Thu

Feb 22
2007

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly

Energy on the Alpha Geek Radar

One easy way to tell when an idea has hit the broader alpha geek radar is when stories start appearing on slashdot. So it seems like a good sign for our upcoming Energy Innovation Conference that slashdot is now regularly covering energy. Here are a few of the recent stories that caught my eye:

  • Server Power Consumption Doubled Over Past 5 years pointed to a report on a new study that showed that "In the US, servers (including cooling equipment) consumes 1.2% of all the electricity in 2005, up from 0.6% in 2000." This trend is what first got energy on my radar. I had a conversation with Larry Page and Sergey Brin several years ago in which they cited energy as one of the biggest costs for Google, with the annual energy costs of running a single CPU approaching the purchase cost of that CPU if then-current trends continued. Subsequent conversations, such as one with Debra Chrapaty, VP of Operations for Windows Live that I blogged about last year, confirmed that this is a huge and growing issue.

  • Biology Could Be Used to Turn Sugar Into Diesel covers Emeryville startup Amyris Biotechnologies, a company funded by the Gates Foundation to research applications of synthetic biology to malaria, but they've gone further afield. I love the engineering spirit of these guys: "Jack Newman, the Vice-President of Amyris said, 'Why are we making ethanol if we're trying to make a fuel? We should be making something that looks a lot more like gasoline. We should be making something that looks a lot more like diesel. And if you wanted to design, you name it, a jet fuel? We can make that too.'" Spoken like a hacker. (Incidentally, we''ve been following synthetic biology for a while too. Drew Endy came to Foo Camp 2003, and ETech after that, and we had Rob Carlson at our Science Foo Camp this year. It's amazing stuff. Check it out.)

  • Nanotech Battery Claims to Solve Electric Car Woes points to the work of A123 Systems on "a Lithium Ion battery that not only can discharge at very high rates of current but can be recharged very quickly without damage to the cells or overheating." If true, and widely deployed, this innovation might make true long-range electric vehicles a reality.

It's really interesting the way ideas spread and catch on, and suddenly get on everyone's radar at the same time. It makes me think of Danny Hillis' definition of global intelligence: "It's that which decided that decaf coffeepots should be orange." (And yeah, I know that "An Inconvenient Truth" and the drumbeat on global warming has contributed to this issue being front and center, but a lot of the companies and projects that are surfacing now actually predate that public awareness. Hackers have been playing with energy for a long time -- I think of Lee Felsenstein's pedal powered internet project for instance -- but it's now getting much wider notice.)

More Radar Posts on Energy or power.


tags: energy  | comments: 3   | Sphere It
submit:

 
Previous  |  Next

0 TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.oreilly.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/5249

Comments: 3

  Thomas Lord [02.22.07 12:28 PM]

It's really interesting the way ideas spread and catch on, and suddenly get on everyone's radar at the same time. It makes me think of Danny Hillis' definition of global intelligence: "It's that which decided that decaf coffeepots should be orange."

Interestingly, Wikipedia offers a paragraph on that topic:

An odd fact about Sanka is that the bright orange label that made it easily identifiable to consumers found its way into coffee shops around the country in the form of the decaf coffee pot. Coffee pots with a bright orange handle are a direct result of the American public's association with the color orange with the Sanka brand and therefore all decaffeinated coffee. (However, those that serve rival Folgers coffee usually have green handled pots for decaffeinated.)

How you get from a successful branding campaign to "global intelligence" is an interesting question. The two categories are, of course, not mutually exclusive -- neither are they naturally always compatible. All too often, they are clearly at odds.

-t

  Lee Felsenstein [02.22.07 04:30 PM]

My work on pedal power has led me to something which promises to be much bigger - what would appear to be unlimited power derived from static magnetic fields, stemming from research done by Magnetic Power Inc.

Yes, it's supposed to be impossible, but look out - it's cropping up in several other places (Ireland and China) at the same time - just as you describe! This is one of the characteristics of breakthroughs in science and technology - they tend to show up in several places almost simultaneously.

I'm taking a skeptical approach, which means that I can be convinced by good enough evidence. And what I've seen so far, while not yet the holy grail of "over unity" efficiency, shows every promise of getting there. I want to be in on it when that happens.

I'll be submitting a proposal to the conference. Stay tuned!

  Mark Simpkins [02.23.07 01:43 AM]

I have recently started a small project GeeKyoto, aimed initially at getting an open source presentation to rival Al Gore's together (with all the requisit branches and variations according to your audience).

We also hope to start building more visualisation widgets.

I hope we will cover energy, though probably to start with it will be visualisation and monitoring of peoples use of current energy sources at a personal level. I am going to be documenting my 'new' (as in an old house, we have newly moved into) house's energy consumption, issues with changing suppliers, finding the greenest supplies we can etc . all within the context of an average middle class family living in South London, this is part of the ViridianIndex project that will grow out of geeKyoto.

I am going to be in San Francisco next week for the Emerging Telephony conference, so if anyone is interested in geeKyoto and is in the area, let me know and we can chat, maybe arrange a 'fellow traveller' meetup.

Cheers,

mark.

Post A Comment:

 (please be patient, comments may take awhile to post)






Type the characters you see in the picture above.