the system.

America is planning to build a new OCO. In the meantime, however, a small group of scientists labours away on Earth, doing its best to monitor emissions at ground level. At the end of February a number of these researchers met at the Royal Society in London, to discuss what they were up to.

Measuring gas levels day in, day out can look a little humdrum to outsiders, including those who hold the purse strings. They tend to prefer scientists to experiment and test hypotheses, not just tally things. But that attitude galls the greenhouse-gas measurers, and not only because it denies them money. It also ignores the fact that careful measurement is a way of discovering new things, not just of checking the status quo. Monitoring is not just a necessary handmaiden of science—it is the real thing.

And, what people do in the short term.

Indeed, for all the noise that is made about climate change, much of this research is done with next to no money. Asked how she paid for her monitoring of various greenhouse gases in Baden Württemberg, Ingeborg Levin of Heidelberg University replied “by stealing”—meaning not that she robs banks, but that the monitoring work is cross-subsidised by grants intended for other studies.

How broken is the discussion on GHG that there is no world-wide GHG monitoring system?

Let's hope the NASA budget gets approved for OCO 2.

Proposed reflight

Three days after the failed February 2009 launch, the OCO science team sent NASA headquarters a proposal to build and launch an OCO "carbon copy", which planned to have the replacement satellite launched by late 2011.^[16] On February 1st, 2010, the FY 2010 NASA budget request did include US$170 million for NASA to develop and fly a replacement for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.^[17]

MARCH 04, 2010

Platform shifts Mainframe to Mini to PC to Mobile. Why leaders fail to make the shift

Platform shifts happen every decade or so in computing. The leaders of the previous generation are rarely successful in dominating the next generation platform. IBM dominated the mainframe business. They didn’t lose their dominance because another company built a better mainframe. They lost it because the market shifted to a new platform…Mini computers. Digital Equipment, Data General, and a few others dominated that market. Another platform shift is happening today, from PCs to Mobile devices, and another industry leader will be left behind. John Herlihy of Google Europesays “In three years time desktops will be irrelevant”

The issues for Innovator's Dillemma are referenced.

Why do leaders fail to adapt? The Innovators Dilemma, made famous by Clayton Christensen, clearly explains why market leaders fail to make the leap. Innovation usually happens at the low end of the market where the products are simple, prices are low, margins thin, and the market totally undefined. The industry leaders have great margins, high prices, and customers who want more features and are willing to pay for them. The industry leaders always move up market and leave the new emerging market to smaller innovators. The process usually follows these 6 steps;

1. The disruptive technology is discovered, often by the market leading company.
2. Marketing people seek reactions from customers and industry analysts.
3. Established companies decide it is a better strategy to speed up the pace of sustaining technical advancement in their own product rather than go down market with the disruptive technology.
4. Start-ups learn about the disruptive technology and see opportunity. They keep their cost structure low, build the technology, and find new markets through trial and error.
5. The start-ups get some initial success and then move up market and eat away customers from the market leading company.
6. The market leading company finally jumps on the bandwagon reluctantly with a half hearted attempt and fails. It is too late.

Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker is referenced.

Platform shifts have 10X the number of devices and users. The move to Mobile is big and fast. Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley says Mobile Internet usage is bigger than most people think, and it is exploding. Every platform shift has 10X the number of devices and users. There were about 1M mainframes, 10M mini-computers, 100M PCs, and 1 Billion cell phones. The next wave of mobile devices will be over 10B.

Mary Meeker's report has lots of good information in it.

Note the fast growth of Mobile Internet compared to other technologies

And, she makes the point I have seen few make which is spot on.  The growth of real-time wireless sensors.

I was talking to a Google developer brainstorming some mobile scenarios, and he laughed when i was going three steps beyond his ideas.  When we both worked at Microsoft we were talking about GPS data with photos in 2001, and people thought we were crazy - "that's too expensive and what would you do with GPS coordinates."  Make money!!!!

Google is all over this scenario.

What is the new publishing and distribution network for Mobile?

The Mobile's phone capabilities are less important and some young users look at phone calls as people who aren't with it.

I wrote 2 weeks ago about the idea maybe Facebook should have bought a Bloom Box to diffuse the decision that the company will buy coal based electricity.

Feb 22, 2010

Maybe Facebook should have bought a Bloom Box to diffuse Greenpeace’s campaign against a coal powered data center

Thanks to Matt Stansberry’s reporting on SearchDataCenter, attention was drawn to Facebook’s Prineville Data Center being coal powered.

Tiered energy rates bring higher prices for new customers
By 2012, BPA will charge tiered rates for power. Customers that signed 20-year contracts in 2008 will pay tier-one (i.e., inexpensive) pricing for their current electricity demand. These customers use most of the power produced by the dams.

Matt Stansberry broke the news on this topic and has demonstrated the force one person can have, especially a press writer. 

Greenpeace decided to start a Facebook page on getting Facebook to run their data center on 100% renewable energy.  They had a goal of 10,000 members of the group.  It was 6,700 on Feb 22, 2010.

There is even a Facebook site for this topic with over 6,700 users.

In 2 weeks it is now 138,279

Members

6 of 138,279 members See All

Liat Shoval

AyaMichaelovich

Leah GreenBen-Avraham

SébastienAertgeerts

RinatKorbet

MichalShimoni

How many more members will there be in 2 more weeks?

This gives a whole different way to think of the value of a green data center.  If Greenpeace is successful in getting Facebook to convert to 100% renewable energy and pay a premium over coal who is next?

I've always said the problem with data centers is they have big targets painted on them for environmentalist as they have high concentrations of electricity use and are run by rich companies.

After sitting in multiple presentations at conferences on energy efficiency and monitoring, I figured out that this was a futile effort to educate the masses.  The comparison I’ve used in consumer behavior terms is when you get your monthly bills how much effort do people spend on their credit card & bank bills vs. the utility bill.  Think about.  How many people spend even a tenth of the time on their utility bill vs. bank/credit card bills?

Why is smart grid in the consumer space popular?  It is easy for the media to talk about and relate to, making it a popular topic.  There are tons of appliance and electronic vendors who see the money to be made by selling smart grid features.  Utilities are viewed as progressive to come up with residential smart meter solutions.  Google and Microsoft are throwing efforts in as well.  Does this make residential the right one just because it is popular?

CNET news has an article that provides a perspective on the smart grid that supports the opportunity in commercial.

Businesses offer best path to money in smart grid

by Martin LaMonica

BOSTON--For consumers, the face of the smart grid is most likely to be a home energy monitor that gives people insight into home electricity use. But from a business perspective, there may be more action catering to business customers, rather than homeowners.

A panel of smart-grid company executives here at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen East conference on Tuesday said saving commercial, industrial, and business customers is an easier sell than helping consumers save on utility bills.

Images: The many faces of the smart grid

View the full gallery

Home energy monitoring systems and Web applications such as Google PowerMeter let people get details on where home electricity is going. But it's unclear at what point consumers are willing to make changes in their behavior based on that information.

And raises the issue of consumer behavior.

"I think we need to temper our expectations," said Tim Healy, the CEO of energy efficiency company EnerNoc. He noted an "apathy found by consulting company the Shelton Group, which found that consumers would be willing to spend $129 more a month on energy bills before taking actions, such as buying an EnergyStar appliance or scheduling dishwasher or dryer jobs to take advantage of off-peak rates. (Click for PDF of study.)

And, here is a big wake-up call from an Accenture survey.

Consumers Reject Lower Energy Use As The Answer to Reducing Reliance on Fossil Fuels and Energy Imports

Related Assets

March 09, 2010

Consumers call for strong government intervention in energy market

NEW YORK; March 9, 2010 – Three out of four consumers are concerned by energy and climate change issues, but nearly two thirds say that using less energy is not the answer to reducing reliance on fossil fuels or foreign energy supply, according to global research by Accenture (NYSE: ACN). The survey of 9,000 individuals in 22 countries also shows that almost nine out of ten consumers want more government intervention in the energy market.

The survey reveals this interesting consumer behavior.

· When asked why they think reducing reliance on fossil fuels is important, 60 percent of Americans say dependence on foreign oil while 26 percent say climate change and reducing emissions.

· Globally, 49 percent of respondents say lowering emissions is the chief reason to reduce dependence on fossil fuels while 32 percent say dependence on foreign oil.

· In the U.S., extreme concern for climate change declined to 36 percent from 53 percent in the past year.

· U.S. consumers see new forms of energy as a better solution than reducing demand, with 62 percent favoring alternatives and 38 percent favoring curbs on demand.

I am so glad i lowered my expectation in the residential scenario for energy efficiency.  Just because I turn off the lights, watch my energy consumption like a lot of you doesn’t mean the rest of the public will change their behavior.

There is no Prius badge people can wear by shaving their electricity use by 10-20%.

The act explicitly applies only to federal government agencies. These agencies are under several mandates to comply with public solicitation of information. Along with making public and accessible all bureaucratic and technical procedures for applying for documents from that agency, agencies are also subject to penalties for hindering the process of a petition for information. If “agency personnel acted arbitrarily or capriciously with respect to the withholding, [a] Special Counsel shall promptly initiate a proceeding to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted against the officer or employee who was primarily responsible for the withholding.” ^[6] In this way, there is recourse for one seeking information to go to a Federal court if suspicion of illegal tampering or delayed sending of records exists. However, there are nine exemptions, ranging from a withholding “specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy” and “trade secrets” to “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” ^[6]

The Electronic Freedom Foundation used this to get a copy of Apple’s iPhone SDK agreement reports NetworkWorld.

EFF publishes iPhone developer agreement

By Dan Moren, Macworld
March 09, 2010 02:02 PM ET

If you've followed the news of App Store rejections over the past couple years, you may have wondered what exactly is engraved upon the stone tablets that govern the terms of Apple's App Store and developing for the iPhone. The trouble is we haven't been able to tell you, as the agreement itself contains terms that prohibit publicly discussing it. But on Monday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) legally obtained and published a copy of the agreement for the first time.

In order to do so, it had to take advantage of a legal loophole. EFF noticed that NASA had created an application for the iPhone, and NASA--being a government agency--is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. EFF requested a copy of the SDK agreement and a revision dated March 17, 2009 was provided.

If you have confidential information you may want to think about your disclosures to federal gov’t agencies.

The author makes a closing statement.

For my part, as somebody writing about these issues, the most frustrating part of the agreement has been the ban on public statements. I can see why Apple believed it was in its interest to keep the agreement private, but in the long term I think it's done more harm than good, both in terms of contributing to the perception of Apple as overly secretive and by gagging developers from speaking publicly about their issues. Apple's platform remains wildly popular despite what some consider Byzantine restrictions--the company shouldn't be afraid of a little discussion.

And some of his points are why for the Open Source Data Center Initiative we are have adopted the practices of openness and transparency for what we will be doing.

Open source intelligence (OSINT) is a form of intelligence collection management that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence.

This description fits what I have been telling others about the various data center sources of information. 

“If there is a public publication of information, we are open to look at and provide feedback on the value we see in the information.”

Which is a pretty good description of how this blog has been run, commenting on public available information.

The description goes on to clarify the difference vs. open source software.

In the intelligence community (IC), the term "open" refers to overt, publicly available sources (as opposed to covert or classified sources); it is not related to open-source software or public intelligence.

Sources of information are:

OSINT includes a wide variety of information and sources:

• Media: newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and computer-based information.
• Web-based communities and user generated content: social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.
• Public data: government reports, official data such as budgets, demographics, hearings, legislative debates, press conferences, speeches, marine and aeronautical safety warnings, environmental impact statements and contract awards.

We have seen helicopters flying over Apple data centers, and world wide maps of Google data centers.

• Observation and reporting: amateur airplane spotters, radio monitors and satellite observers among many others have provided significant information not otherwise available. The availability of worldwide satellite photography, often of high resolution, on the Web (e.g., Google Earth) has expanded open source capabilities into areas formerly available only to major intelligence services.
• Professional and academic: conferences, symposia, professional associations, academic papers, and subject matter experts.^[1]
• Most information has geospatial dimensions, but many often overlook the geospatial side of OSINT: not all open source data is unstructured text. Examples of geospatial open source include hard and softcopy maps, atlases, gazetteers, port plans, gravity data, aeronautical data, navigation data, geodetic data, human terrain data (cultural and economic), environmental data, commercial imagery, LIDAR, hyper and multi-spectral data, airborne imagery, geo-names, geo-features, urban terrain, vertical obstruction data, boundary marker data, geospatial mashups, spatial databases, and web services. Most of the geospatial data mentioned above is integrated, analyzed, and syndicated using geospatial software like a Geographic Information System (GIS) not a browser per se.

OSINT is distinguished from research in that it applies the process of intelligence to create tailored knowledge supportive of a specific decision by a specific individual or group.^[2]

I wonder how much OSINT has started searching twitter and Facebook.

In the Open Source Data Center Initiative I anticipate we be using this type of description for what we will be doing.  Part of the challenge for the data center industry is there so much information out there, it is hard to make sense of it for an organization that doesn’t have a full staff of experienced professionals.

Here is where I got the idea for Open Source Intelligence.

Complimentary Online Seminar:

Real-Time Intelligence - Exploit Open Source Multimedia

Online Seminar

Real-Time Intelligence - Exploit Open Source Multimedia

Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: 11am Eastern; 8am Pacific
Duration: 1 Hour

Hello Dave,
Al Qaeda uses online videos to recruit and train. Other terrorist networks use audio files to disseminate messages. China circulates propaganda via video. The Internet is exploding with multimedia; streaming video, audio, images, PDFs and more. Open Source Intelligence needs to account for and take advantage of all advanced media types. But how?
Learn how you can:

• Capture streaming video for on-demand classification and detailed examination
• Automate extraction of multimediaOSINT and all contextual data
• Transform complex data sources into accurate information for advanced analysis

Please join this free online seminar and see a live demonstration of Kapow Technologies’ advanced web harvesting capabilities in use at US Intelligence Agencies, extracting from sites like YouTube, China.org, Al-Jazeera and MySpace.