GE’s New Smallworld™ Office Suite 4.3 Delivers Big Updates to Global Utility Customers

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Press release:

19 September 2012
GE’s New Smallworld™ Office Suite 4.3 Delivers Big Updates to Global Utility Customers 

• Upgrades to GE’s Gas Distribution, Electric, Water and Global Transmission Office Products
• Features Industry-Specific Functionality for Electric, Gas and Water Utility Companies
• Integrates with GE’s PowerOn Classic™, PowerOn Fusion™, and Smallworld Core Technology Software™

SAN DIEGO—September 19, 2012—GE (NYSE: GE) announced the official release of Smallworld™ Office Suite 4.3, the latest version of its industry-leading, utility-specific geospatial application for managing complex network infrastructures. The updated software features innovations specifically designed to reduce cost, improve decision-making and demonstrate bottom-line benefits for global utility customers managing today’s expanding and evolving infrastructure.

GE’s Gas Distribution Office, Electric Office, Water Office and Global Transmission Office products are key components of the Smallworld Office Suite 4.3 and offer a variety of innovative features. The new Quality Manager feature provides robust data quality analysis and reporting, enabling customers to reduce data quality related costs. Improvements to the Upgrade Framework include a graphical user-interface-driven management tool for use with any Office Suite or custom application. In addition, updated risk management tools address needs and regulatory mandates experienced by many Office Suite customers.

“The new Smallworld Office Suite 4.3 demonstrates GE’s commitment to parallel our solutions with the evolving needs of our customers,” said Bryan Friehauf, product line leader—smart grid solutions for GE Energy Management’s Digital Energy business. “The 4.3 Office Suite provides an off-the-shelf software solution that allows utilities to manage their costs and risks in large-scale utility projects.”

The full Smallworld Office Suite 4.3 portfolio provides industry-specific functionality. The features enable growth in both the technical capability and subject matter coverage for electric, gas and water utilities around the world. It offers industry-proven functionality available “out-of-the-box” for quick installation and implementation. It also integrates with other GE software products such as outage management solution PowerOn Classic™ and distribution management solution PowerOn Fusion™, to provide a full end-to-end solution for utility companies.

Included with Smallworld Office Suite 4.3 is the latest release of GE’sSmallworld Core Spatial Technology™. This offering focuses on the productive management of geospatial data. New features include automated conflict resolution extensions and a user interface transition to Smallworld Application Framework architecture and Smallworld Interface Framework Toolkit presentation layer—engaging interface development via the new Quality Manager and Upgrade Framework.

The new update will provide GE’s Smallworld Design Manager, a product often used by utility companies to automate the design of new assets. Additional upgrades to the software include easy-to-use design layout tools with CAD-based precision placement features and improved support for formation and costing of designs. Other key features include compatible units, macro assemblies, points and spans, usability improvements to the design summary, menus and user interface framework and an administrative application with streamlined new project and design.

“All the software is connected to our core Smallworld network, providing enhanced integration and functionality,” added Friehauf. “We are happy to announce these latest products are now available from GE.”

GE Energy Management’s Digital Energy business is a global leader in protection and control, communications, power sensing and power quality solutions. Its products and services increase the reliability of electrical power networks and critical equipment for utility, industrial and large commercial customers. From protecting and optimizing assets such as generators, transmission lines and motors, to ensuring secure wireless data transmission and providing uninterruptible power, GE Energy Management’s Digital Energy business delivers industry-leading technologies to solve the unique challenges of each customer. For more information, visithttp://www.gedigitalenergy.com.

About GE
GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.

Follow GE Energy Management’s Digital Energy business on Twitter@YourSmartGrid.

Tax Credit in Doubt, Wind Power Industry Is Withering

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The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Friday, September 21, 2012

Tax Credit in Doubt, Wind Power Industry Is Withering

By DIANE CARDWELL

FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. — Last month, Gamesa, a major maker of wind turbines, completed the first significant order of its latest innovation: a camper-size box that can capture the energy of slow winds, potentially opening new parts of the country to wind power.

But by the time the last of the devices, worth more than $1.25 million, was hitched to a rail car, Gamesa had furloughed 92 of the 115 workers who made them.

“We are all really sad,” said Miguel Orobiyi, 34, who worked as a mechanical assembler at the Gamesa plant for nearly five years. “I hope they call us back because they are really, really good jobs.”

Similar cuts are happening throughout the American wind sector, which includes hundreds of manufacturers, from multinationals that make giant windmills to smaller local manufacturers that supply specialty steel or bolts. In recent months, companies have announced almost 1,700 layoffs.

At its peak in 2008 and 2009, the industry employed about 85,000 people, according to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry’s principal trade group.

About 10,000 of those jobs have disappeared since, according to the association, as wind companies have been buffeted by weak demand for electricity, stiff competition from cheap natural gas and cheaper options from Asian competitors. Chinese manufacturers, who can often underprice goods because of generous state subsidies, have moved into the American market and have become an issue in the larger trade tensions between the countries. In July, the United States Commerce Department imposed tariffs on steel turbine towers from China after finding that manufacturers had been selling them for less than the cost of production.

And now, on top of the business challenges, the industry is facing a big political problem in Washington: the Dec. 31 expiration of a federal tax credit that makes wind power more competitive with other sources of electricity.

The tax break, which costs about $1 billion a year, has been periodically renewed by Congress with support from both parties. This year, however, it has become a wedge issue in the presidential contest. President Obama has traveled to wind-heavy swing states like Iowa to tout his support for the subsidy. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has said he opposes the wind credit, and that has galvanized Republicans in Congress against it, perhaps dooming any extension or at least delaying it until after the election despite a last-ditch lobbying effort from proponents this week.

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.

Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image

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The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Sunday, September 23, 2012

Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image

By JAMES GLANZ

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Jeff Rothschild’s machines at Facebook had a problem he knew he had to solve immediately. They were about to melt.

The company had been packing a 40-by-60-foot rental space here with racks of computer servers that were needed to store and process information from members’ accounts. The electricity pouring into the computers was overheating Ethernet sockets and other crucial components.

Thinking fast, Mr. Rothschild, the company’s engineering chief, took some employees on an expedition to buy every fan they could find — “We cleaned out all of the Walgreens in the area,” he said — to blast cool air at the equipment and prevent the Web site from going down.

That was in early 2006, when Facebook had a quaint 10 million or so users and the one main server site. Today, the information generated by nearly one billion people requires outsize versions of these facilities, called data centers, with rows and rows of servers spread over hundreds of thousands of square feet, and all with industrial cooling systems.

They are a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of data centers that now exist to support the overall explosion of digital information. Stupendous amounts of data are set in motion each day as, with an innocuous click or tap, people download movies on iTunes, check credit card balances on Visa’s Web site, send Yahoo e-mail with files attached, buy products on Amazon, post on Twitter or read newspapers online.

A yearlong examination by The New York Times has revealed that this foundation of the information industry is sharply at odds with its image of sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness.

Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found.

To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust. The pollution from data centers has increasingly been cited by the authorities for violating clean air regulations, documents show. In Silicon Valley, many data centers appear on the state government’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a roster of the area’s top stationary diesel polluters.

Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants, according to estimates industry experts compiled for The Times. Data centers in the United States account for one-quarter to one-third of that load, the estimates show.

“It’s staggering for most people, even people in the industry, to understand the numbers, the sheer size of these systems,” said Peter Gross, who helped design hundreds of data centers. “A single data center can take more power than a medium-size town.”

Energy efficiency varies widely from company to company. But at the request of The Times, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company analyzed energy use by data centers and found that, on average, they were using only 6 percent to 12 percent of the electricity powering their servers to perform computations. The rest was essentially used to keep servers idling and ready in case of a surge in activity that could slow or crash their operations.

A server is a sort of bulked-up desktop computer, minus a screen and keyboard, that contains chips to process data. The study sampled about 20,000 servers in about 70 large data centers spanning the commercial gamut: drug companies, military contractors, banks, media companies and government agencies.

“This is an industry dirty secret, and no one wants to be the first to say mea culpa,” said a senior industry executive who asked not to be identified to protect his company’s reputation. “If we were a manufacturing industry, we’d be out of business straightaway.”

These physical realities of data are far from the mythology of the Internet: where lives are lived in the “virtual” world and all manner of memory is stored in “the cloud.”

The inefficient use of power is largely driven by a symbiotic relationship between users who demand an instantaneous response to the click of a mouse and companies that put their business at risk if they fail to meet that expectation.

Even running electricity at full throttle has not been enough to satisfy the industry. In addition to generators, most large data centers contain banks of huge, spinning flywheels or thousands of lead-acid batteries — many of them similar to automobile batteries — to power the computers in case of a grid failure as brief as a few hundredths of a second, an interruption that could crash the servers.

“It’s a waste,” said Dennis P. Symanski, a senior researcher at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit industry group. “It’s too many insurance policies.”

At least a dozen major data centers have been cited for violations of air quality regulations in Virginia and Illinois alone, according to state records. Amazon was cited with more than 24 violations over a three-year period in Northern Virginia, including running some of its generators without a basic environmental permit.

A few companies say they are using extensively re-engineered software and cooling systems to decrease wasted power. Among them are Facebook and Google, which also have redesigned their hardware. Still, according to recent disclosures, Google’s data centers consume nearly 300 million watts and Facebook’s about 60 million watts.

Many of these solutions are readily available, but in a risk-averse industry, most companies have been reluctant to make wholesale change, according to industry experts.

Improving or even assessing the field is complicated by the secretive nature of an industry that is largely built around accessing other people’s personal data.

For security reasons, companies typically do not even reveal the locations of their data centers, which are housed in anonymous buildings and vigilantly protected. Companies also guard their technology for competitive reasons, said Michael Manos, a longtime industry executive. “All of those things play into each other to foster this closed, members-only kind of group,” he said.

That secrecy often extends to energy use. To further complicate any assessment, no single government agency has the authority to track the industry. In fact, the federal government was unable to determine how much energy its own data centers consume, according to officials involved in a survey completed last year.

The survey did discover that the number of federal data centers grew from 432 in 1998 to 2,094 in 2010.

To investigate the industry, The Times obtained thousands of pages of local, state and federal records, some through freedom of information laws, that are kept on industrial facilities that use large amounts of energy. Copies of permits for generators and information about their emissions were obtained from environmental agencies, which helped pinpoint some data center locations and details of their operations.

In addition to reviewing records from electrical utilities, The Times also visited data centers across the country and conducted hundreds of interviews with current and former employees and contractors.

Some analysts warn that as the amount of data and energy use continue to rise, companies that do not alter their practices could eventually face a shake-up in an industry that has been prone to major upheavals, including the bursting of the first Internet bubble in the late 1990s.

“It’s just not sustainable,” said Mark Bramfitt, a former utility executive who now consults for the power and information technology industries. “They’re going to hit a brick wall.”

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.

Data Centers in Rural Washington State Gobble Power

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The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Monday, September 24, 2012

Data Centers in Rural Washington State Gobble Power

By JAMES GLANZ

QUINCY, Wash. — Set in the dry hills and irrigated farmland of Central Washington, Grant County is known for its robust harvest of apples, potatoes, cherries and beans. But for Microsoft, a prime lure was the region’s other valuable resource: cheap electrical power.

The technology giant created a stir here in 2006 when it bought about 75 acres of bean fields to build a giant data center, a digital warehouse to support various Internet services. Its voracious appetite for electricity would be fed by hydroelectric generators that work off the flow of the nearby Columbia River, and Microsoft officials pledged to operate their new enterprise with a focus on energy efficiency and environmental sensitivity.

“You’re talking about one of the largest corporations,” said Tim Culbertson, who was the general manager of the local utility at the time. “You’re talking Microsoft and Bill Gates. Wow!”

But for some in Quincy, the gee-whiz factor of such a prominent high-tech neighbor wore off quickly. First, a citizens group initiated a legal challenge over pollution from some of nearly 40 giant diesel generators that Microsoft’s facility — near an elementary school — is allowed to use for backup power.

Then came a showdown late last year between the utility and Microsoft, whose hardball tactics shocked some local officials.

In an attempt to erase a $210,000 penalty the utility said the company owed for underestimating its power use, Microsoft proceeded to simply waste millions of watts of electricity, records show. Then it threatened to continue burning power in what it acknowledged was an “unnecessarily wasteful” way until the fine was substantially cut, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

“For a company of that size and that nature, and with all the ‘green’ things they advertised to me, that was an insult,” said Randall Allred, a utility commissioner and local farmer.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the episode was “a one-time event that was quickly resolved.”

Internet-based industries have honed a reputation for sleek, clean convenience based on the magic they deliver to screens everywhere. At the heart of every Internet enterprise are data centers, which have become more sprawling and ubiquitous as the amount of stored information explodes, sprouting in community after community.

But the Microsoft experience in Quincy shows that when these Internet factories come to town, they can feel a bit more like old-time manufacturing than modern magic.

In Santa Clara, Calif., a hub of technology facilities in Silicon Valley, diesel emissions from generators at a Microsoft data center caught the attention of regulators for potentially threatening the health of workers at nearby businesses. Microsoft, which was notified by state regulators last year, says it has reduced its emissions.

Over the last few years, Quincy has become an unlikely technology outpost, with five data centers and a sixth under construction. Far from the software meccas of Northern California or Seattle, Quincy has barely 6,900 residents, two hardware stores, two supermarkets, no movie theater and a main drag, State Route 28, whose largest buildings are mostly food packers and processors. Its tallest building is a grain elevator.

“A farming community in the middle of a desert,” said Warren Morgan, the president of Double Diamond Fruit.

The remarkable scale of the Quincy data centers, and their power demands, have made this town something of a test tube for studying the planet’s exploding need to house and process digital information.

The data centers, which include Yahoo and Dell facilities, wound up in Quincy by way of the Columbia. The river flows 1,200 miles from the mountains of British Columbia to the spectacular gorge between Oregon and Washington, where the water crashes into the Pacific Ocean.

Along the way, about a dozen large hydroelectric dams tame the river, providing irrigation for farms and the cheap, plentiful power that has become a magnet for large agricultural operations and heavy industries like aluminum, steel, paper and chemical plants.

When Microsoft was searching the country for a location for its new installation, the Grant County Public Utility District, which owns two of the dams, says it offered the company rates that would range from 2.5 cents to 3.8 cents per kilowatt-hour in its first five years — far below the national industrial average of 6 cents to 7 cents, according to analysis based on federal figures by the Electric Power Research Institute. The power from dams is also highly reliable, a critical factor for data centers, which can crash with the slightest interruption.

Beyond power, Washington State has awarded the industry lucrative tax breaks, ostensibly to promote growth in rural areas. Although the initial expectations that private fortunes would be made on land sales and housing developments were quickly dashed, Quincy’s revenue from property taxes, which data centers do pay, has risen from $815,250 in 2005 to a projected $3.6 million this year, paying for a library and repaved streets, among other benefits, according to Tim Snead, the city administrator.

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.

EPA Honors Organizations for Supporting Green Power

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Press release:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASESeptember 24, 2012

EPA Honors Organizations for Supporting Green Power
WASHINGTON – Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) presented its 12^th annual Green Power Leadership Awards to 24 Green Power Partners and three suppliers for their achievements in advancing the nation’s renewable electricity market. For most municipalities, electricity usage is the single-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. By using green power, communities and businesses can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create local jobs, and improve public health.
“Our 2012 Green Power Leadership Award winners have not only demonstrated commendable civic leadership in their efforts to use renewable energy sources, they’ve also helped to reduce our carbon footprint and cut back on pollution – all while supporting America's growing renewable energy industry,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Thanks to their commitment -- and the commitment of all of our Green Power Partners -- our country is one step closer to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future.”

“Green power” is electricity generated from renewable resources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas and low-impact hydro, and produces no net increase of greenhouse gas emissions. From purchasing 100-percent green power to installing large-scale solar panel arrays, the award winners help demonstrate that green power makes sense not only for Americans' health and environment but for business' bottom lines.

The 2012 Green Power Leadership Award winners are listed below in the following categories:

First-ever Sustained Excellence in Green Power: Intel Corporation, Kohl’s Department Stores, Staples, and Whole Foods Market
Green Power Partner of the Year: City of Austin, Texas; Hilton Worldwide; Microsoft Corporation; and the University of Oklahoma
Green Power Community of the Year: Beaverton, Ore. and Oak Park, Ill.
Green Power Purchasing: American University; Bloomberg L.P.; City of Philadelphia, Pa.; Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Kettle Foods; Lockheed Martin; McDonald’s USA, LLC; MOM’s Organic Market; NYSE Euronext; Quinnipiac University; TD Bank; and The North Face
On-site Generation: Coca-Cola Refreshments and Zotos International, Inc.
Green Power Supplier of the Year: Renewable Choice Energy and Sterling Planet
Innovative Green Power Program of the Year: Wellesley Municipal Light Plant
The 24 award-winning partners were chosen from more than 1,300 partner organizations. Utilities, renewable energy project developers and other green power suppliers were eligible to apply for the Supplier of the Year and Program of the Year awards.

EPA also announced the winners of the second annual Green Power Community Challenge, a national competition between communities to use renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to the Green Power Community of the Year award, Oak Park, Ill. also won the community challenge for achieving the highest green power percentage of total electricity use at 92 percent. Washington, D.C. also won the challenge for a second year in a row for using the most green power annually with more than one billion kilowatt-hours (kWh).

EPA, through the Green Power Partnership, works with partner organizations, over half of which are small businesses and nonprofit organizations, to reduce the environmental impacts of conventional electricity use. Partners are voluntarily using more than 23 billion kWh of green power annually. Through their use of green power, these organizations are avoiding carbon pollution equal to that created by the electricity use of more than two million average American homes each year.
More on the Green Power Leadership Awards: http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/awards/winners.htmMore on the Green Power Community Challenge: www.epa.gov/greenpower/communities/gpcchallenge.htm
More on the Green Power Partnership: www.epa.gov/greenpower

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City to widen 10th Street from Hwy. 63 to Spring Avenue

The City of Rolla Street Department willbegin a project to widen 10th Street from Hwy. 63 to Spring Avenue onMonday, July 23 at 7 a.m. Thefirst phase of the project will include the excavation of the curb andsidewalk. After the new curb and sidewalk are poured, a two-inch mill andoverlay of asphalt will be applied to this portion of 10thStreet.  This project will also resultin the construction of an additional right turn lane onto Hwy. 63 that willgreatly improve traffic flow and safety at this busy intersection. Cautionsigns will be posted in the construction area, indicating that this is a workzone, and for motorists to please drive carefully. During this time the Cityappreciates the assistance and cooperation of the public. For more information, please call the PublicWorks Department at 364-8659 or visit www.rollacity.org.

Open House to discuss Country Hills Development set for July 25

Thecommunity is invited to attend an Open House to discuss the proposed CountryHills Development project on Wednesday, July 25 from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. in theCouncil Chambers at Rolla City Hall (901 N. Elm Street in downtown Rolla.).  The County Hills development is asingle-family housing project, being proposed by the Springfield based developer,Housing Plus, LLC. The project consists of 34 single-family homes, withapproximately 1,350-square-feet of living space. The development has receivedbroad support in Rolla and was given a strong endorsement by the MissouriHousing Development Commission (MHDC), last year when the City first appliedfor funding through MHDC for this project. The Country Hills Development project isdesigned to fill a much-needed gap in available affordable single-family homesin Rolla. The project will serve families at or below 60% of Rolla’s medianincome as well as families needing affordable workforce housing in the 60% to80% median income bracket.Rolla does not have a project of this typetargeted to the single-family market made economically viable through the useof housing tax credits provided by MHDC,” said John Petersen, the City’sDirector of Community Development. “The proposed project is made even moreattractive because it comes with a path to home ownership for the residents andfocuses on working families’ housing needs.” For more information, please contact JohnPetersen, Director of Community Development, at 573-426-6970.