Smart Grid

Microsoft and Toyota plan to use Windows Azure, the software giant's cloud offering, to build a telematics service that will initially serve people who have the car maker's electric and plug-in hybrid cars.

For almost 100 years, the lightbulb was simply a lighting device: when a current passed through it, photons came out. Over the last few decades, that has changed. The electronic ballast in a modern fluorescent fixture has almost as many power electronics in it as your cell phone. And, with the emergence of L.E.D.'s, the lightbulb will make the leap to full-fledged I.T. appliance, capable of intelligent automated control and energy management. That transformation is a microcosm of changes in all machines that we use to live our lives: cars are more CPU than engines; HVAC systems have more computing power than an old-fashioned IBM mainframe; and your television set has morphed into another access point for the Internet.

The federal government has committed billions to enhancing national power grids to load balance, save power and, eventually, use the same cables to carry data and power.

Cisco this week said it will acquire Arch Rock Corporation, a privately held developer of IP-based wireless network technology for smart grids.

The IT links to clean technology get stronger by the day, and if the push in Washington by Bill Gates and others to get the federal government to triple its research and development spending succeeds, Silicon Valley is certain to benefit.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, IT as we know it didn't exist. I'm talking of course about the 1980s, when what we call IT was generally called MIS (management of information services). MIS was about automating back-office functions such as accounting and payroll.

Verizon Business has signed a deal to provide IT services for the CURRENT Group's brand of smart grid sensors and software.

Enterprise efforts to consolidate data centers and install virtualization software are taking a big bite out of the number of power-hungry application and storage servers required to support enterprise data. But after taking this critical first step, what else can you do to boost efficiency?

F2F, B2B, P2P, and now M2M. No, M2M is not one of the personal categories in Craigslist. It's machine-to-machine technology, an emerging field closely associated with smart grids.

Ubiquitous wireless networks are already available in cities including Baltimore and Minneapolis, corporations such as Thomson Reuters have sustainable data centers that sell power back to the local utility, the smart energy grid is well on its way, and city-provided social networks are common. The next steps toward the city of tomorrow are all about integrating these services cohesively.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has launched a new project to create standards and interoperability for the so-called smart grid, an IT-driven upgrade of the electricity grid.