Green Blog
A better web. Better for the environment.
Largest supplier of energy monitors now compatible with Google PowerMeter
5/24/10
Today we are excited to offer a new way for many more people to access Google PowerMeter: our new Featured Device partner
Current Cost
- the largest global supplier of real time displays for monitoring energy use. Having already sold one million energy monitoring devices, Current Cost
will now offer devices
that are compatible with Google PowerMeter. They will also offer upgrades to existing customers so that they too can monitor their energy consumption anywhere online with our software.
Devices that integrate with Google PowerMeter will first be available in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Current Cost uses the Google PowerMeter API that
we released back in March
and
joins others
as a Featured Device partner that allows customers to understand their energy use. Our partnership is another example of hardware meeting our software to help customers save energy and money.
E.ON
, one of the UK’s largest utilities, has also teamed up with Current Cost to offer its customers a Google PowerMeter compatible energy monitor as part of its free “
Energy Fit Starter Pack
.”
Current Cost estimates that their customers have already saved close to 400,000 tons of CO2 through monitoring their electricity use. One Australian restaurant
recently learned
that something as easy as turning off their coffee pots each night would save them $3,000 dollars per year.
Curious how you can start saving?
Sign up
for Google PowerMeter today.
Posted by Scott Coleman, Partnership Development Manager, Google.org
Not merely tilting at windmills — investing in them too
5/3/10
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
to bring you information on other green efforts at Google)
On Friday we made our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project — two wind farms that generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to power more than 55,000 homes. These wind farms, developed by
NextEra Energy Resources
, harness power from one of the
world’s richest wind resources
in the North Dakota plains and use existing transmission capacity to deliver clean energy to the region, reducing the use of fossil fuels. Through this $38.8 million investment, we’re aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy — in a way that makes good business sense, too.
To reach a clean energy future, we need three things: effective policy, innovative technology and smart capital. Through our philanthropic arm Google.org, we’ve been pushing for
energy policies
that strengthen the innovation pipeline, and we’ve been dedicating resources to developing
new technologies
, including making investments in early-stage renewable energy companies such as
eSolar
and
AltaRock
. Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated funding for utility-scale projects. To tackle this need, we’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.
A clear windy day at the Ashtabula II wind farm
We’re excited about this first project investment because it uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid. The turbines can continuously adjust the individual blade pitch angles to achieve optimal efficiency and use larger blades with 15 percent more swept area than earlier generations, allowing capture of even more wind energy for each turbine. The control systems for these wind farms are also advanced and dynamic, allowing for remote 24/7 monitoring and operation to ensure maximum turbine up-time and power production. A couple of us got a chance to climb 80 meters up one of the 113 turbines to see firsthand how the rotating blade motion goes through a gearbox to turn the generator that makes the electricity. The climb to the top also provided a great view of the entire wind farm (don’t worry — we all had harnesses and turned the turbine off!).
My colleague Matt takes a rest after the 80-meter climb
We look forward to finding more opportunities to invest in renewable energy projects that use the latest technologies to push the envelope for delivering low cost clean energy. We’ll let you know what we find.
Posted by Rick Needham, Green Business Operations Manager
Eating our way through Earth Day
4/22/10
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
to bring you information on other green efforts at Google)
Today,
Earth Day
turns 40 and is now celebrated in more than
198 countries
. Here at Google, we’ll be focusing on one of the planet’s more enjoyable aspects: its food. (Though, to be fair, we’re always focused on food around here). Our offices are hosting farmers markets, planting herb gardens, hosting talks on sustainable cooking and much more.
At our Mountain View headquarters, we’re enjoying solar cooking demonstrations, classes on composting and local food sourcing, distribution of reusable shopping bags and discussions on healthy cooking and eating. We’re also hosting a speaker from
The Nature Conservancy
and giving tours of our on-site
1.6MW solar panel installation
and the 400kW
Bloom Energy
fuel cells. Today is also Take Your Child to Work Day, so we have plenty of kid-friendly activities centered around healthy, sustainable habits to complement the bounce house, movies and games.
The focus on food is not limited to Mountain View. Our Dublin office is removing all disposable cups, Stockholm is running a special Earth Day food menu in their cafe, Wroclaw employees are planting seeds and Amsterdam is overhauling its salad bar with organic offerings. And the cafe in our London office is sourcing all of its food from within 50 miles of the office, as well as organizing a bike-to-work effort coordinated with
Google Maps
.
Beyond food, we’ve been busy with a number of other Earth-related initiatives. Last month,
Google Maps biking directions
launched in the U.S. and we hope that having these directions on hand will help you find less carbon-intensive ways to commute to work or meet friends. Just the other week we
added
a new feature in
Google Finance
that reports companies’ carbon disclosure rating from the Carbon Disclosure Project. Oh, and don’t forget about the
new kids on the block
.
If you’re looking to make a difference, check for
local efforts
or
make a pledge
to have an impact. We’re working to
minimize
our own carbon footprint, and hope that you’ll take a moment today to consider how you can make a positive impact on our planet.
Posted by Austin Rachlin, Green Business Operations
The goats are baaaahk!
4/15/10
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
to bring you information on other green efforts at Google)
Last year
, in our quest to minimize our carbon footprint (and keep people on their toes), we turned to an unlikely solution for mowing an overgrown field: goats. More than 200 goats from
California Grazing
have once again arrived at our
Mountain View headquarters
where they’ll stay for over a week chomping away on grassy goodness. The cost of bringing in the goats is comparable to hiring lawn mowers for the same job and the green benefits are clear: the goats eliminate mower emissions, reduce noise pollution, restore plant species and fertilize while grazing.
Don’t worry, we’re not going to be in the business of
chèvre
anytime soon, but in the meantime we’re having a lot of fun watching our new colleagues.
Posted by Dan Hoffman, Director of Real Estate and Workplace Services for NorCal, and Chief Goat Herder
Powering consumers with information about their energy use
4/5/10
(Cross-posted from the
Google Public Policy Blog
)
We all receive an electricity bill once a month that is hard to decipher besides the total amount due. What if we instead had access to
more useful and actionable information
about our energy consumption? What if consumers could use this information to automatically adjust appliances, lights, and other equipment to save money and cut energy use?
That’s what a group of over 45 major companies and organizations said today in a
letter to President Obama
. Signers include companies like AT&T, General Electric and Intel and NGOs like The Climate Group, NRDC and the Alliance to Save Energy. The group also includes start ups, smart grid companies, venture firms and trade organizations.
This diverse group shares a common vision: giving consumers the ability to monitor and manage their power use will save them energy and money. It will also unleash innovation in homes and businesses as new energy saving technologies and apps are developed.
This group will continue to look for ways to offer ideas to policymakers on how to empower consumers with energy saving tools and information.
Join the discussion tomorrow
at an event in Washington, DC co-hosted by Google and The Climate Group. If you can make it, RSVP
here
.
Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel
Tomorrow night, turn off your lights!
3/26/10
Tomorrow from 8:30 to 9:30pm local time, hundreds of millions of people around the world will switch off their lights and participate in
Earth Hour
, the largest climate awareness event ever held. As climate change will effect people on every continent, we think a united, global call for action to address the problem is needed.
At Google we’re working hard to be part of the solution for the climate crisis. A first step was pledging to be a
carbon neutral
company. Our web-based services run in some of the world’s most
efficient data centers
, we deploy renewable energy where viable, and we buy high-quality
carbon offsets
to address the emissions we can’t otherwise eliminate.
Even with these efforts, however, there remains an urgent need for clean, affordable electricity. To that end we have a team of engineers working to develop technology breakthroughs that will help make
carbon-free
electricity an economically viable alternative to electricity from coal.
We’re also putting our experience with organizing information to work, so we can enable others to do projects in the sustainable space. We recently announced, for example,
Earth Engine
, a computational platform that enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s forests. And we’re working with our peers through
Climate Savers Computing
to cut the power used by computers in half.
We also want to help you achieve your personal energy reduction targets. Most people don’t know their own direct energy footprint, so we launched
Google PowerMeter
to give detailed, near real-time information about home energy usage. We also like to encourage everyone to set their computer’s
power management
to avoid wasting electricity when it’s not being used.
It’s tools like Google PowerMeter that my parents wish they had years ago when I was a teenager and living under their roof. They were often exasperated to find the lights on in rooms I’d just left, and it took years for them to convince me that I could choose something to eat without standing in front of the fridge with the door wide open. The point is, I had to learn to become a steward of the environment. We can help many more people take steps toward better care of the environment, and make that learning curve easier to climb.
Turning off the lights won’t solve the climate crisis, but it’s a start. Earth Hour gives individuals a simple, meaningful way to participate in a global call for change. As U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated, “Earth Hour is a way for the citizens of the world to send a clear message — they want action on climate change.”
So I hope you’ll gather your friends and family and join me, and hundreds of millions of others, in turning off the lights. And please include the light in the fridge.
Posted by Erik Teetzel, Google GreenKeeper
Easing the development of Google PowerMeter compatible devices
3/23/10
At Google, we are encouraged to experiment and tinker to see if there is a better way of doing things. We want to encourage others in the energy monitoring space to do the same. To this end, I'd like to introduce our most recent strategic partner
Microchip
, which is a supplier of cost-effective, innovative products for the embedded developer. Today, Microchip will include as part of their developer demonstration environment the
Google PowerMeter API
library that we
recently announced
. This integration will make it much easier to create devices compatible with Google PowerMeter which means one can more quickly go from concept to demo to product.
The Google PowerMeter API is designed to work with a variety of energy monitoring devices - from utilities with smart meters, back haul networks and enterprise scale meter data management systems - to small embedded consumer devices that can send energy information directly to Google PowerMeter.
Google's belief in open source also means that the Google PowerMeter API library is available to everyone under the Apache 2.0 license. Embedded developers, tinkerers and makers are welcome to explore the code and use it in their products.
As we search for clean energy alternatives, it is important that everyone - from utilities to garage inventors - get a chance to try out new technologies and methods so that we all benefit from their inspirations.
Posted by Charles Spirakis, Google Software Engineer
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