Tag: solar panels

Technology / Software

Power line communications now being used in more and more scenarios

Power Line Communications
I had a nice catch-up call with Mike Holt the other day – Mike is Semitech Semiconductor’s VP Sales and Marketing and we had previously talked last August.

Mike was bringing me up to speed on what has been going on with Semitech in the last five months. Semitech make semiconductor chips specially designed for power line communications (PLC). Power line communications is essentially the use of electrical cables to transmit data.

Power line communications is receiving a lot of interest these days because of the current buzz (bad pun, sorry) around Smart Grids. Every smart meter is, by definition, connected to an electricity distribution network – if this network can be used to send and receive information, it saves having to roll out a separate infrastructure for your smart grid communications.

During our call, Mike made me aware of a number of bits of Semitech news (they’ve expanded their sales team, they had new product announcements and they closed a new funding round) but by far the more interesting part of the chat, for me, was when Mike started to tell me of the new markets that are expressing an interest in PLC…

Technology / Software

SAP’s Palo Alto energy efficiency and CO2 reductions

Cisco Telepresence

As mentioned previously, I was in Santa Clara and Palo Alto last week for a couple of SAP events.

At these events SAP shared some of its carbon reduction policies and strategies.

According to SAP Chief Sustainability Officer Peter Graf, the greatest bang for buck SAP is achieving comes from the deployment of telepresence suites. With video conferencing technologies SAP is saving €655 per ton of CO2 saved. This is hardly surprising given Cisco themselves claim to have saved $790m in travel expenditure from their telepresence deployments!

Other initiatives SAP mentioned were the installation of 650 solar panels on the roof of building 2 which provides for around 5-6% of SAP’s Palo Alto energy needs. This means that on sunny days, the SAP Palo Alto data centre can go completely off-grid. The power from the solar panels is not converted to AC at any point – instead it is fed directly into the data centre as DC – thereby avoiding the normal losses incurred in the conversion from DC->AC->DC for computer equipment. Partnerships with OSISoft and Sentilla ensure that their data centre runs at optimum efficiency.

SAP also rolled out 337 LED lighting systems. These replaced fluorescent lighting tubes and because the replacement LED lights are extremely long-life, as well as low energy, there are savings on maintenance as well as electricity consumption.

Coulomb electric vehicle charging station at SAP HQ in Palo Alto

SAP has placed 16 Coulomb level two electric vehicle charging stations around the car parks in its facility. These will allow employees who purchase electric vehicles to charge their cars free of charge (no pun!) while they are at work. SAP has committed to going guarantor on leases for any employees who plan to purchase electric vehicles. We were told to watch out for a big announcement from SAP in January in the electric vehicle space!