The same process works with food. We consume energy store in whatever that we eat. We do use some of that energy to stay alive, like breathing or walking, but for most of us living in developed markets, there is a surplus. A lot of that energy gets store as fat in our bodies – for a raining day, which usually doesn’t come for most us since we get regular meals – so we go to the gym to use up that energy to stay fit.

Now a gym in the UK is looking to harness all that excess human energy, by hooking up generators to its gym equipment. According to this report, the Green Heart Gym in Hull, England now has equipment that will generate electricity as users work out.

The report says that the power will go to feed the facility’s LED lighting, which should work, but its assertion that such power can go to power other application in the community is a bit far fetched. Unless the gym is equipped with some sophisticated power storage and transmission equipment, it is highly unlikely that power from gym goers will be sufficient to support applications outside the immediate vicinity of the facility.

On the other hand, it is a pretty cool concept. Imagine a system at remote cell sites relying on wind and sun. When those resources are not available for any reason, why not have a crank, or treadmill for local users to power up the equipment. With some of the ultra low powered site equipment being development, it just might work.

According to the EPA figures, Intel now buys 88% of its electricity from green sources, consisting of a mix of purchased power from Sterling Planet and PNM, as well as some on-site generation. Sources of power include geothermal, biomass, small hydro, solar, and wind.

Also high on the rankings was Microsoft, who came in third with 1.12 billion kWh of green power purchased per year. 46% of Microsoft’s power was green, supplied also by Sterling Planet, the EPA noted.

ICT firms that also made the list include Cisco Systems (269 million kWh, 10th place), Sprint (176 mllion kWh, 14th place), Dell (119 million kWh, 19th place), and Google (103.4 million kWh, 22th place). Another Google firm, Motorola Mobility also made the list at 25th place, while Intel’s chip rival, AMD (27th), Xerox (34th), Applied Materials (37th), made up all the IT & Telecoms firms in the top 40.

Apple Computers, who has had to endured a sustained marketing blitz from Greenpeace over allegations of relying too much on coal for its data centres, was also listed on the list. It’s Austin, Texas facility was placed in 45th place with an annual purchased of some 12.8 million kWh, which was enough to meet 100% of its electricity requirements.

What should be noted is that the above rankings is based on the absolute amount of green power purchased, and not on the percentage of green power that actually runs a company’s operations.

Out of the companies that reported 100% green power usage, Datapipe scored the highest ranking for IT & Telecoms firms with an annual green power consumption of 55.9 million kWh, followed by Nokia USA with 40 million kWh.

Ricoh Production Print Solutions, Codero, EasyStreet Online Services, Workday, XMission Internet, Green House Data, Aviat Networks, Dotster, Other World Computing, VerticalResponse, ReCellular, Avectra, DECISIVE ANALYTICS, Canvas Dreams, iCIMS, Green Geeks, GrayHair Software, Votenet Solutions, 3 TIER, Altova, Community IT Innovators, Madison Computer Works, REAL-COMP, Varsity Technologies, PC Guru, Soho Network Services, Affordable Internet Services Online, Studio eBusiness, Network Cybernetics, Supplylogix, Bates Investigations, Sandwich.Net, Invisible Gold, Island Joe Group, Vertex Technology Management, Maine.Info, and Alchemy Host, also made the 100% renewable powered list with usage figures ranging from more than 12.3 million kWh, to as little as 1000 kWh.

Interestingly, Apple’s Austin facility, which was listed as part of the Fortune 5000 list, was not included in the 100% green powered list although it is listed as getting 100% of its energy from renewable sources.

Lastly, it is worth noting that a lot of the companies in the program might not be using actual electricity generated by renewable energy, since they are not buying directly from solar or wind farms, but from resellers of renewable energy certificates.

Greenpeace however has highlighted another key aspect of the insatiable appetite for power from data centre – the fact that most of them are powered by coal rather than green and renewable energy.

In a report titled “How Green is Your Cloud?”, Greenpeace evaluated big cloud operators, including Akamai, Dell, Oracle, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, HP, Facebook, Google, Rackspace, saleforce.com, Twitter, Yahoo, and Apple, on their energy policies, concluding that Apple has the ‘dirtiest’ practices for its data centres, which Greenpeace claims relied heavily on coal fire plants.

Apple, the Greenpeace report found, had 55.1% of its data centre power come from coal, making it the only company with over half of its power from coal. HP, IBM, and Oracle, were the next on the list of coal users, with Greenpeace pegging them at 49.7%, 49.5%, and 48.7% respectively. The company that used the least amount of coal for its data centres was Dell, which came in at 20.1%, followed closely by Yahoo at 20.3%.

In addition to the use of coal, Greenpeace also gave each company a “Clean Energy Index” score. In this, Yahoo had the highest ranking at 56.4%, reportedly because of its use of hydro power and free-air cooling at large scale facilities in Washington and New York. Dell also scored highly (56.3%) in this category, presumably because of its high ranking in the EPA’s renewable energy usage index. Google and Facebook both score respectively at 39.4% and 36.4%, but six of the firms examined scored less than 20%, with salesforce.com coming in last with a score of only 4%.

In addition to coal and clean energy scores – there is also a reference to nuclear if you refer to the chart – the Greenpeace report also graded the firms’ data centre infrastructures in four categories – energy transparency, infrastructure siting, energy efficiency & GHG mitigation, and renewables & advocacy. The firms were given grades ranging from A through F in each of the categories.

In this part of the report, Amazon had the worst performance, getting 3 ‘F’ and a ‘D’ score, followed by Twitter with 2 ‘F’ and 2 ‘D’ scores. Google arguably had the best average, taking home 1 ‘A’, 2 ‘B’, and a ‘C’.

For individual categories, Akamai was given an ‘A’ for energy transparency, a category that yielded two ‘F’ scores from Amazon and Twitter. No one got an ‘A’ for infrastructure siting – referring to how a company selects their sites in relation to access to clean energy – although Yahoo and Facebook both managed ‘B’ scores. Amazon again scored a ‘F’, along with Apple for their site selection. Likewise, no company got an ‘A’ for energy efficiency & GHG mitigation, although the majority got ‘B’ or ‘C’, with Twitter the only one assigned a ‘F’. In terms of renewable energy usage and advocacy, Google’s ‘A’ was only accompanied by Yahoo’s ‘B’, with the rest coming in either ‘C’ or ‘D’ and Amazon getting a ‘F’.

Greenpeace’s approach comes at a tangent to what most industry commentators define as ‘green’ data centres. As anyone familiar with data centre power consumption can attest to, no source of renewable energy – with the exception of perhaps geothermal in places like Iceland, or New Zealand, or some well placed hydro electric plants – can provide the kind of power required to run a massive cloud. Yes, solar panels on roof tops can probably power the lights, and emerging full-cells might even be able to power some IT load, but localised renewable systems are simply not at the scale and efficiency where they can support the power load of data centres.

So unless the site location has access to enough renewable energy supply, it leaves only one option for data centres to use renewable energy, and that is through renewable energy certificates. While these do represent renewable energy generated somewhere, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s greener in the grander scheme of things. Renewables generated in remote locations are sometimes not used up, or there is huge wastage during transport to where they are needed.

In other words, while RECs mean clean energy generated somewhere, the power load from data centre users still need to be filled locally, and more often than not, it is through more coal-powered plants. So buying RECs doesn’t replace coal demand locally. And because of the inefficiencies of renewables sometimes, more coal might actually be used to make up the difference.

That said, Greenpeace’s highlight of site selection does make sense, and certainly, energy transparency and disclosure should be paramount for all data centre operators – without which the IT industry still have no idea how much CO2 it is using. The oft-quoted figure of ICT’s 2% share of global CO2 emissions is, as far as I know, from an obscure Gartner report dating back many years. And as far as I know, that was only an guesstimate.

“Even as we note the 100 year anniversary of that maritime tragedy, we need to consider the fragility of another highly-regarded engineering marvel –our electrical grid, which is often called the most complex machine ever built,” wrote Christine Hertzog, a consultant at SGL Partners, a strategy advisory firm focused on smart grid and M2M business sectors. “It has worked remarkably well for the past 130 years, but if the grid was a ship sailing in the Atlantic now, it has to dodge dangerous icebergs ahead.”

The grid is liken to the doomed trans-oceanic luxury passenger liner in three aspects, noted Hertzo, who is also active in the NIST Cyber Security Working Group Data Privacy subgroup.

First there was a false sense of security, created by over confidence of the capabilities of the Titanic by the captain and crew, which ultimately led to the disaster. The same false sense of security was emerging with smart grids. Hertzog points out that the existing grid was built on ‘security through obscurity,’ which now fades as grids become connected to the internet.

The Titanic also wasn’t prepared when the unimaginable happened and didn’t carry enough lifeboats. Similarly, there is a lack of failover strategies in today’s electricity grid, especially in regards to power generation. Most grids today relied on too few sources of generation for their load, hence are vulnerable to massive outages from the failure of a relatively few assets.

Lastly, utilities are like the operator and passengers of the Titanic, and have an “inability to think the unthinkable.” While utilities are focused on keeping the lights on, they have yet to investigate potential threat scenarios. “Their scenarios have to include ‘what if a concerted cyber attack disables our main generation sources AND transmission facilities?’  This type of thinking exposes the unthinkable – the grid’s reliability is threatened by its lack of resiliency,” Hertzog wrote.

“For many security experts, it is not a question of if, but rather when the grid will be the victim of a major cyber attack. Will our electric utilities and policy makers learn to avoid or minimize failures based on the lessons from past catastrophes, or are we doomed to sit in the dark because we failed to think the unthinkable?”

In an online interview for a documentary film called, ‘Take Back Your Power‘, Chalk – dubbed a ‘hacking expert’ by the filmmakers – asserted a 100% certainty of catastrophic failure of the energy grid within 3 years.

“We’re in a state of crisis,” said Chalk in a press release issued by TheBigPitcher Films. “The front door is open and there is no lock to be had. There is not a power meter or device on the grid that is protected from hacking – if not already infected – with some sort of trojan horse that can cause the grid to be shut down or completely annihilated.”

“One of the most amazing things that has happened to mankind in the last 100 years is the Internet. It’s given us possibility beyond our wildest imagination. But we also know the vulnerabilities that exist inside of it. And then we have the backbone, the power grid that powers our nations. Those two are coming together. And it’s the smart meter on your home or business that’s now allowing that connectivity.”

Chalk also challenged governments, media, and technology vendors to demonstrate “one piece of digital technology that is hack-proof,” pledging to crack any system presented.

“The computer companies that are involved, the manufacturers that are involved, bring forward a technology and I will show you that it’s penetrable,” said Chalk. “I’ll do it on national TV, I’ll do it anywhere. But I can guarantee you 100% that there is nothing out there today — nothing — that can’t be penetrated.”

The filmmakers also highlighted recent examples of concern over smart grid security from security experts such as Doug Powell, manager, SMI Security, Privacy & Security, for Canadian utility BC Hydro, as well as industry insiders like former CIA Director James Woolsey.

Powell points out that smart meters represents “a new potential threat vector,” while Woolsey asserts that “the so-called ‘smart grid’ that is as vulnerable as what we’ve got now is not smart at all. It is really, really stupid.”

On top of those views, US Inspector General Gregory Friedman also warned of potential vulnerabilities, stating in an audit released in January: “Without a formal risk assessment and associated mitigation strategy, threats and weaknesses may go unidentified and expose… the system to an unacceptable level of risk.”

According to the filmmakers, the audit found that energy officials knew of these weaknesses but approved funding for projects anyway. “The initial weaknesses had not always been fully addressed, and did not include a number of security practices commonly recommended for federal government and industry systems.”

With strong criticism to the smart grid now coming from many directions, energy corporations and governments now have the challenge to explain to an increasingly unapproving public why they continue to fast-track smart grid installations, the filmmakers said.

“Citizen groups and organizations throughout the US, Canada and Europe have launched legal actions to stop the installation of smart meters. They cite issues such as cost increases, health risks, privacy concerns, grid vulnerability and the lack of democratic process,” the filmmakers said. “In Chalk’s home province of British Columbia, Citizens for Safe Technology ( www.citizensforsafetechnology.org ) and the BC Coalition to Stop Smart Meters are leading a growing challenge.”

Options for opting out of the smart metering program have been announced in markets including California, Maine, Vermont, Louisiana, Michigan, Connecticut, Quebec, the UK and the Netherlands. In the US, several regions including the counties of Santa Cruz and Marin are enforcing outright moratoriums.

“Unless we wake up and realize what we’re doing, there is 100% certainty of total catastrophic failure of the entire power infrastructure within 3 years,” said Chalk. “This could actually be worse than a nuclear war, because it would happen everywhere. How governments and utilities are blindly merging the power grid with the Internet, and effectively without any protection, is insanity at its finest.”

The full video interview with David Chalk can be seen on www.thepowerfilm.org . The feature film documentary ‘Take Back Your Power’, which critically examines the smart grid program, will be released online this spring.

According to the market researchers, utilities have so far ignored public cellular networks for their smart grid initiatives, but that is about to change. A confluence of factors is leading a major shift in how utilities view public cellular options as they roll out smart grid infrastructure projects, Pike said.

“Carriers and integrators have awakened to the unique opportunity of the smart grid. It is no longer just another general vertical market application,” says vice president Bob Gohn. “With new pricing and service offerings specifically tailored for the large number of endpoints but relatively low aggregate data volume typical of grid applications, public cellular is becoming a real competitor to private utility-owned networks. The end result is a significant and growing monthly stream of revenue to the carrier, without taxing the carrier’s network resources.”

According to Pike Research, global annual service revenue from public cellular network nodes in smart grid applications will surpass $1 billion by 2020, representing a 27% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2011 to 2020. A cumulative total of 73 million cellular M2M communication nodes will be shipped for use in smart grid applications during the period from 2011 through 2020, the cleantech market intelligence firm finds.

A major factor for the surge is the European Union’s much-publicised 20-20-20 mandate, which aims to reduce EU GHG emission by at least 20% below 1990 levels, deploy 20% of renewable energy for the EU, and a 20% reduction in energy use.

Europe is the leading region for public cellular node unit shipments and revenue through the remainder of the decade, Pike said. Europe will also likely lead the market in annual service revenue, due largely to the sheer volume of aggregate data being sent by the region’s smart meters, as well as the smaller (yet steadily growing) number of nodes being used for applications such as distribution automation and substation automation.

The site, which houses the IT infrastructure of almost 500 major international organisations, will now purchase 100% of its energy from UK renewable energy provider, SmartestEnergy.

According to Telehouse, SmartestEnergy buys energy from independent generators from around the country and supplies it to its customers.

The move, according to Tokuji Mitsui, managing director of Telehouse and KDDI Europe, is part of the firm’s strategy to go green.

“The biggest challenge we face at Telehouse is to improve our energy efficiency and reduce our carbon footprint, and in order to support this challenge Telehouse has worked closely with industry leading partners and regulators. We are committed to our environmental responsibilities and continue to work to align our business strategy with our green ethics wherever possible,” he said.

“The majority of electricity supplied to us is utilised by our clients, therefore it is integral that we take on initiatives such as the 100 per cent green energy supply, which in turn benefits our customer’s credentials by reducing their carbon footprint. We intend to roll out this green partnership initiative with SmartestEnergy to all our European sites in the near future.”

What is unclear however is whether the decision to go with renewable energy will cost Telehouse any more than its current cost base, or whether any extra cost will be passed on to its customers.

One of the biggest obstacles to the adoption of renewable energy is the cost, since it typically costs more than conventional grid power. This, according to most industry experts, make renewable energy for large facilities like data centres economical infeasible unless government subsidies are involved – see our story on NTT America’s deployment of renewable energy systems at its California data centre.

Obviously, the press release can be interpreted in another way. Telehouse can source all its energy from SmartestEnergy for its own systems, but leave the choice to its customers to select its own source of power. In face the release makes clear that Telehouse London are awarded the Carbon Trust Standard, which certifies that organisations have measured, managed and reduced its carbon emissions across its OWN operations. It says nothing of the energy source that is used to power the equipment of its customers.

On the other hand, by connected to SmartestEnergy, Telehouse now have the ability to offer its customers access to renewables as well, if it is not doing so already. In fact, many data centre operators and managed hosting providers offer some kind of service for its customers to go greener, including more efficient equipment, renewable energy power, and so on.

According to news report, the same rules will be expanded to 75% of rural towers and 33% of urban powers by 2020.

The move is targeted at reducing the country’s reliance on diesel generators, which currently power about 60% of all sites in the country. If enforced, the new regulations will be first in the world to require mobile operators to deploy renewable energy to power its networks.

Telecoms operators will get some support from the government in the form of the Universal Services Obligation fund. The regulations are not specific to onsite renewable energy systems however, and do not exclude renewable power sourced from India’s burgeoning renewable energy sector.

As part of its statement, the DoT estimates that renewable energy generation makes up about 11% of the country’s entire power base.

“We’ve reached a point in our engineering projects where we’re facing new challenges related to our solar receiver design,” Google wrote in its blog. “At this point, other institutions seem better positioned than Google to take this work to the next level.”

However, all is not loss. True to its originally philosophy of trying to stimulate the renewable energy market, Google will make all that it has learned through the Initiative, namely research into technologies for solar power towers – a system that focuses a field of mirrors on a solar receiver on top of tower, which then captures that heat and turns it into electricity, available to the rest of the industry.

Here’s a video of the Heliostat project

<iframe width=”450″ height=”259″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/C_oRDBda73U” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Here’s what Google has learned and is sharing in its own words:

• Smarter controls: In the past, the focus has been on making strong heliostat structures. We learned that using lower cost materials and smarter software controls can generate better performance at a lower cost. This ends up lowering the overall cost of the concentrating solar power system.
• The Brayton engine: Concentrating solar power plants traditionally use significant quantities of water for cooling. This poses a challenge to scaling these technologies, especially in the desert. Our research shows that using a “Brayton engine” — a jet engine that uses solar energy to heat air and does not require spray cooling with water — significantly reduces water use and may reduce operating costs as well.
• A systems approach: We took a system level approach to designing concentrating solar systems. By focusing on the cost and quality of the system as a whole, we tried to make cutbacks on some components, while compensating elsewhere to maintain performance. We believe this approach could reduce the cost of electricity generated by concentrating solar systems, rather than attempting to optimize each individual component, which can drive up overall costs.

The solution, based on Flexenclosure’s E-Site, will allow Airtel to harness solar and wind energy at the sites to minimise diesel consumption – and yes, CO2 emissions.

According to Flexenclosure, Airtel has been testing its solution in Kenya for the last two years and has achieved demonstrable results, including a substantial reduction in diesel consumption compared to previously 100% diesel powered sites.

In addition to optimised solar and wind generation systems and a bank of batteries to storage energy, E-Site solution also includes sophisticated control system that ensures maximum power is captured from the renewable energy sources and that the use of the battery bank is highly efficient, the company said.

Under the agreement, Ericsson will be responsible for implementation and maintenance services for all the sites.