Mark Bramfitt - Utilities & IT

New Power Conversion Co Funded by Google Targeting DCs

Interesting squib in the New York Times Bits blog late Wednesday regarding a start up company in Goleta called Transphorm, backed by Google and other venture capital firms.

The company promises to deliver power conversion "modules" (that sound a lot like transformers with AC/DC rectification - like the power bricks for laptop computers) based on gallium nitride instead of silicon. (And despite double majoring in Materials Science and Engineering, don't ask me about the science!)

Of interest is Google's backing, with the stated intent of applying the technology to power conversion equipment in data centers, although Google has yet to test any prototypes.

The energy savings potential noted by Transphorm is huge - hundreds of terrawatts, though that appears to be for the entire energy conversion market, certainly not for data centers alone.

With "standard" power supplies in servers and IT equipment in the mid-ninety percent efficiency range, this technology is certainly chasing a small sliver of remaining potential, but then the market is immense. It makes sense to go after data centers as an entry point due to load factors that would yield high rates of return. 

It will be interesting to see the technology in action, and if it can be cost effective compared to traditional high efficiency power supplies.

Thanks to Utility Panelists

I moderated a panel session at the Teledata Technology Convergence Conference in Santa Clara Wednesday titled "What's Next for Utility IT Incentives" that was well attended and received.

Lee Cooper of Pacific Gas and Electric Company fielded questions about why incentives for server virtualization were no longer needed (the program will close at the end of the year), and why incentive programs for IT equipment are so difficult to design and administer.  He noted that he is watching server power management software as a technology that could be rewarded with incentives, but admitted that the technology doesn't appear to be at all mature yet.

Mary Medeiros McEnroe from Silicon Valley Power (the municipal utility serving the City of Santa Clara) explained how they tailor their programs to their very specific market, which is dominated by large-scale data centers. She revealed that they had ceased offering incentives for new data centers to install air-side free cooling systems, as the technology was being incorporated in all of the new data centers they were seeing anyway.

Derek Schwartz, founder of the Green Data Center Alliance, addressed what I think is a crucial aspect of utility IT and data center programs: marketing and outreach through education and training.  The Alliance has developed a very interesting plan that describes not only the technologies and measures that are most fruitful for pursuing energy efficiency, but the organizational changes that can help make those gains a reality.

Many thanks to my panelists, who I trust felt comfortable and supported by my moderation!

(I will update this post if a video or audio recording of the session is posted by Teledata.)

IBM Scores with Watson on Jeopardy!

And I'm not referring to how well Watson did against the two former champions...

IBM has a true bonanza on its hands with the spectacle of Watson, a specialized computing system, playing on Jeopardy! this week.

Everywhere I visit on the web (Andrew Sullivan, the New York Times, etc.) there is breathless coverage of the event, outpacing the Deep Blue/Kasparov chess match fifteen years ago.

I have yet to watch PBS's Nova program describing IBM's efforts, but I did watch a clip of the first half of the first show.

Watson is comprised of two rows of five racks of IBM servers, cooled by a pair of CRAC units. I loved Alex Trebek mentioning how noisy it is in the server room.  It's hard to tell whether the setup features traditional under floor air distribution, but the racks are oriented properly, with a central hot aisle. There is no apparent airflow isolation.

Perhaps one slight missed opportunity for IBM, which would have been to feature the latest energy efficiency measures in the room, resulting in a super quiet, more imposing presence. Something more like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but not like the bubbling water unit from Rollerball!

Container/Modular Data Center Paper Published!

Very pleased indeed to announce that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has released the final version of a paper devoted to assessing the energy efficiency and deployment considerations of container/modular data center units.

I co-wrote the paper with Henry Coles of LBNL, and I am indebted to him for the heavy lifting of the technical analysis comparing selected units, rating them for energy efficiency.

The crux of the paper is that the latest generation of modular units, featuring on-board air-side economizers supplemented with direct evaporative cooling systems, offer superior energy efficiency performance and should also be easier and less costly to deploy. Companies like Lee Technologies, HP, and SGI are offering second-generation units.

We've had great support from the vendor community both in providing information for the report, and in supporting our analysis and conclusions.

I hope that the report is of interest and use broadly in the industry - and a big thank you to the US General Services Administration for commissioning it. 

 

Thanks to Agrion Panel & Recap

I was asked to moderate a panel yesterday in Palo Alto hosted by Agrion, an organization that hosts discussions and events related to sustainable development and cleantech (registration and membership required to access content, including recording of the session).

Our topic was data centers and energy efficiency, and the dynamite panel included representatives from eBay, Extreme Networks, NetApp, Oracle, and the Wired Real Estate Group.

We managed to cover a lot of ground in an hour-and-a-half; as you may know from attending events like this each topic naturally raises several promising lines of discussion, so it is hard to cover all of the allotted topics.

When it came to "matters of religion" we had some good debate about the use of air-side economizers in data centers (consensus view: they should be mandated in all new facilities but are hard to retrofit into existing ones), the move to high or extreme rack densities (it's going to happen, so designers and operators should plan for it), and data center efficiency metrics (PUE is good enough to evaluate the facility, and no one knows how we can get to an IT efficiency index).

In conversations both before and after the panel time, I talked to folks who recognized that industry leaders (such as our panelists and their companies) are way ahead of the curve compared to typical enterprises and other geographical regions of the US. It's almost becoming silly to talk about data center efficiency in Silicon Valley; we have to continue to take the message out on the road.

Finally, I talked to am environmental quality rep from a major IT company who said it is about time to talk about the use of IT to drive improvements in other areas of the economy. In other words, maybe data center and IT growth, certainly if implemented with energy efficiency as a priority, is on balance a great thing, if it helps us manage energy use better in other areas of the economy.

My personal thanks to Dean Nelson, Kevin Ryan, John Wallerich, Brian Day, and Franz Seidelhuber for a great discussion.

The Jevons Paradox and IT Energy Efficiency

The New Yorker published a lovely piece by David Owen under their "Annals of Environmentalism" banner in the December 10, 2010 edition. (Subscription required for access to full article; abstract free.)

The article describes the Jevons Paradox, which postulates that improving the efficiency and thereby lowering the cost of a product or service will result in more of its use rather than less. The cited case in the original paper by Englishman William Stanley Jevons were efforts to improve the efficient use of coal.

Another English economist (Len Brookes) brought the concept back to the forefront during the oil crisis in the 1970s, arguing that devising ways to do more with less oil would result in higher energy consumption, not lower - a so-called "rebound effect".

Discussing this paradox and determining if it is valid is of critical import to energy policy and efforts to improve energy efficiency, so is of obvious interest to utility professionals in the EE field. I expect that IT professionals will be equally intrigued, given the tremendous rate of change in the performance and yes, efficiency, of successive generations of IT equipment.

It is not an unfair question to ask whether improving data center or IT equipment efficiency will simply make all IT capabilities cheaper, and therefore used more, and by more people, gobbling up any energy savings and attendant environmental benefits.

I've got the outlines of a paper (or perhaps a chapter in a book I am pondering writing) that specifically looks at IT and energy use and the Jevons Paradox.

In the meantime, if you want to dig deeper, I recommend this post from James Barret at the National Geographic website, and not only because he reached for the same Yogi Berra-ism that I did when first thinking about Jevons.

 

Calling Out HP for Poor Marketing Ethics

Only peripherally related to IT, so disregard if you wish...

HP has fallen into the tender trap of allowing their marketing agents to run roughshod over civil conduct and indeed civil laws in San Francisco, by posting flyers on every single lamp pole on Lombard Street in San Francisco over night.

Yes, I have a personal pet peeve over visual litter and the co-option of public space for commercial use.

Funny, but IBM got caught out eleven years ago when their ad agency stenciled advertisements all over Financial District sidewalks, eventually paying more than $100,000 in fines and restitution.

What should HP do (in the unlikely event they're listening)? Remove the offending flyers, by tomorrow morning. Publicly apologize. Flay their marketing firm or better yet ban them from HP work for evermore.

Hard to believe that marketers think these activities do anything but engender customer hostility, and harder still to believe they can foist plans like this on otherwise responsible companies like HP.

 

 

Note: Community Profile Page Now Posted

I have been very involved in political life and community service in the Sonoma Valley for many years now, and I'm actively laying the groundwork for a potential campaign for County Supervisor in 2012.

I'm grateful when my clients and colleagues in the utility and IT industries express interest in this aspect of my life, and certainly when they express their support!

This site is of course devoted to my consulting practice - I expect I'll be building another one soon if we launch a formal campaign. But for anyone interested in what my community life entails, I've posted a page with my community profile, and will post an update or two as we move through 2011.

NYT: St. Louis Attracting DC Development

Interesting article in the New York Times today about how the downtown St. Louis office market is attracting attention from data center developers including Unisys, Digital Realty Trust, Xiolink and Contegix.

Note the two primary factors noted for the development activity: low power rates from local utility Ameren, and available distribution capacity because former industrial tenants are long gone.

The latter case looks like a great reuse of stranded utility assets (though Digital notes it is spending "millions" to bring in power), which is good for everyone concerned.

However, note the reason for Missouri's low cost of power (forty percent lower than the national average price): it's coming from coal. If you have any concern at all about carbon management or potential regulation and taxation, you'd weigh a decision to locate in the fair city of St. Louis very carefully.