Smart grids
Intel uses 2.5 billion kWh of green power per year, giving the company the top spot in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s latest Green Power Partnership ranking for the Fortune 5000. The EPA Partnership is a voluntary program that encourages corporate purchase of renewable energy in the US. According to the EPA figures, Intel now [...]
As someone who writes about green telecommunications practices, the focus for me has always been on driving energy efficiency at increasingly power-hungry data centres, especially those powering big cloud services. Greenpeace however has highlighted another key aspect of the insatiable appetite for power from data centre – the fact that most of them are powered [...]
The roll out of smart grids might just be like the launch of the Titanic 100 years ago – full of promise by heading towards iceberg-laden waters, wrote an expert on the Smart Grid Library blog. “Even as we note the 100 year anniversary of that maritime tragedy, we need to consider the fragility of [...]
One apparent network security expert, David Chalk, has issued a warning to the smart grid sector that catastrophic failure of the power grid as a result of hacking is inevitable. In an online interview for a documentary film called, ‘Take Back Your Power‘, Chalk – dubbed a ‘hacking expert’ by the filmmakers – asserted a [...]
Mobile operators can tap into a potential market of US$1 billion from the supply of networking services to smart grid deployments, says new research from Pike Research. 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 [...]
Data centre and telecoms facility operator Telehouse has pledged to use 100% renewable energy to power its London Docklands site. 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 [...]
India’s Department of Telecom has introduced new rules that will call for 50% of all mobile towers in the country to use some kind of renewable energy power by 2015. In perhaps an even more ambitious target, the new rules also call for at least 20% of urban cell sites to use some form of [...]
Google has called it quits on its high profile RE>C, or Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal, initiative, citing engineering challenges and the fact that the renewable energy sector has made enough progress that it can now leave it to others to further research in the area. “We’ve reached a point in our engineering projects where [...]
Bharti Airtel’s Nigeria unit has contracted Ericsson to upgrade an initial batch of 250 diesel powered base stations with new ‘green’ sites from Sweden’s Flexenclosure. 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, [...]
First published in Communications Day A pilot program conducted at Microsoft’s Seattle campus has shown that intelligent building solutions using cloud-based software can be achieved with 10% of a building’s annual energy expenditure, offering a ROI period of 18 months. The program was implemented in 13 of Microsoft’s 118 buildings on its campus, and carried [...]
Nokia Siemens Networks is looking to revolutionise the mobile network with is Liquid Radio architecture, which not only promises to re-architect today’s base station infrastructure, but also to ultimately bridge the gap between highly specialise (and expensive) telecoms equipment and commoditise (cost competitive) computer components. Green Telecom Live talks to Mike Murphy, head of Technology [...]
Interview with Telenor Connexion: Inside the world of M2M
Telenor Connexion, the unit of the Telenor Group focused on the machine-to-machine market, has been developing and deploying M2M applications for customers for the past decade. Green Telecom Live speaks with Gwenn Larsson, head of marketing at Telenor Connexion, about what makes M2M different from the rest of the mobile industry and the kinds of [...]
Verne Global outlines Iceland data centre plans
Two years after we first published the Icelandic government’s plans to promote the building of data centres on its shores, a venture capital-backed start tup, Verne Global, is looking to make it a reality. Verne Global, backed by General Catalysts from Boston, Novator in London and the Wellcome Trust, is now constructing a wholesale data [...]
Next gen data centre architecture Part 2: Cisco’s Unified Computing
Cisco this month unveiled what some company executives dubbed one of the biggest announcements for the network equipment maker – ever. With the announcement of its Unified Computing, Cisco officially enters the computing space, although not quite as previous speculation in the industry had outlined. Instead of just producing its own blade server, Cisco unveiled [...]
Next gen data centre architecture Part 1: Juniper’s single switching fabric
In the past couple of weeks, cloud computing has really taken off, with both service providers, server makers, and switching vendors all making big announcements on service deployments and new gear designed for cloud operating environments. Specifically, both Juniper and Cisco made significant announcements in their vision of a next generation data centre environment that [...]