Tom Raftery on ELECTRICITY 2.0

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About this Event

25 Nov 2008

web 2.0 meets energy distribution and Green datacentres

About the Speech:

Tom Raftery spoke on ELECTRICITY 2.0 and efficient data centres, on Tuesday 25 November 2008 at 12:45 pm, at a joint roundtable of the IIEA Digital Future and Energy Groups.

Youtube presentation available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9Mw1glEqlM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XlW3ISIjPk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKBnkxZDJZo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb6g-8QGDxU

Tom Raftery is co-founder and director of Cork Internet eXchange, a hyper efficient data centre, and Senior Consultant at RedMonk sustainable technology consultancy. He is also the blogger behind Ireland\'s highest subscribed blog, tomrafteryit.net and is a regular keynote speaker at Web 2.0 conferences.

Following on from Jeremy Rifkin, who recently spoke at the IIEA, Rafterty will present outline "Electricity 2.0", a new concept of how energy networks can leverage Web 2.0\'s bottom-up inter-connectivity. At a time when datacenters promise huge opportunities for Ireland, he will also examine sustainable, competitive solutions for a data centre economy.

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For too long, power distribution has been a top down, subscribe only model, but the electricity grids of tomorrow will be read/write, just like the Web. It’s a commonplace to talk about how IT should be delivered as a utility, but what about delivering a utility the same way the Web works? Utilities need to become more like the Internet: disparate, disconnected electrical grids will be joined up to give us one global electricity super-grid. Imagine the resilience: electricity that can route around problems. Think about how much more stable the super-grid would be if the excess energy produced by, for instance, Scandinavian wind farms on windy nights could simply be sold to meet capacity shortages in the U.S. as people arrive home from work, or in Japan as they start to wake up. What if the grid were smart, publishing prices in real time, based on supply and demand fluctuations? And further, what if smart meters in homes and businesses could adjust appliances based on the real-time pricing (thermostats up/down, devices on/off, etc.) And what if, again like the Internet, the super-grid were read/write, i.e., if you could be a producer as well as a consumer? In this talk Tom Raftery will explain how this vision will be realized, which companies and geographies are leading the charge, and what you should to do to encourage the change.

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