Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview

Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.

Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with autonomous eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. These new energy architectures will also significantly reduce our carbon footprint. For more details please see:

Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37

Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG

High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP

Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g

How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Network and Telecommunication protocols for the Energy Internet


[Bruce Nordham of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has developed some very exciting concepts on the networked and telecommunications protocols for the future “Energy Internet” or what he calls “Building Networks”.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Details on building an "Energy Internet"


[I have put together a compendium of material on building the future “Energy Internet” which can be found at http://goo.gl/8HyNb.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Must watch video: on the move electric vehicle charging at University of Auckland


[I am very excited to see the recent announcement from University of Auckland of their very innovative inductive charging system for electric vehicles.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

$1 Billion University Green program launched - CIO and NRENs could be big beneficiary


[The $1 billion green challenge is inspired by the exceptional performance of existing green revolving funds operated by many universities worldwide.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Facebook to build server farm on edge of Arctic Circle


[Here is a great example of how countries like Canada, Sweden, Norway, etc could be the hubs of the future global green Internet.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The "Energy Internet" - how the Internet + renewable energy can transform the economy


[Here is a couple of interesting articles on topics on how the Internet + low carbon or zero carbon renewable energy architectures can transform the global society and economy.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Using the social Internet as a tool to reward consumers to use solar powered ICT devices



[Here is a great example of how the Internet and ICT could be used as an incentive to get customers to reduce their carbon footprint from ICT devices.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Hewlett Packard, AMD and Others Aim to Use Wind, Solar Power for Data Centers


[A concept that originated with CANARIE funded Greenstar project, spearheaded in Quebec by ETS, PROMPTinc and CRC in Ottawa, is now gaining momentum around the world.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

The rebound effect and ICT - why free energy may reduce CO2 emission

[I have long argued that energy efficiency, as a primary objective, is not sufficient to slow down, never mind reduce CO2 emissions.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Scant CO2 Benefit from China’s Coal-Powered Electric Cars

Much has been made of China’s big push to build and deploy 1 million electric vehicles a year by 2015. The move will help cut smog and oil imports. Less has been made of the scant impact this is likely to have on the country’s emissions of carbon dioxide, given its enduring reliance on coal for most of its electricity. 

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Packet Based Energy Delivery Systems


[Internet engineers have long recognized the value of packet based networks, particularly those that support the end to end principle.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

If you have no power, energy efficiency is irrelevant


[There are dozens, if not hundreds of research initiatives around the world looking at improving energy efficiency in computers and networks.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Modeling the economy in a changing climate

As society adjusts to the knowledge that our climate is changing, policy makers are faced with a difficult question: how can they use policy to help prevent and cope with climate change, while minimizing the damage to their nation or organization’s economic health?

Monday, August 22, 2011

SURFnet pilots green cloud service for Dutch universities using lightpaths

[I recently received a fascinating e-mail from Rogier Spoor at SURFnet on an exciting initiative they have undertaken to pilot a green cloud service for Dutch universities using a lightpath connection to Iceland.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Clouds would reduce carbon emissions equivalent to 16.8 million cars

[An excellent article on the carbon reduction potential of clouds. And one of the few analysis that distinguishes between energy consumption and efficiency versus carbon footprint.

Open Flow in the real world: Carriers, clouds and follow the sun/wind networks


[It is exciting to see the concept of software controlled networks pioneered by CANARIE and CRC (UCLP) and other researchers such as Nick Mckeown at Stanford starting to gain momentum.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

World's first zero carbon video conference using follow the wind/follow the sun

[At this week’s CANARIE annual general meeting the Greenstar team demonstrated the world’s first zero carbon video conference using follow the wind/follow the sun technology.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Could the Net be killing the planet one web search at a time

It's Saturday night, and you want to catch the latest summer blockbuster. You do a quick Google search to find the venue and right time, and off you go to enjoy some mindless fun.

Meanwhile, your Internet search has just helped kill the planet.

Far-flung data centers could use otherwise unharvestable renewable energy for computation.


Really Remote Data

Far-flung data centers could use otherwise unharvestable renewable energy for computation.

Monday, May 30, 2011

The future of Green IT is Survivable IT

[Before the first battle has hardly begun we have already lost the war on climate change.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Green Cloud Apps will be future killer apps for the Internet

[I recently stumbled across a very cool app called EchoSign that allows for electronic transmission and signature of all sorts of documents such as NDAs, expense claims, contract revisions, patient signatures, etc.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Obama orders all US departments and suppliers to develop climate adaptation plan

[This is big news. Developing a climate adaptation plan is a lot harder than making vague commitments to sustainability.

Friday, May 13, 2011

UK Government report on how climate change could ruin the Interent

[The UK government recently issued a report outlining the impacts of climate change on the Internet.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

If the Internet was a country it would be the 5th biggest energy consumer in the world

[Another excellent analysis by Greenpeace on the threat that the Internet poses in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The dramatic growth of the data centers that power the Internet are the heavy industry of the information age.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Electric roads and Internet will allow coast to coast driving with no stopping and no emissions

[Here is a great article on some of the ongoing research with electric roads in Korea and USA. As I have blogged before electric roads can be powered solely by independent roadside windmills or solar panels, owned and operated by small businesses.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

ICT research funded by GHG emission reduction program in Quebec

[Once again Quebec is a world leader in understanding the critical role that ICT can play in helping reduce ICT emissions.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Free Lunch: Exploiting Renewable Energy For Computing

[This is an excellent paper on how locating cloud computing facilities at renewable energy sites can significantly reduce the cost of computing at our universities and businesses.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Energy Efficiency Gains at Home being defeated by growth of electronic gadgets

[This is one of many reasons why I have argued that ICT energy efficiency is not sufficient. The growth in usage of computer gadgets will dwarf any gains in energy efficiency.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Australia gets it right: carbon pricing, national broadband, eResearch, Green IT research

[These days Australia seems to be firing on all cylinders and demonstrating true political leadership on a number of fronts from carbon pricing, deploying national broadband, through to  eResearch and more recently announcing the worlds’ largest Green IT research center.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Universities and R&E networks are sitting on a gold mine - the real value of IPv4 addresses

[There has been a lot of buzz in the press about the recent news of Nortel selling some of its address space to Microsoft for $7.5m which works out to $11.25 per IP address.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

A new look at an old idea: Powering autos from the grid

http://goo.gl/zPHWW


Electricity that powers electric motors is the best replacement for fossil fuels that power internal combustion engines. As discussed in my lastpost, connecting to the grid while in motion is the best means of powering electric vehicles.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Relocating data centers to colder climates can reduce costs by up to 75%

[At the recent On*vector workshop in San Diego, Dallas Thorton of the San Diego Computer Center (SDSC) gave an excellent presentation on the CANARIE funded UCSD-McGill project looking at the overall cost savings by relocating a facility like the SDSC to Canada.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Smackdown: climate science vs. climate economics and impact on Internet

[Here is an excellent article that puts in stark perspective the challenges we face with future global warming.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Must read: Solar powered Wifi and Data Centers - real world examples

[Here is an excellent web site and presentation on building solar powered data centers and wide area WiFi networks.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Design principles for building networks to survive global warming

[I continue to be amazed at how little attention is being paid by network engineers on adapting to the severe challenges of global warming.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Some innovative clean energy solutions that bypass deadend thinking of energy efficiency

[For those who read my blog know that I keep harping about the fact that the pursuit of energy efficiency in its own right as a “green” strategy is an intellectual dead end.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Why Energy needs to be Free to reduce CO2 and the Falsehood of Energy Efficiency

[There has been a spate of good articles on the falsehood of energy efficiency in terms of reducing energy consumption and GHG emissions.

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