Photo of before and after installation of Digital Lumens lighting system in Maines Paper & Food Service courtesy of Digital Lumens.

Digital Lumens reduced the cost of lighting for their first customer by 87%.

Digital Lumens specialise in high-bay lighting for warehouses, cold storage facilities, and manufacturing plants. This is a mostly invisible but very large segment. It is estimated that in the US alone, $5bn worth of lighting is sold into the supply chain sector every year.

Mike Feinstein, Digital Lumens’ VP of Sales and Marketing, told me on a recent call that they are very much a start-up company and that they have had their first revenues in this calendar year.

In a recent press release Digital Lumens reported that their first large-scale customer, Maines Paper & Food Service has reduced their energy requirements for lighting by 87% since installing the Digital Lumens lighting system. Up until now, Maines 500,000 sq ft (46,450 sq meters) warehouse was lit using sodium lights 24 x 7 and lighting costs made up around 20% of Maines total energy spend.

With the new system Maines expects to save 1,726,108kWh per year which, at a cost of US$0.0958 per kWh for industrial customers in New York, amounts to a $ saving of just over $165,000 per annum. This saving, combined with an incentive provided by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), means that Maines will recoup the cost of this project in less than a year!

I was fascinated with this story so I spoke to Pat DeOrdio, the VP of Operations for Maines.

Pat told me that Maines were doing a full analysis of their lighting to see how “we could reduce our kW off the grid and help with our Green initiatives” when they came across the Digital Lumens solution.

For Pat, what was particularly compelling about the intelligent lighting system was the management software which came with it

“With Digital Lumen’s lights, every one of them is like a little computer. It has its own IP address so we are able to control that lighting level – if we want to have the light turn off in 30 seconds, 60 seconds or when nobody’s in the aisle, you know, why do you want it lit? It gives us the ability to control the light level from a computer and it reduces our energy cost”

Of course another big advantage of the LED lights is the fact that they give out so much less heat. This is particularly important in large cold rooms and freezers because it reduces the workload on the chillers cooling the rooms

Three other big advantages Pat cited to the Digital Lumens’ solution were that:

1. They allowed lights to be turned down to a ‘nightlight mode’ – 10% light. This was important in the large warehouse setting for worker safety.
2. The total flexibility of the system means that, in Pat’s words “as we get used to it, maybe we’ll only turn the light up to 80%, cos that’s all the light level we’ll need” – allowing for further savings and
3. The colour of the light is much brighter now so the produce they are stocking even looks better!

LED lighting is making huge strides now in commercial settings. When the Sentry Equipment Corporation in Oconomowoc, Wis., was considering how to light its new factory, it decided to go with LED’s. From the New York Times report on the building:

By lighting all of the building’s exterior and most of its interior with L.E.D.’s, Sentry spent $12,000 more than the $6,000 needed to light the facility with a mixture of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. But using L.E.D.’s, the company is saving $7,000 a year in energy costs, will not need to change a bulb for 20 years and will recoup its additional investment in less than two years.

Kaj den Daas, chairman and chief executive of Philips Lighting, one of the largest manufacturers of lighting globally, in an interview two years ago said “We are not spending one dollar on research and development for compact fluorescents.” Instead, the bulk of its R.& D. budget, which is 5.2 percent of the company’s global lighting revenue, is for L.E.D. research. Philips is betting the store on the L.E.D. bulbs, which it expects to represent 20 percent of its professional lighting revenue in two years.

I love the idea of electric cars and have done for a long time.

Recently, one of my best friends Ray Flynn, proprietor of Flynns Garage (a Nissan Dealership in Carlow, Ireland), contacted me to let me know he is one of only 15 Nissan dealerships in Ireland who have been approved to sell the new all-electric Nissan Leaf. As such he had a limited number of slots available for a test drive and he wanted to know if I’d like one of them. I jumped at the chance!

The Leaf is a totally electric car relying completely on its 24 kW·h/90 kW lithium ion battery pack for power. The battery pack is rated to deliver 100 miles on a full charge but this can vary from about 62 miles (100 km) to almost 138 miles (222 km) depending on driving style, load, traffic conditions, weather (i.e. wind, atmospheric density) and accessory use.

Nissan Leaf under the hood

The car is a five seater with a spacious interior. It is very responsive to drive. My own car is a 2008 Toyota Prius and this is a much nippier car than the Prius. It handles well on the road and because there are 300kg of batteries under the floor, the car sticks to the road on corners!

Charge time varies on the type of charging (normal or fast) and whether the battery is fully depleted or only partially. Using a standard 220/240 volt 30 amp supply the battery can be fully charged in 8 hours. Fast charging using a 440V level 3 charger charges to 80% in around 20 minutes – these are typically the kinds of chargers you will see deployed in places like McDonalds, Tesco’s and motorway café’s I assume.

Nissan Leaf interior

There is a lot of technology built in to the car. It is connected to a global data center which provides support, information and entertainment at all times. The GPS navigation system delivers a constantly updating display of your range as well as showing all the charging stations on your route and it allows you to book a charging station to ensure that it is available when you arrive.

Mobile phone apps will allow remote turning on of aircon and heating as well as setting charging times to coincide with time of use rates from utilities. The advantage of turning on aircon/heating before getting to the car is to have it pre-heated/cooled while still connected to the mains to save on battery life.

Nissan Leaf rear spoiler with solar panels

It has a spacious boot and there is an option to get a rear spoiler with solar panels to trickle charge the auxiliary 12 volt battery, though, tbh this feels like a bit of a gimmick!

In terms of the main battery, Nissan has announced that it will warranty the battery pack in the Leaf for 8 years or 100,000 miles after which time Leaf batteries will still hold around 70-80% of their rated capacity. I suspect that there will be a significant market for slightly depleted car batteries at that point for home energy storage to better enable load shifting and smart grid applications.

The car I was driving is a pre-production model. Because the production lines are only now being set-up, this one was hand-made and is insured for a replacement value of £1.2 million! Consequently I drove it very carefully.

Conclusion: The Nissan Leaf is the future of motoring, no doubt. It is fast, affordable and very cheap to run. And that’s not taking into account at all, the environmental advantages of running a zero emissions car! Sure, there are limitations to having a car with a 100 mile range – most of these will be overcome by the roll-out of networks of fast-charging stations. After this test drive, I have no doubt that when it comes time to replace my Prius, my next car will be all-electric.

The Leaf goes on sale in Ireland in February 2011 at a price of €29,995 (after a €5,000 govt subsidy), in the UK in March 2011 for £28,990 and in the US in December for US$32,780.

And finally, if you are interested in going entirely zero-emissions with your motoring, my buddy Ray (mentioned above) has partnered with a solar panel company and they are able to offer a Nissan Leaf and the solar panels to charge it from. Now that’s serious awesomeness!

Photo credit tiffa130

And here, after a short break, are this week’s Green Numbers:

• US wind energy usage grows by 28%

  Consumption of electricity from wind rose by 28% between 2008 and 2009, according to the federal government’s annual energy report.

  tags: us wind energy renewables greennumbers

• Spanish companies have 9,210 MW of installed wind power outside Spain

  The installed capacity of Spain increased by 2,459 MW in 2009, reaching a total of 19,149 MW (these figures include both the activities of national and international operators). This way, wind energy rose as the third technology of the system with demand coverage of 14.4%, reaching peaks of over 50% on certain occasions. 

  tags: greennumbers spain wind wind energy installed capacity

• Three firms control 89% of US soft drink sales

  Three firms control 89% of US soft drink sales. This dominance is obscured from us by the appearance of numerous choices on retailer shelves. Steve Hannaford refers to this as “pseudovariety,” or the illusion of diversity, concealing a lack of real choice. To visualize the extent of pseudovariety in this industry we developed a cluster diagram to represent the number of soft drink brands and varieties found in the refrigerator cases of 94 Michigan retailers, along with their ownership connections.

  tags: soft drink sales coca cola pepsi dr pepper greennumbers

• €200m wind farm for Co Clare

  Clare County Council has given the go-ahead for construction on the largest community owned wind farm development in Ireland.

  The €200 million project will see West Clare Renewable Energy build 28 3MW wind turbines on a mountain slope between Ennis and Miltown Malbay, and will generate enough power to cover every home and business in Co Clare. Construction of the project will generate up to 300 jobs.

  tags: Clare County Council community owned wind farm greennumbers wind energy

• Indian Point Nuclear Plant’s Toll on River Stirs Debate

  Just beneath the wind-stippled surface of the Hudson River here, huge pipes suck enough water into the Indian Point nuclear plant every second to fill three Olympic swimming pools. And each second they take in dozens of organisms — fish and crabs, but mostly larvae — that are at the center of a $1.1 billion debate: should the plant have to put in cooling towers that would vastly reduce the intake of water?

  tags: greennumbers Nuclear Plant Indian Point cooling towers

• The Many Benefits of Smart Grid Investment

  A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  A power grid is only as secure and reliable as its most overloaded and vulnerable distribution areas.  A single point of failure can interrupt power for thousands, even millions of customers.  This flaw in our grid is becoming more apparent as electricity demand has increased quickly over the past few decades.  Since demand is outpacing the available supply of electricity generation capacity, power grid failures are becoming more common, but this need not be the case.  Smart grid technologies can efficiently schedule and redistribute electricity usage, smoothing the demand curve and reducing the peaks.  If we invest in smart grid technology, automating the detection of grid malfunctions before they become catastrophic, we will save billions of dollars a year.

  tags: greennumbers smart grid investment

• Maines Paper & Food Service Reduces Lighting Energy by 87% with Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System

  Digital Lumens today announced that Maines Paper & Food Service, Inc. has deployed the company’s Intelligent Lighting System in their 460,000 square foot headquarters in Conklin, New York, to slash energy use, improve light levels, and meet corporate sustainability targets.  Lighting-related energy use has dropped by 87%.  Maines expects to save 1,726,108 kWh per year (more than enough electricity to power 200 homes for a year), and 1,240 metric tons of CO2.

  tags: Digital Lumens Intelligent Lighting System led lighting greennumbers

• CSC Baseline Data: Server Productivity – 4.7% of servers totally unproductive

  As we collected baseline data for our first and second group of servers, we have been able to pull together some initial reports for our NightWatchman Server Edition case study environment.  Taking into account that we have a few servers that are not yet up and running with the software, it is worth noting that these are preliminary reports, but it is interesting to see what the data will look like and how it will help us begin to develop a plan in order to put the data to best use.
  In this blog we’ll share the first set of reports around server utilization. Here is the information we pulled from the tool around our pilot servers:

  tags: greennumbers 1e csc NightWatchman Server Edition

• China’s 45 Billion Disposable Chopsticks Require 100 Acres of Forests Every 24 Hours

  Apparently China’s Ministry of Commerce has had it with disposable chopsticks. It sent out a warning to chopstick makers in June to warn them that: “Production, circulation and recycling of disposable chopsticks should be more strictly supervised.” The reason? With about 45 billion disposable chopstick pairs made every year in the country, or about 130 million a day, a lot of wood is being wasted, and that in a country that is trying to increase its forest coverage (from about 8% in 1949 to 12-13% today, compared to 30% for the USA).

  tags: china chopsticks greennumbers disposable chopsticks forests wood

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I recently had an opportunity to interview Dr Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, Canada about Smart Grid data privacy. Commissioner Cavoukian has written and presented extensively about Smart Grid privacy. She is also the author of a white paper on Smart Grid privacy called SmartPrivacy for the Smart Grid and Dr. Cavoukian partnered with two major utilities to develop a practical roadmap for utilities to achieve the gold standard in data protection (Privacy by Design: Achieving the Gold Standard in Data Protection for the Smart Grid).

Here is the full transcription of our chat:

Tom Raftery: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Smart Grid Heavy Hitter Series. My guest on the program, today, is Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario. Commissioner, I’m curious, why is the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario concerned about Smart Grids?

Commissioner Cavoukian: Well, I always say that in order to protect the privacy of the citizens of Ontario, I have to protect the privacy of people anywhere in the world. Privacy knows no bounds and technology transcends jurisdiction. So, whatever new technologies arise that have privacy implications, we need to get right in there and ensure as much as we can that protections are built into, especially, new technologies and new developments like the smart grid. The ideal opportunity to protect privacy is at the outset and ideally embed privacy into the design of new technologies like the smart grid.

Tom Raftery: Why is there a concern at all about privacy and smart grids? What’s the danger?

Commissioner Cavoukian: Anytime that there’s the possibility of collecting personally identifiable information either directly or through some data linkage to it, privacy enters into the equation.

So, with the smart grid you start with smart meters. And I should tell you that here in Toronto, Ontario we are leading in the smart grid, smart meter applications. By the end of this year, all houses in Toronto will have smart grids and in Ontario by the end of 2012. So, it’s widespread application.

Now, what smart girds enable the utility to do is to on a real time basis go in to your home and give you a very clear indication of your electricity usage, which is very good because it will promote energy consumption reduction, and a number of other programs – this is all very positive. As long as the information is kept between the electrical utility and the consumer, there’s no issue. It’s no different than now so to speak.

However, with the possibility of third parties being interested in this information, the possibility of unauthorized data usage of this information there’s link to an identifiable individual and with the growth of smart appliances – your computer, your television, your refrigerator; everything is going to be telling you and telling the utility what you’re doing, when you’re doing at, at what times – this introduces a whole new element of potential profiling of a consumer’s activities within the household, which is after all your castle, right? Your home is sacrosanct.

No one has been able to peer into the activities within the home before now. They’ll be able to do that. So, we have to ensure that this information is protected like Fort Knox.

Tom Raftery: How widespread are the concerns? How many people are aware that this is an issue and how are people trying to deal with that issue?

Commissioner Cavoukian: And you are absolutely right. About a year, a year-and-a-half ago I did an article. And I call privacy the sleeper issue of the smart grid; because certainly last year not a lot of activity associated with this area, but I can tell you that in the past year the interest has grown dramatically.

In Canada, we have jurisdiction over electrical utilities. So, I’ve been working with Hydro One, here, in Ontario, Canada and Toronto Hydro and they not only understand the issues, of course, they’re regulated. I oversee complaints with these two utilities; however, I want to tell people – don’t rely on regulation.

I want to exceed regulation. I want appeal to electrical utilities that in order for the smart grid to work you need consumers to sign up and to become involved, you need to build trust and consumer confidence.

The way you do that is by ensuring that they know what you’re doing as an utility, they know what information you have from them, and most important, you are not going to disclose this information, you’re not going to share it with any third parties without their consent – this is big.

So, my appeal to utilities, and I’ve been working with utilities throughout North America and the US Smart Grid Alliance. I’m an active member there.

My pitch to them, is do this because it’s good for your utility, because you want to get the buy-in of consumers, you want to get their cooperation, you must have their trust, you must have their confidence.

So, by embedding privacy into the design of the smart grid you will be able to grow your smart grid in a way that attracts more consumers to it and that’s the win-win proposition of this.

Tom Raftery: It’s great that you’re telling utilities this. What are they actually doing? Are they taking what you say on board, are they saying, “Oh! Commissioner, Cavoukian is a nut case and we’ll just put her concerns to one side,” or are there a range of reactions?

Commissioner Cavoukian: Well, I am sure it is some of them think I am a nut case, I give you that, but I think the majority the ones who have reached out to us have been actually quite positive about our approach.

They’ve actually given me a complement and they’ve said, “You’re not like most regulators we know.” And I take that as a complement, because once there’s — my message to utilities and to everyone is do a positive-sum paradigm not a zero-sum paradigm.

By that, I mean, I definitely want you always to protect the privacy. I don’t care if you’re the private sector, the public sector. If you’re doing individual’s personally identifiable information you must protect that information.

However, I don’t say protected to the exclusion of your own interests, your business interests. You have a business model, it has to survive, and hopefully strive. In this case, with the smart gird electrical utilities want to grow this in an effort to promote conservation of energy, grow green programs, reduce reduction, consumption of energy, empowering your users your users. We are all for that; so we’re not doing this — we’re not saying protect the privacy to the exclusion of those interests, not at all.

We’re saying you can do both. We show you how to do both by embedding privacy into the design of the smart grid, and I should tell you it’s at the ideal time. This is the time to do it when you’re at the nascent stage. It’s at it’s infancy, the smart grid development, starting with the smart meters and I’m not giving you a pie in the sky. I’m telling you how to do it in a very defined way. We’ve worked with Hydro One, for example, and Toronto Hydro.

We have two papers that we’ve produced that are available on our website. This one, the latest one with Hydro One is called, “Achieving the Gold Standard in Data Protection for the Smart Grid”.

So, we’re trying to get people to reach for the sky on this in terms of doing it now, embed privacy, and we tell you how to do it. This is best practices on exactly how to do it and we do it in partnership with an electrical utility. So, we give you the road map on how to do this and also respect privacy and enhance your business interests, positive-sum win-win.

Tom Raftery: Commissioner, we’re running low on time, so one final question. Is there anything about privacy on smart grids that I haven’t asked you that you would like to address?

Commissioner Cavoukian: Just one final point for the people listening to this. I would like them to view the smart grid and how to protect information in a way that is not the usual ‘who owns the data’. The question of ownership often comes up and I’m going to suggest to you that’s the wrong language to frame this in.

When you talk about privacy and personally identifiable information, data protection you use the language sort of bundles of rights associated with that information. It’s the language of custody and control of the information as opposed to ownership; because it’ll be easy for the utility to say, “You know, it’s our data, we collect it, and then you get mired into this whole legalese about who owns the data. It’s not one of ownership.

Of course, the utility is collecting the data, they’re providing a service to consumers, and there’s an exchange of information. I think it’s better to talk about what obligations and duties are associated with that.

So, for a utility, who has custody and control over the data they also have a duty of care and obligations with respect to protecting that data, they have a duty of care, confidentiality, and ensuring that the consumer not only knows what you’re doing. So, you’re transparent with respect to your practices, but they have access to their own data and ideally they have full ability to say no, no third party use of its data unless I consent to it.

That’s the Gold Standard and that’s what I’m hoping that, that language will be embraced in this area.

Tom Raftery: Commissioner, thanks a million for coming on the show.

Photo credit Dale Smith

I’m heading off on holidays to Ireland tomorrow (Aug 5th) until the 17th – so expect the posting frequency here to slow down dramatically for the next two weeks!

Hopefully we’ll have better than above but I have lived in Ireland so I’m not optimistic

Have a great (Green) one and see you all in a couple of weeks.

Tom.

Photo credit Lauren Manning

And here are this week’s Green Numbers:

• GE: Good citizen, but where’s the payoff?

  Inside GE, Ecomagination is deemed a success, so much so that it has spawned a sister initiative (if you can spawn a sister) called Healthymagination, focused on profitably creating better health for more people. GE says that it expects Ecomagination product revenues to grow at twice the rate of GE’s overall revenue between now and 2015.

  The logic behind both initiatives is simple, Bob noted. Big global problems demand big solutions from big companies. GE prides itself on “tackling the world’s most complex and pressing problems,” as chief executive Jeff Immelt writes in the report.

  The trouble is, the payoff for GE’s shareholders have been disappointing. I didn’t realize just how disappointing until I put together this chart comparing GE’s stock-price performance to the S&P500 and to a couple of its conglomerate competitors, Siemens and United Technologies.

  tags: ge ecomagination healthymagination greennumbers

• GE invests in SynapSense to cut data center energy

  General Electric on Monday said it will invest in and partner with SynapSense, a start-up that makes a system for reducing data center energy with the help of wireless sensors.

  tags: ge synapsense data center energy management systems greennumbers

• HP first to use TPC power usage benchmark

  The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) has added a power efficiency metric, TPC-Energy, to its ongoing roundups of speedy transactional processing systems. Hewlett-Packard is the first participant to use the new TPC-Energy specification, submitting benchmark results of four of its systems.

  “Energy is an increasing factor in the total cost of ownership” for many organisations, said Karl Huppler, chairman of the TPC. The new benchmark will allow an organisation to judge how energy efficient systems are, as judged by watts per performance.

  tags: Transaction Processing Performance Council greennumbers energy efficient TPC-Energy energy watts per performance

• US Wastes $200 Billion on Environmentally Damaging Subsidies

  A new report by the Green Scissors Campaign details some $200 billion worth of yearly US government subsidies that the coalition says are “wasteful to taxpayers, harmful to the environment and bad for consumers.” Green Scissors 2010 [PDF] covers four broad areas in which these subsidies occur– energy, agriculture and biofuels, infrastructure, and public lands.

  tags: Green Scissors Campaign greennumbers subsidies energy agriculture biofuels infrastructure public lands

• Engineers race to design 10MW offshore wind turbines

  British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines – giant, 10MW offshore machines twice the size and power of anything seen before – that could transform the global energy market because of their economies of scale.

  tags: wind turbines offshore Aerogenerator 10mw greennumbers

• New report shows how greening our Royal Bank of Scotland could create 50,000 jobs

  A new WDM/PLATFORM report released today finds that transforming the Royal Bank of Scotland into the Green Investment Bank would kick start the green energy revolution.  The research, by former Pricewaterhouse Coopers consultant, James Leaton, finds that it would bring 50,000 new green jobs a year, boost the UK economy, reduce the UK’s carbon emissions and improve international competitiveness – whilst not increasing the budget deficit.

  tags: Royal Bank of Scotland rbs greennumbers Green Investment Bank carbon emissions jobs

• Plankton declines 40% as Warming Oceans Causes Steady Population Decline

  The warming temperatures of the ocean are problematic for many species, but especially worrisome is the impact hotter water has on cornerstone species upon which many other marine animals rely. Usually we hear about changes in ocean temperature impacting coral reefs, but now scientists are finding that across the globe, phytoplankton — the food for zooplankton which is food for many other ocean species — is in decline, and that will have massive impacts for not just the marine food chain but ocean systems on the whole.

  tags: plankton phytoplankton greennumbers climate change global warming ocean acidification

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Photo Credit Ryan Somma

We received an email in GreenMonk today which really piqued my interest. It was from Katherine Hui and she talked about a project she is working on with Forum for the Future called Gate Crashing the Energy Sector.

Rather than trying to paraphrase, I’ll just let Katee tell it in her own words:

I’m Katee and Chris Adams suggested I get in touch with you about a project I’m working on with Forum for the Future.

It’s called Gate Crashing the Energy Sector and it’s basically getting people to come up with new ideas and ways of providing/distributing/producing/etc. energy.

Here’s more info:

Gatecrashing the energy sector is about creating a sustainable energy system and prevent the worst impacts of climate change. We need to urgently develop radically different ways of generating, distributing, storing and using energy.
History shows us that real disruption rarely comes from within a system and the energy sector in the UK is currently dominated by powerful incumbents, the majority of whom are wedded to the current system. So, we are embarking on an exciting new project to invite people to ‘gatecrash’ the energy sector and create disruption by bringing expertise and ideas from outside.

Over the next 5 months we will be bringing together people from a range of disciplines and organisations to generate new ideas and prototype alternatives to current systems. We are reaching out to anyone with an interest in creating disruption in the energy sector; from multinational ICT companies and home tinkerers to social entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Through a series of events and prototyping workshops we hope to generate and support alternatives. Our aim is to produce 3-4 projects that we can showcase in 2011 – these might be working prototypes or detailed business plans but will be at a stage where they can been seen as genuine alternatives to current systems. The conversations have begun with people wanting to get involved and we will hold the first of a series of events in September.

Is this something you’d be interested in getting involved with or know people that may want to get invovled? More info is up here: http://katee.org/?p=641 and we’re @lightbulbmoment on twitter.

Thanks so much for your time!

Given that GreenMonk’s tagline is Green from the roots up and Sustainable from the top down and also given our close association with HomeCamp – you know this is right up our street.

We look forward to working with Katee and Forum for the Future on this – and if you are interested, why don’t you get involved too? Let’s Gate Crash the energy sector!

You should follow me on Twitter here.

I was lucky enough recently to meet Jose Iglesias, the guy spearheading Symantec’s sustainability efforts. I wrote the interview up over on Monkchips, but much of the content belongs here too. I like Symantec’s clear focus on energy. While others are broadening their sustainability story, Symantec is doubling down on managing energy more effectively, with a plan to take its expertise in reducing IT power consumption and start applying it to broader Smart Grid demand response.

Symantec’s Green IT story is very much an enterprise play and arguably a solid sustainability product strategy could help to increase visibility for some of Symantec’s enterprise tools. Thus for example – Symantec NetBackup PureDisk for storage deduplication could be used to cut the amount of storage and power. One challenge for Symantec is identifying and serving the new buyers in energy reduction. Most of the firm’s traditional practitioner purchasers are not tasked with reducing the energy footprint of the products they manage….

“We sell to admins, but few get compensated on energy savings”

To which I would say… not yet.

Smart Grid as Game Changer

One major opportunity for Symantec to change the account management game there is to parlay its IT experience directly into related spaces such as Smart Grid security and asset management. I knew before the briefing that Symantec is having some early success in the Smart Grid market selling, for example, cryptography. Security is a major issue overhanging smart grid and remains a key selling point.

I am not a fan of FUD though it certainly works. But let’s get real. In Europe for example we’re getting all excited about the need for smart grid standards to prevent tampering with our energy supply. Yet Russia could turn off a gas tap and we’d be screwed within weeks, no smart grid required. Whichever way you look at it – energy reduction is going to be very big business indeed. The tail is starting to wag the dog.

So Symantec has plenty of potential upside in Green IT near term, and smart grids longer term. If you’re interested in learning more about the company’s efforts and products in energy efficiency check out the Monkchips post, which also talk to the fact the firm needs to improve its sustainability reporting in order to have a stronger voice in the sustainability conversation. I know many of you are CSR reporting nuts…

Photo credit tiffa130

And here are this week’s Green Numbers:

• Khosla-Backed Calera Scoops Up $19M for Carbon Recycling

  Calera Corp., a startup working to capture emissions from industrial flues and recycle it into pavement and building materials, has made it to the second phase of a competitive government program for carbon capture projects. The Department of Energy announced on Thursday that it will invest nearly $19.9 million in stimulus funds to help Calera design, build and deploy a system for churning out carbon-fed cement and aggregates at pilot scale.

  tags: calera greennumbers emissions building materials carbon capture Department of Energy

• DOE Awards Up to $122M for Making Fuel from Sunlight

  Revolutionary — that’s how the Department of Energy describes the methods for generating fuels directly from sunlight that the agency hopes will emerge from a new project in California. The DOE announced on Thursday morning that it will award up to $122 million over five years to a team of scientists in a so-called “Energy Innovation Hub” dedicated to simulating the natural process of photosynthesis and using it for “practical energy production.”

  tags: Department of Energy sunlight greennumbers photosynthesis “Energy Innovation Hub”

• Gamesa to build three wind farms in Castile-Leon for a local wind power developer, with aggregate capacity of 140.6 MW

  Gamesa has signed an agreement with Esquilvent, a wind power developer from Castile-Leon for the construction of three wind farms with aggregate capacity of 140.6 MW in the town of Ampudia in Palencia (Castile-Leon, Spain).  

  The contract encompasses execution of the wind farms’ electrical installations and the civil engineering work as well as the supply, assembly, installation, start-up and maintenance of 75 Gamesa G90 turbines. Under the terms of the agreement, Gamesa will operate the facility and provide maintenance services for a five-year period.

  tags: gamesa greennumbers Esquilvent wind farms

• Terra-Gen Bags $1.2B for Massive Southern California Wind Farm – NYTimes.com

  Terra-Gen Power, a major developer of wind, solar and geothermal energy projects in the U.S., is $1.2 billion closer to building the country’s largest wind farm. This new capital, announced today, will help the company aggregate 570 megawatts-worth of power at its Alta Wind Energy Center site in Kern County, Calif.

  This new capacity, composed of four separate projects, will be added to existing installations at the Center (150 megawatts-worth of turbines built by General Electric), which is expected to reach 3,000 megawatts — the largest amount produced at any one wind facility in the U.S. Terra-Gen will be buying 190 new turbines from Vestas-American Wind Technology.

  tags: Terra-Gen Power greennumbers Alta Wind Energy Center wind farm

• European Industry leaders welcome possible 30% reduction in emissions

  CEOs from twenty-seven of Europe’s largest companies positively welcomed the call by environment ministers in France, Germany and the UK, made on 15 July via the press, for the EU to adopt a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (over 1990 levels) by 2020 (see Europolitics4021). This message was also conveyed by the OECD, whose recent analysis illustrates the advantages from which the European economy could benefit if the EU were to decide to make this effort.

  tags: emissions reduction target 30% greennumbers greenhouse gas emissions

• UK’s 30 per cent emissions call gets widespread support from private sector

  Major companies operating in the UK have come out in support of energy secretary Chris Huhne’s call to increase the emissions reduction target to 30 per cent before 2020, up from the current 20 per cent aim.

  In a letter to the Financial Times, chairman and CEO’s of 27 leading companies including Lloyds Banking Group, renewable energy project development company Acciona and energy utility Centrica said the UK, French and German ministers were right to demand an increase to today’s targets.

  tags: emissions cuts 30% Chris Huhne emissions reduction target greennumbers

• Google Energy’s 20 year 114MW green power purchase

  Google is officially in the green energy business. The search giant announced on Tuesday that its Google Energy subsidiary signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy. Google will begin buying 114 megawatts of electricity from an Iowa wind farm on July 30.

  Google, of course, cannot directly use the clean green energy generated by the wind farm; that power goes into the local grid. So Google Energy will sell the power on the regional spot market, where utilities and electricity retailers go to buy power when demand spikes and they have a shortfall. Google will use the revenue from spot market sales to buy renewable energy certificates (RECs) which will offset its greenhouse gas emissions.

  tags: google google energy greennumbers wind energy wind farm NextEra Energy renewable energy certificates

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

GE published a U.S. Consumer Impressions of the Smart Grid [pdf] survey* recently.

I spoke to the general manager of Metering and Sensing Systems for GE’s Digital Energy business, Luke Clemente about the survey and he told me that the main points of the survey were:

• 96% of Americans who are familiar with the smart grid are overwhelmingly positive about the technology and what it will do for the country
• while only 2% thought that smart grid was not a smart investment by utilities and/or consumers
• 80% of U.S. consumers are excited about upgrading the electrical network with smart grid so that their country can rely more on clean domestic energy sources
• 78% think that the smart grid would help reduce the number of power outages and restore power more quickly when outages do occur
• 74% understand that the smart grid will give them the info they need to make better decisions about electricity usage
• 72% think the smart grid will help them save money on their monthly bills
• 63% believe the smart grid will create new jobs in the energy sector
• 66% agree they would buy smart appliances and other in-home devices to maximize their control over energy once smart grid rolls out in their community

In our follow-up conversation Luke said

One of the awareness issues which needs to be driven, is that it does cost more to generate electricity at two o’clock in the afternoon than it does at 2am. To the extent that we can shift our use of energy to less intensive times, that will end up driving better utilisation of the grid and better economics

Luke went on to mention the Department of Energy’s year-long study which showed that consumers, when given information on their electricity consumption, reduced their bills by 10% and reduced peak demand by 15%.

There are three crucial points here –
consumers have quite a positive attitude to Smart Grids
consumers will adjust their behaviour when given information related to their energy use and
that response is good for the grid (and by extension, for its users).

We have seen some instances where utilities failure to communicate effectively with their customers has led to blowback against Smart Meter and Smart Grid projects.

However, as this survey shows, overall consumer sentiment to Smart Grids is positive. Utility companies need to beware that they don’t squander this goodwill – right now it is theirs to lose.

You should follow me on twitter here.

* The survey was conducted in March 2010 by StrategyOne among a census representative sample of 1,000 U.S. consumers via telephone. The margin of error for the sample of U.S. consumers (n=1,000) is + 3.1% at the 95% level of confidence.