grid

Scaling Amazon EC2 to 512 active nodes

Among all the cloud-computing hype, one thing that hasn't been evident is just how far you can scale across a provider. I haven't seen any other vendor come near Amazon.com's ability to reach the massive scale that the cloud itself connotes.

Max Gorbunov from Grid Dynamics ran a 512-node Monte Carlo simulation to find out how well Amazon EC2--short for Elastic Compute Cloud--would perform. He used GridGain, a Java-based open-source grid computing infrastructure for the test.

All in all, this test clearly shows that you can utilize Amazon's massive infrastructure for high-end processing with an acceptable performance hit. And while I am sure I am oversimplifying the difficulty associated with getting this all set up, based on the development notes it seems like it was fairly easy (at least for Max.) … Read more

Tendril: Smart grid meets Zigbee home networks

Start-up Tendril Networks on Tuesday announced the details of its networked in-home energy displays, a sign that smart grid technology is crawling into the marketplace.

Basic in-home displays show consumers how much electricity they are consuming at a given moment. More sophisticated systems, as Tendril Networks has developed, are designed to give consumers more options to save energy by collecting information over time and to communicate with the utility through networked meters.

The company's product, called Tendril Residential Energy Ecosystem (TREE), is a combination of software that works with utilities' back-office systems and a line of devices that use … Read more

First Solar and Sempra plan thin-film solar plant

First Solar is teaming up with Sempra Generation to build in the Nevada desert what could become North America's largest thin-film photovoltaic plant. The 10-megawatt project would be located 40 miles southeast of Las Vegas, next to Sempra's natural gas plant in El Dorado.

"As a result, the impact to the immediate environment is minimal and the project completion timeline will be shorter," Mike Ahearn, CEO of First Solar, said in a statement.

Sempra will develop, own, and operate the plant, which First Solar will maintain and monitor. Construction began in July and is set to … Read more

Comparison of Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid Cloud offerings

Peter Wayner at Infoworld published a good overview of Cloud offerings from Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid. The main takeaway: Cloud Computing is as nebulous as it is cumulus.

The first surprise is that the services are wildly different. While many parts of Web hosting are pretty standard, the definition of "cloud computing" varies widely. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud offers you full Linux machines with root access and the opportunity to run whatever apps you want. Google's App Engine will also let you run whatever program you want -- as long as you specify it in … Read more

Indian entrepreneurs focus on energy efficiency

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--To cut greenhouse gas emissions, the United States has to invest equally as much in energy efficiency as in renewable energy technologies, and set a price on carbon dioxide emissions.

That was the message from California Energy Commissioner Arthur Rosenfeld, at a meeting Monday with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) about energy efficiency.

In a keynote speech, Rosenfeld--widely recognized for his contribution to California's aggressive energy-efficiency policies--cited a McKinsey report showing that the potential for greenhouse gas abatement in the U.S. between now and 2030 is evenly divided between investments in energy efficiency and renewable … Read more

GoGrid launches Cloud Computing management API

GoGrid has gotten a lot more interesting over the last few months, going from what we had previously called Utility Computing to more of a full-on Cloud approach.

GoGrid delivers true "Control in the Cloud" by combining many of the familiar features of dedicated server or managed hosting with the flexibility and scalability of cloud server hosting

One of the more interesting (and I believe relatively new) aspects of the GoGrid solution is a REST-like API to programmatically control your infrastructure over the internet.

At the core of REST (representational state transfer) is the concept of resources which … Read more

IBM to prime pump for smart-grid start-ups

IBM has broad green-tech intentions, branching from energy-efficient data centers to cutting-edge solar cell technology. Next up is a concerted smart-grid effort.

The computing giant is preparing a technical "framework" to accelerate new technology integration into the creaky electricity distribution grid, said Drew Clark, director of strategy for IBM's Venture Capital Group, which is charged with aligning start-ups with IBM and its customers.

The idea is to create a common set of communication protocols and data formats that utilities and smart-grid start-ups can adhere to.

With these technical blueprints, based on standards like TCP/IP, new technologies … Read more

Two megawatts of batteries connected to power grid

Giant cousins of your laptop batteries are going to provide storage to the electricity grid.

Altairnano on Tuesday said that Indianapolis Power & Light, a division of utility AES, completed tests for using two megawatts worth of its batteries to maintain grid frequency.

The two one-megawatt units--each housed in a semi-trailer--can store up to 15 minutes worth of electricity, or 250 kilowatt-hours each. (The average U.S. home consumes 920 kilowatt-hours per month.)

The tests are important because they demonstrated that lithium-ion batteries can be used for utility-grade energy storage. Right now, most short-term energy storage is done by lead … Read more

Energy storage coming to a power grid near you

Someday, the electricity grid will operate with the equivalent of a giant hard drive. But in the short term, grid storage will look more like a PC's cache or RAM, able to serve up small bursts of power to keep things from crashing.

A panel of experts, organized by the New England Clean Energy Council, earlier this week said that the utility storage field has enormous potential. But rapid deployment of storage devices is held back by concerns over technology risk and financial complexity.

Technology optimists say that wide-scale energy storage will change the face of the transmission grid … Read more