IBM Innovation Portal

The Energy Web

In a previous post I relayed some words by IBM's Chairman & CEO Sam Palmisano regarding IBM's new (at that time) focus on "Smarter Planet", and how by investing in upgrading our nation's electric power grid (ie, making it "smarter") we will be well positioned to begin bringing online those long-awaited alternatives to coal and natural gas. Indeed, without a way to establish a true two-way dialog between energy producers & operators, and between utilities and energy consumers, we have little chance of successfully integrating these so-called "non-dispatchable" renewable sources (eg, solar, wind) into our energy picture.

One interesting thought that is making the rounds of the Obama transition team as well as those poised for investment into this emerging 'Smart Grid' sector is the notion of a national "energy web". This energy web, in concept, would be architected and deployed in a similar way to what we built back in the DARPA days, where a relatively large amount of US treasure was allocated to build a robust and resilient data exchange infrastructure, based on a set of open (TCP/IP) standards. Perhaps even more significantly, we all know the "killer app" that subsequently emerged that was built upon the Internet in the mid-90s --  it's something we now refer to almost as if it's a basic  natural resource - the Web.

But what if we could build a second killer app to help address, on a large scale, this imperative to provide an intelligent, collaborative network that links energy producers/sources, with operators and utilities, and ultimately with energy consumers both big and small. An energy cloud, if you will, that will link all of the key energy stakeholders, while providing a secure means of knowing where and how much energy is needed at all times. Energy Web would  require not only the emergence of standard interfaces, but also the physical infrastructure to support a way of distributing not only power, but information, requiring a broad range of intelligent devices.

Further, what if we could build this energy web as a robust but accessible (programmable) platform that would encourage and catalyze innovation around the idea that we need thousands of entrepreneurs building "apps", applications and services that address these enormous but critically important challenges of moving to renewable energy sources as fast as is feasible, but done smartly and cost-effectively? Think of it as an 'iPhone AppStore for Energy' or something similar...imagine if we could bring even a fraction of the 10,000+ apps built for this popular mobile device to bear on key areas like demand response, modeling & simulation, energy efficiency & conservation, usage monitoring, real-time pricing, etc.

What we need to do as a community of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, in my opinion, is to band together to drive interest and investment into such a project, beginning with some top-down support from the incoming administration, to the definition of a set of architectures and standards that will help us get started down this path.

IBM, through its Smarter Planet initiatives, has begun to define and deploy some of this smart infrastructure. Gridwise Alliance , a utility-sponsored standards group, has done a terrific job in defining some of the standards and semantics for information passing and sharing between intelligent devices and people...let's leverage and scale this excellent work into delivering the most important new platform of our time.

 But this is just a start...who else is with me to build this into a true Energy Web?

A Smart(er) Grid for a Smarter Planet

Recently IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano spoke about an increasingly urgent topic at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City. In a talk entitled A Smarter Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda,  Sam insisted that he was being literal: "This isn't just a metaphor.  I mean infusing intelligence into the way the world literally works - the systems and processes that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold… services to be delivered… everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move… and billions of people to work and live."

Over the next 10-20 years, analysts are estimating that $10-20 trillion will be spent on energy infrastructure globally, as antiquated power grids are replaced with "smart grids". This means big opportunities for the utility companies, start-ups, and the venture capital community to help  make our planet a lot "smarter"  about the energy we generate, distribute and consume.  Think of the $1 trillion plus we have already invested in the Internet...how can we leverage this information infrastructure investment into driving intelligence across the electric grid, creating a kind of "Energy Web"  with IP-addressable endpoints that act as intelligent sensors to enable utilities to look down into the demand in near real time, and consumers to take an active role in energy conservation.

Contrary to the doom-and-gloom we are hearing on a daily/hourly basis about the implosion of our financial system and resultant dampening effect on risk equity, we believe this is a terrific time to develop and bring such ideas forward. There has never been a time when we have been in more need of innovation around our energy infrastructure, and now is the time to join forces and collaborate around some practical and pragmatic solutions that will bring alternative sources of energy together with the intelligent infrastructure to deliver it where it's needed.

- Drew

“We get to keep virtually all of that money”

Don't know if you follow Ben Worthen's usually insightful blog on WSJ.com...as you might expect from following this blog, I don't agree with him or the mostly evolutionarily-challenged posters that inexplicably agree with his premise that Cloud is just a lot of fog. If you want a dose of classic FUD (fear uncertaintly and doubt) re where software is headed, check this out

And for a good view of why Larry feels this way, all you have to do is add up all of those zeros behind the 20%+ yearly maintenance fees that continue to prop-up software and application companies. Here is Larry's own Co-President: “We get to keep virtually all of that money,” said Oracle Co-President Safra Catz. Sure, some of that goes to customer service, but Catz said that mostly customers are paying for access to the new software – and Oracle is going to develop that new software regardless of whether customers pay them maintenance fees. For Oracle, maintenance is pretty much free money, about $10.5 billion worth in its 2008 fiscal and about $1.5 billion more than that this year. “When many customers just send you money for something you’re doing anyway, you literally can’t help [but increase profits],” said Catz.

You can't make this stuff up... if there was any doubt about what these companies are poo-pooing Cloud it is for this reason.

Technology to help measure impact of social entrepreneurship

NYT today wrote about a new Web-based software program, unveiled Thursday at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, which aims to help foundations and grant makers solve this problem. It sets benchmarks for measuring social impact, tracks grantees’ performance and compares their performance to other nonprofits doing similar work.

The software, called Portfolio Data Management System, was developed by Acumen Fund, a venture philanthropy organization, with the help of engineers from Google. Salesforce.com, which makes Web-based software for businesses to manage their customer relationships, will distribute the new tool.

Plastic from Sugar? If only Benjamin knew...

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

According to a recent Forbes article, a handful of companies large and small have been working on replacing petroleum-based ingredients in chemicals with renewable ingredients. In the latest development, Genomatica, a small, private sustainable-chemicals company in San Diego, says it can now make thousands of tons of a foundational chemical in plastics using sugar instead of a petroleum-based ingredient. Very cool. Read more here.

7th-Grader Designs Three Dimensional Solar Cell

This just in from the really, really future scientists of America via Slashdot..."12-year-old  William Yuan's invention of a highly-efficient, three-dimensional nanotube solar cell for visible and ultraviolet light has won him an award and a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. 'Current solar cells are flat and can only absorb visible light'" Yuan said. 'I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light. Solar panels with his 3D cells would provide 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than cutting-edge 3D solar cells. 'My next step is to talk to manufacturers to see if they will build a working prototype,' Yuan said. "If the design works in a real test stage, I want to find a company to manufacture and market it.""

Google and GE To Advance Smart Grid

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) announced Wednesday that they'll work together to integrate electric vehicles, renewable energy and "smart grid" technologies into the nation's electric grid.

Is this the beginning of "Pacific Google and Electric" (PG&E) or just another tideous Google PR story?

You decide...the rest of the story is here

Wavvy Clouds

We have word that the U. S. Patent and Trade Office has approved a application by Google that outlines a scheme to build a giant floating data center powered by ocean energy in the form of waves, tides and currents.

The article by our friends at  greentechmedia  specifically talks about their using Pelamis machines, developed by Scottish firm, Pelamis Wave Power, as a way to build the power systems.

"Pelamis machines are giant, linked semi-submerged cylindrical parts that produce electricity when wave motions drive a hydraulic system that includes electrical generators. Pelamis has built a 2.25-megawatt wave energy farm off the coast of Portugal."

It makes a huge amount of sense to co-locate  datacenters and alternative power sources, as it's typically far cheaper to move electrons than atoms. This idea can be extended to others forms of alternative power, for example wind and solar. The trick with these, it would seem will be how to dispatch the workloads in the datacenter to "sync" these loads with the availability of power from these intermittent  sources. Hmmm...I smell another patent....or better, startup!

IBM VCG Scobleized!

Here's an "oldie but goodie" from way back in 2007 (how may Web years is that?) that features Drew Clark attempting to match wits with the infamous and loquacious Robert Scoble! Here is "Meeting IBM Ventures" . Enjoy.

Collision in the Cloud?

Early indications are that starting up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) didn't actually end all life as we know it...at least not in the 4 dimensions I am familiar with (see String Theory Simplified )

But my new bud Kirill Sheynkman, head of Cloud start-up Elastra, said (via itWorldCanada) that this sounds a lot like the early adopters of grid computing , the Web. 2.0 start-ups who want to get up and running quickly and without a lot of capital expense, independent software vendors that want to offer their applications in a software-as-a-service model, and enterprises who have selected specific applications for the cloud, such as salesforce automation or human resources.

Kirill goes on to say that “Equipment inside the corporate data centre isn't going away anytime soon,” added Sheynkman. Companies remain reluctant, for a variety of reasons, to trust the cloud for their mission-critical applications. This includes issues around licencing, compliance, interoperability, data privacy and security.