May 8th, 2008
Micron claims low-power server memory lead with two new modules
I think I’ve reported this number before, but I keep forgetting it. Anyway, there is a statistic suggesting that memory components eat up something like 15 percent of the power consumed in data centers. Not an insignificant amount, which is one reason Micron continues to focus on lower voltage as a product differentiator.
It latest additions to the energy-efficient Aspen Memory line are a 1-gigabyte DDR3 module that operates at 1.35 volts and a 2-gigabyte DDR2 module that runs at 1.5 volts. The Boise, Idaho, company says these are the lowest-voltage DDR2 and DDR3 designs available on the market. (Normal voltage ranges for DDR3 are 1.5 volts, while DDR2 modules typically run at 1.8 volts.) So, for example, Micron claims that high-density designs for the DDR2 format can offer a 58 percent power reduction over standard configurations. But, as with all things energy-related, it all depends on your individual configuration. So, you can run your own calculations. with Micron’s server memory calculator.
May 8th, 2008
TerraPass gets more granular with its carbon-crunching calculator
Popular carbon offset Web site TerraPass has updated the online calculator you can use to keep track of your carbon footprint. The update now includes options for tracking the differences between many different hybrid fuels from biodiesel to flex fuel ethanol to compressed natural gas. So, if you select some sort of hybrid you can get more granular about the impact.
May 8th, 2008
Don’t insulate, Nansulate, says Florida cleantech company
Thermal testing. Courtesy Industrial Nanotech.
Energy costs are now serious business for industries, office managers, and home owners across the world. Buildings account for over half of the energy use in the U.S. and a fair portion of that is for heating and cooling. A measure of how serious: many American homes built as recently as the early 1970s originally contained no insulation. Now most local governments require insulation and energy conservation.
Here’s a cleantech product that offers a new way to save energy and a bonus: it’s way geeky. What could be better than nanotech, energy conservation and a patented formula? We’ve got all that right here.
The product’s called Nansulate and it’s made by Naples, Florida-based Industrial Nanotech. It is not a traditional insulation material like foam or fiberglass that comes in sheets, rolls or air-filled layers. This is a thin layer of spray-on material that uses nano-particles.
Here’s an explanation published by a publication aimed at home building: “”I spoke with Stuart Burchill, CEO and developer of Nansulate. He explained that the technology works becanse of a material called Hydro-NM-Oxide which he explained is ‘the worst conductor of heat and cold of any material.’ The paint-like coating is loaded with tiny particles of this substance, and when it cures heat and cool are largely prevented from moving through the coating.There is also something called the Knudsen effect (for you engineers) that further slows the transmission of heat and cold. All of this is the result of a relatively new field of science called nanotechnology or the science of using tiny particles to do big things.”
Here’s another useful link on how Nansulate works. This site was put together by a retailer selling Nansulate here in the U.S. The manufacturer also recently had a major breakthrough internationally. Compared to the U.S. with its laissez-faire attitude, the European Union is very regulation heavy environmentally. The EU is also energy-concerned as energy prices there are much higher than in the U.S. Energy conservation efforts are more highly evolved. The EU just recently approved Nansulate for use across the builidng industry there.
Nansulate’s makers claim it’s far more efficient in blocking heat movement than other insulation products. In one example they cited, Nansulate reduced heating bills by over 40% in a traditional home in New England. The application of Nansulate is not complex, it’s spray-painted on using standard equipment. It goes onto a variety of surfaces from water heaters to roofing, and in most cases does not need any primer or difficult surface preparation. Nansulate also provides coverage of lead-containing paint, and is mold-resistant.
May 7th, 2008
SynapSense gets a grip on your data center’s environmental profile
I was invited by a local hosting provider to give a presentation last Friday about green data centers. As I was gathering the data to illustrate some of the trends I wanted to highlight, I was astonished to discover that very few companies apparently measure their server power consumption very closely today.
Software vendor Cassatt, for example, recently published the results of a survey showing that more than one-quarter of data center managers don’t measure power consumption for their servers at all. Another 24 percent watch it on the macro-level, by monitoring the power distribution units. Another 23 percent have a handle on the server room, 16 percent look at it by rack and 8 percent follow individual servers. If you want to read more of the Cassatt data, you can find a press release and white paper at this link.
Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of venture capital being funneled into companies that offer various approaches for data center visibility and visibility across the electric grid. I’ve written about several of them over the past nine months and will take a closer look over the next few weeks at updating what’s going on with some of them.
First up is SynapSense, which introduced a new version of its SynapSoft software for collecting and analyzing data center operating conditions during the Uptime Institute’s Symposium 2008. Here’s a whole lot more detail on the technology, which includes a new feature called LiveImaging, which actually maps different “hot spots” and “overcooled zones” so that data center managers can see them visually on a diagram.
Peter Van Deventer, cofounder, president and CEO of SynapSense, says because the sensors that SynapSoft uses are wireless, his company’s technology can be deployed in a 25,000-square-foot data center in a matter of hours without disrupting operations. The startup, which was founded a little over two years ago, is working closely with IBM, which has helped its cause. Another public ally is Yahoo, Van Deventer said, and SynapSense is also involved with a project in the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
You’ll hear a whole more about the role of wireless sensors and instrumentation in the data center. Some companies, including SynapSense, believe sensor networks such as the ones that underlie SynapSoft will represent the next wave of wireless adoption. It’s another twist on that old pervasive networks infilitration theory. Van Deventer has more to say in this video interview with Environmental Leader.
May 6th, 2008
I can take costly energy, rice shortages, pricier platinum, but not my beer!!!!
If this be a harbinger of things to come, life is gonna get bleak here pretty soon. I’m not talking about recession or no recession, health care or not health care, not even worried about food prices going up 50% in a year. I eat too much anyway. No, this is about the threat to my beer supply. And yours.
Reports from Europe indicate warmer summers are reducing hop harvests in Europe and that is raising the price of beer there. And in this global economy it’s just a matter of time until American hops get pricier, too. Right now there’s a hopsmeisters conference in Germany where they take their brewing and beering seriously. Germany has more hops farmers than any other nation. Now they’re looking for irrigation plans to keep the hops happy during hot, dry spells…and hops varieities that can withstand warmer summers. One source could be countries like Turkey that have long had hotter summers and still grow a variety of hops. I am sending all our good hopes for good hops. This is not a shortage civilization could long withstand.
May 5th, 2008
Fuel cell breakthrough? Gentlemen, start your engines…
“Since 1965, methanol has been the only racing fuel used by the Indianapolis 500. Methanol also is an ideal hydrogen carrier fuel for fuel cell technology applications.” That’s a direct quote from the Methanol Institute website. Now how’d you like to have that under the hood of your old beater?
Methanol, known commonly as wood alcohol, can be made from almost any raw material that contains carbon. The production process requires a catalyst. The Methanoliacs’ website says it requires nickel. That’s not so bad. Nickel being relatively inexpensive.
But the catalytic needs don’t end there. Using methanol in fuel cells to produce electricity requires a second catalyst. In the past this has been platinum. And that precious metal makes gold look cheap. Prices now are over $1900 per ounce.
Now comes some research from Europe that promises an even more efficient catalytic process using cheaper materials. The need for platinum is not eliminated but greatly reduced. And it is more than just the composition of the platinum allow that the research deals with. Says a summary report, it is the actual form of the platinum crystals: “if the platinum alloy is structured amorphously, its electrical conduction properties are enhanced and it undergoes less corrosion (advantages for the medium in which it has to operate). Moreover, it has an operational capacity in the order of 80-100 times greater than platinum in a crystalline structure. Amorphous materials are those with a disordered molecular structure.”
This will NOT lower the price of the platinum, of course, but it means far more economical catalysts can be made far more efficient. Perhaps a truly significant step toward realizing the long-awaited promise of widely useful fuel cells.
May 5th, 2008
Sun creates its own solar system of eco partners
Going back to my roots in writing about and for IT resellers, VARs and systems integrators with today’s entry. That’s because Sun Microsystems became one of the first high-tech companies a few weeks back to include its business partners in its ability have a green tech dialogue with its customers. Cisco and Polycom have also made some public outreach, but very little has been said publicly by Hewlett-Packard and IBM on this particular issue. Which is a shame, when you think about it, because each of them have thousands of business partners who could be preaching their unique green gospel. Sun’s mantra on this particular issue is that it should be good business practice to marry “ecology and economics.”
Sun’s new Eco Advantage Program is aimed at helping the Sun partner community become more conversation about the environment and technology’s impact, as well as energy efficiency and the appropriate solutions that can be deployed on the IT side. If you’re a Sun partner, you can find the information at this Web address.
The main elements of the program include:
Training: Information about how to discuss data center power and cooling issues; training on consolidation and virtualization services with a specific green twist
Services: Eligible business partners will be able to work with the Sun Eco Assessment Service, which is essentially a high-level evaluation of the specific consumption profile of the data center in question.
Modeling and ROI tools: Basically, templates to help a VAR spec out various power, cooling or carbon savings options.
Methodologies: Ideas about how to provide repeatable implementations that conform to a client’s energy-efficiency needs.
May 4th, 2008
Oil and the future of cleantech are NOT separable
Courtesy Gordon Murray & Mohr Davidow.
I recently blogged about one VC’s efforts in cleantech as it relates to finding renewable replacements for petrochemicals and coal-based products. That same company, Mohr Davidow, has invested in an auto design firm. Why? Because Gordon Murray has moved on from high performance cars, to highly efficient cars. Ways of using fossil fuel more efficiently have become most attractive, a fast growing area of cleantech. If you can re-design the personal vehicle to make it lighter, more fuel efficient, less resource thirsty, you could be a big financial winner in the future.
Another Mohr Davidow investment is in Jadoo Power System. They’re a fuel cell company. They make products aimed at replacing traditional batteries for industrial applications. Military expedition and field video crews, law enforcement communicatons and construction site electronics. Jadoo wants products that provide steady, efficient power with reduced battery weight.
To Mohr Davidow, Jadoo and Gordon Murray it’s clear that finding ways to use less fossil fuel, or perhaps none at all, is worth investing time and money.
FOSSIL FUELS AND CLEANTECH INSEPARABLE
When I write a blog that reflects (often badly) on the fossil fuel industry, there are inevitably those who write comments saying this doesn’t belong on a tech blog site. I will try to make this connection as clear, as concise as possible.
Everything that happens in the fossil fuel industry either helps or hinders development of cleantech. Any change in the political or economic situation with regards to oil, natural gas or coal directly affects how investors, consumers and regulators see clean tech alternatives. The world of energy and hydrocardon compounds is NOT a series of closed compartments. Every political or economic or consumer decision necessarily helps reshape, however subtly, the future of fossil fuels and cleantech at the same time. As oil prices rise, so does interest in cleantech from solar to fuel cells. And the potential for more use of nuclear also becomes greater and the nuclear-related issues more intense.
DEAD DUCKS AND YOU
These comments were posted after I wrote about the ducks killed in a pond of water laced with hydrocardons in the Alberta, Canada, tar sands region.
“There is certainly no news here to Canadians. We’ve been struggling with the problem for decades. Stick to emerging technologies and computer geek stuff please.”
“…Oil is a dirty business politically and environmentally. It was like that 100 years ago, and it will be even worse 50 years from now. If you are really worried about ducks, you can always buy the oil elsewhere… lol”
Both comments exemplify the inevitable clash of values that the rising financial cost of energy and the rising environmental cost of energy are bringing to prominence. For decades the U.S. has been able to lead the world in resource consumption per capita. Now there’s less and less cake to go around because it’s being shared with so many more mouths. Fewer major countries are involved in military wars, economic competition has become far more popular even among “communist” nations. Those who cling to the old days of use and throw it away conflict with those who say more conservation, less waste, less entitled resouce use is necessary or inevitable. That clash and the hunger for resources is where cleantech can provide some relief, some solutions, and thus some profits for investors.
Not everybody will care if thousands of ducks die in hundreds of oil ponds, but many people and some governments will care and that will increase the market for electric cars, or nuclear fuel or efficient electric grids or low-energy cell phones or biodiesel from wood chips.
FOSSIL FUEL TECH IS FILTHY
As the talkback writer said, oil is messy. Syncrude of Canada is now trying to get the tar and feathers off their corporate image. They’ve officially apologized for the dead ducks. But let’s not be too snide toward our northern neighbors, as we Yanks are pretty good duck-killers ourselves. We also host thousands of acres of open ponds full of oil industry wastes. Here’s a link to a paper written on the problem by a federal scientist. The conclusion: open oil pits in America kills thousands of animals annually. Of course, that’s against the law which is unevenly enforced. The oil pits are called a “significant, preventable, and illegal source of avian mortality in the United States.”
AND THEN THERE’S COAL….
Is oil tarred with an unkind brush? They have little to fear from King Koal. Here’s the latest in a battle over water pollution from coal mines in Ohio. The Koal Kings tell Ohio they’ll shut their mines before they’ll clean up their wastewater. Now there’s some serious corporate governance going on there. To hell with the ducks, and the fish, for that matter. Whose planet is this anyway?
May 4th, 2008
Power cord clutter: A picture is worth a thousand words
For your rainy Sunday viewing pleasure, here’s a link to a compendium of photos that were submitted as part of Green Plug’s first “What’s Under Your Desk” contest. The Earth Day campaign was part of a visibility effort meant to reinforce interest in the company’s universal power cord technology. You can read a little more here about Green Plug’s push for some sort of national standard for consumer electronics power cords.
May 2nd, 2008
TechTurn specializes in hand-me-downs with a tech twist
One of my neighbors actually set a television out curbside as garbage a few weeks back, which reminded me that in spite all of the media coverage about green tech over the past year (guilty as charged), there’s still a big problem with how to handle electronic gadgets at the end of their first life.
One of the bigger companies in the refurbishment and recycling business, TechTurn, is hoping to help change this by continuing to extend its capacity this year. The company operates out of Austin, Texas, and Richmond, Va., right now but will add facilities in the midwest and the west by the year’s end, according to TechTurn President Jake Player. Astonishingly enough, there really is no nationwide organization for handling this sort of thing. At least that I know of. Hello? Anyone?
So, anyway, I have actually spoke with TechTurn a couple of times in the past just to get a better handle on how the concept of using refurbished or retooled equipment is faring. Player actually shared a really interesting statistic, one that surprised me: And that is, 80 percent of the systems that his company takes in are actually resold or redeployed by all manner of people. For example, a company may need a specific configuration for a specific software application because even though the hardware is “older,” it’s easier to apply patches. The stuff that TechTurn resells may be as young as 90 days or as old as eight years. The useful life of a desktop falls off dramatically at five or six years old, he says. TechTurn is one of Microsoft’s Authorized Refurbishers, which means it can special special editions of its operating system specifically meant for refurbished equipment.
Here’s a link to their online store in case you want to do a little shopping!
This is a relatively dated article from the United Nations about the impact of information technology on the world manufacturing picture and on the whole trash industry. I’m sure many of the figures are now outdated, but it gives you a sense of why you might want to consider reassigning or refurbishing an existing piece of technology vs. dumping it.
“Refurbishing a computer is five times better for the environment than recycling,” he says.
You know, I often wonder if the use of leasing for information technology will pick up as the need for better “end of life” management comes into play. I suppose that’s a matter for another column. Anyone have any thoughts on that? It balances both the hunger for the new, when appropriate, with proper respect for what’s on its way out.
As I’ve written before, the main thing to do is convince people that buying previously owned equipment is perfectly OK. Thanks for my PowerBook G4, Mom! That MacBook Air will just have to wait.
Recent Entries
- Micron claims low-power server memory lead with two new modules
- TerraPass gets more granular with its carbon-crunching calculator
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- I can take costly energy, rice shortages, pricier platinum, but not my beer!!!!
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