GE wants to be a big data company. In a presentation in San Francisco Tuesday, the industrial giant announced a platform of products, including predictive software products, Hadoop-based big data software for ingesting and managing industrial data and a relationship with Amazon Web Services to share industrial data in public clouds.
All of this is key to its industrial intent vision, where connected sensors on machines talk to the cloud and companies harness the power of industrial data in real time to automate industrial processes. GE has estimated that connecting devices to the “industrial internet” could boost global GDP to the tune of $10 trillion to $15 trillion by 2030.
GE is building big data software called the Historian that uses Hadoop to manage time-series data to help industrial customers track their rising industrial data. GE’s Bill Ruh, VP of the Global Software Center, pointed out that industrial data is growing at twice the rate of other types of data. For example, GE generates about 5 terabytes of data a day in its labs.
The Hadoop part of the software allows the data to scale across multiple nodes, while the time-series component helps manage the influx of tiny pieces of data that comes in almost constantly. Time-series data isn’t huge, but it’s always coming in, adding up to millions and billions of records over a relatively short amount of time depending on how often it is collected.
The partnership with Amazon (Amazon CTO Werner Vogels attended the event, and he’ll also speak at our Structure event tomorrow in San Francisco) means the cloud giant will be the first cloud provider on which GE will deploy its industrial internet platform. It’s not clear yet, if Amazon will use GE’s Hadoop software in its cloud or if there are just some API links being built.
Update: Vogels and Ruh say that the relationship means that customers can ship and store their data designed for the GE Predictivy software and the Historian platform to Amazon’s cloud. So customers can do it on-premise and/or in the cloud. Pivotal will help build some of the software connectors that will make it possible for customers to use this data where they want without concerning themselves about where it is headed.
In some ways the demonstrations that GE showed off, are taking direct design strategies from consumer applications such as Facebook, and its software options, called Predictivity are designed to connect the data coming in from machines to people in user-friendly ways.
The goal behind all of these products is to bring the internet of things back to the enterprise realm. It’s nice to connect your home, but when you can connect power plants you can drive a lot more results in terms of energy efficiency and even cost savings. And because the money is there, we’ll see a lot of interesting software to solve the problems associated with managing, analyzing and running predictions against data.
“Now for the first time I think we’re going to see innovation coming out of the industrial space and not just the IT space, “said Paul Maritz, the CEO of Pivotal, a company that GE recently invested $105 million in.
I’ll update the story with more information after the event.
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This summer some odd-looking pieces of public sculpture will start popping up in pedestrian-heavy parts of New York City. Like a cross between a pogo stick and a helicopter, these contraptions are actually solar-powered charging stations for mobile phones, and they’re being installed throughout the city by solar charger maker Goal Zero, design firm Pensa and AT&T.
Each Street Charge terminal comes equipped with three 15 watt solar panels mounted on overhead flanges, and a big 168 watt-hour lithium ion battery pack, capable of charging six devices simultaneously and maintaining a reserve power reservoir during the night. iPhone owners will have access to Lightning and 30-pin connectors, while there is a micro-USB plug for other phones. Each station also comes with three female USB ports for people who carry around their own cables.
Pensa created first created a prototype of Street Charge last year and installed it in a reclaimed public area in Brooklyn’s trendy Dumbo neighborhood. Pensa then teamed up with Goal Zero to build the kiosks using its solar power technology and with AT&T to deploy them. The first of the newly designed stations went up in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Governor’s Island, Union Square and Riverside Park. but AT&T plans to install more this summer in other high-traffic pedestrian areas, including Coney Island, Riverside Park, Rockaways, Summerstage in Central Park, Randall’s Island, and Hudson River Park.
With stark memories of Hurricane Sandy still vivid in many minds, New Yorkers don’t need to be reminded of the importance of an off-grid power source. After the storm, a city-wide power outage saw New Yorkers sharing generator power to charge phones and laptops. A handful of solar-powered kiosks isn’t going charge the entire city’s cellphones if there is another natural disaster, but they’re definitely a step toward creating a sustainable alternate power supply.
The charging service is free to use, but there looks to be plenty of monetization opportunities for the kiosks. The stations include panels for display advertising, and a Wi-Fi hotspot could easily be incorporated into its design. The kiosk could also be used as an information kiosk, incorporating digital maps with points of interest, or even as means of providing solar-powered lighting at night.
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There was only one new laptop launched at WWDC this year and there wasn’t very much new about it. The 2013 MacBook Air looks basically the same as it has for a few years: same thin silver package, same rounded corners, same clicky black keys. But people who’ve been using the new Airs — the 11-inch, starting at $999 and the 13-inch starting at $1,099 — say don’t let that sameness fool you. There’s a huge difference that you can’t see: super-long battery life.
Here are the main conclusions from the best reviews out there:
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Following the start of commercial production (and a name change) late last year, smart window maker View announced on Tuesday that it’s raised another round of $60 million led by glass giant Corning, and including Khosla Ventures and GE. The company, formerly called Soladigm, has now raised around $185 million over its lifetime.
View makes windows that can tint on demand using an iPhone app or control panel. The technology used for View’s windows is called “electrochromic,” which means a low-voltage electrical current is applied to the window to change its color to reflect or absorb light. The tinting effect can cool or warm a room, and save energy by cutting down on air conditioning or heating.
View says its windows can save 20 percent off the costs of heating and cooling, 20 percent on lighting, and can reduce peak load (electricity at peak times of use) by 25 percent. On the other hand, the windows are a premium product and cost more than basic windows, and considerably more than other shading methods like window blinds.
All that funding is going towards View commercially producing its windows in its factory in Mississippi. View started commercial production last year and did its first pilot installation at the W Hotel in San Francisco. But the company needed more money to scale up production. Other investors in View include DBL Investors, Navitas Capital, Sigma Partners and The Westly Group.
There’s a few other companies working on electrochromic windows, including Sage Electrochromics, which was bought by Saint-Gobain last spring. The smart window technology has been under development for decades, but the trick is to create manufacturing processes to make the windows economically.
View, which was Soladigm for five years until its name change in late 2012, makes its windows by sputtering an atomic layer, 1 micrometer thick, of the electrochromic material onto a pane of glass. The layer is then sandwiched by another pane of glass. The layer is made of tungsten oxide for its initial product, and View licensed the technology from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
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Electric car maker Tesla Motors has long discussed making its cars able to have their batteries swapped out, but has yet to actually enable the tech in its cars. But now, following many rumors of an impending battery swap announcement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to twitter on Tuesday to say that on Thursday night, Tesla plans to publicly demo that technology for the first time at its design studio near L.A.
Musk writes:
Live pack swap demo on Thurs night at 8pm California time at our design studio in Hawthorne. Seeing is believing. . . Video of battery pack swap will be posted to the Tesla website around 9:30pm, so those attending will see this first.
Battery swapping tech is a system that the beleaguered startup Better Place was trying to make popular. It entails essentially making the car chassis able to be quickly opened so that a battery with a low charge can quickly come out, and be replaced with a fully charged battery. The idea is to solve the problem of range anxiety (current electric cars can only go 200 to 300 miles on a battery) with a solution that takes minutes, or the equivalent time it takes to pump gas at the gas station.
But getting battery swap stations implemented has proven difficult. Better Place was only able to persuade car maker Renault to make one model, the Fluence Z.E., with a battery swap component. Building out the infrastructure technology has also been expensive, and Better Place spent hundreds of millions on its infrastructure.
If Tesla starts installing battery swap stations around its Super Charger stations, it could pull off what Better Place failed to achieve. Many people in the electric car industry still support the idea of battery swap technology as an answer for electric car infrastructure.
Tesla made its Model S car with a battery that is swappable, Peter Rawlinson, former VP and Chief Engineer for Vehicle Engineering at Tesla, told me during a factory tour back in 2010. But Tesla has yet to implement the tech.
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A French startup is testing a transparent panel that would use solar energy to increase cell phone battery life by 20 percent. SunPartner Group hopes to see its Wysips panels appear in cell phones beginning next year. At less than half a millimeter thick, they are unobtrusive and can be built into a phone or placed on top of an existing screen.
Wysips won’t replace products like Mophie’s Juice Pack Air case, which can double an iPhone’s battery life, but at a few dollars each they are an especially cheap option. They collect power with strips of thin solar cells. These are covered with a layer of lenses that render the cells nearly invisible while concentrating solar energy. Without any external accessory or charger, phones could use idle time to recharge with natural or artificial light — and even recover from a dead battery.
A boost from the sun would be especially useful in a disaster situation or an area with little power connectivity. Wysips won’t charge the phone endlessly, but it would allow a quick call here and there. Devices that use less power, such as a Kindle, could rely solely on a Wysips to stay charged.
SunPartner reports the screens are currently 90 percent transparent. That’s a step above more-expensive transparent solar cells, which absorb infrared but not visible light to preserve the screen’s visibility. The company wants to double the screens’ energy output by 2014.
Wysips wouldn’t replace the traditional phone battery. But they would provide an easy charge in a bind and make routine activities like listening to music have very little impact on battery life. SunPartner also isn’t stopping with small device screens either; it is working on embedding Wysips in glass and other materials, which would expand its territory to billboards, car windows, building surfaces and beyond.
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Solar has been a tough business for both well-funded startups or corporate giants with long histories in the energy business. Siemens proves that case now that it’s failed to find a buyer for its solar technology, which has been losing its appeal in some parts of the world.
The German company couldn’t get rid of the concentrating solar thermal business it bought from an Israeli firm, Solel, for $418 million in 2009, Bloomberg reported Monday. Siemens’ solar business has been bleeding money — at least $1 billion since 2011. It’s planning a layoff that will affect about 280 people.
The company first announced its plan to ditch the solar business last October, when it conceded that mounting losses and lackluster market demand weren’t going to disappear soon enough. Siemens’ exit also means the company won’t likely invest in solar startups like it used to.
Siemens has done well with its wind energy equipment business and is among a group of engineering giants, such as GE and ABB, that have bet big on renewable energy. GE was planning to build a 400MW solar panel factory in Colorado before nixing the plan in 2012.
Solar technology companies worldwide have struggled mightily, and dozens of them have gone out of business or gotten scooped up cheaply. The solar market has experienced an oversupply of solar panels for nearly three years. That has not only depressed prices but also sparked trade disputes in which Chinese solar panel makers have been selling their products at below fair market prices in the United States and Europe.
The market for concentrating solar thermal technology isn’t faring much better, either. That kind of technology, which was what Siemens bought from Solel, uses giant curved mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a heat-transferring fluid to generate steam. The steam then goes to drive a turbine generator to produce electricity. This type of technology is suitable for large solar power plants and works best in regions with intense sunlight and few cloudy days. The plummeting prices of solar panels in recent years has made it difficult for solar thermal technology to compete for utility contracts.
Most of the power purchase agreements awarded by California’s three big utilities, for example, use solar panels instead. BrightSource Energy, a concentrating solar thermal startup in Oakland, announced a change in their business plan earlier this month when it said it would no longer focus on being a power plant developer. Instead, it will supply its technology and engineering expertise and seek more business deals internationally.
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Google has long invested in some unusual really weird ways to get Internet access to remote places and its balloon-powered Internet access trial, dubbed Project Loon, is no exception. But Project Loon is also the latest example of how Google’s greater interests of getting everyone connected align with the unique requirements of clean power.
The balloons that will be used in Project Loon will be powered by 100-watt solar panels, and Google says that Project Loon will be completely charged with renewable sources. On the Project Loon website, it says:
Each unit’s electronics are powered by an array of solar panels that sits between the envelope and the hardware. In full sun, these panels produce 100 watts of power — enough to keep the unit running while also charging a battery for use at night. By moving with the wind and charging in the sun, Project Loon is able to power itself using only renewable energy sources.
This isn’t the first time that Google has turned to small, distributed clean power generation to connect up remote internet access. About five years ago, Google had a plan to build out floating data centers that could use wave power as an energy source. These data centers could be deployed to remote, or even conflict, zones to boost internet access in places that need it.
Many of the planned city-wide WiFi deployments of yesteryear, which used routers propped up on street lights and utility poles — Google was a big supporter of them– used solar panels as a constant power supply. MuniFi didn’t work out as expected, but the concept is the same as Google’s Project Loon.
Solar in particular has long been important to Google. Its headquarters had one of the first large corporate solar rooftops when it was built back in 2007, and it has invested in many solar panel projects that could power its data centers throughout the world.
Wind power is also a big interest of Google’s. Recently Google’s moonshot lab Google X acquired high-altitude wind startup Makani Power, which has built out kite-powered wind turbines that draw power from the wind hundreds of meters off the ground. Project Loon could also possibly be using micro wind generators that create power, as it hints at tapping into wind for power, but Makani’s turbines spin around a long tether (whereas Project Loon’s wireless routers float along on balloons).
Beyond distributed, micro clean power generation (think solar panels on roofs), Google is also interested in large centralized clean power (picture a huge solar or wind farm in the desert). Google has invested over a billion dollars into huge clean power projects like wind and solar farms in the deserts, and is using these types of farms to add clean power for its data centers in remote areas.
Small solar panels and micro wind turbines are also playing an important role in bringing internet access to developing areas in India and Africa where there’s no grid. People are using their cell phones for internet access, and are using solar panels to charge their cell phones.
At the end of the day, getting internet access to everyone on the globe — either by powering data centers, powering the routers themselves, or powering the smart devices that will connect to the internet — will require flexible power generation options. The centralized coal and natural gas plants that are providing grid power to much of the developed world won’t work in the remote locations that are not yet connected.
Because Google is so interested in this concept of connecting everyone, it’s doing these more unusual trials and introducing wacky services like Project Loon. While Project Loon might end up being just too loony to work, the clean power option it’s using isn’t wacky at all and will be the answer to bringing the internet to the ends of the earth.
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Although Apple isn’t the topic of our GigaOM Chrome Show, we did refer to it quite a bit on this week’s episode. The newest MacBook Airs use the Intel Haswell chips we’ve been hoping for in new Chromebooks so know we know what kind of battery life boost to expect. Two new extension recommendations are available in the show, as well as talk about a $35 Chrome media streaming solution.
Can your dog help advance the Internet of Things? Ben Jacobs of Whistle thinks so and explains to Stacey Higginbotham how vets, researchers and pet owners can take advantage of data from devices worn by pets.
Lastly, our GigaOM Weekly Wrapup podcast recaps seven years of blogging as GigaOM celebrates another birthday. There’s more information on the PRISM saga and even a little gaming news: Did Sony turn the tables on Microsoft at this year’s E3 gaming convention?
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Imagine a computer so small it could slip through the human bloodstream. At just a millimeter in width, a new battery built by a Harvard University and University of Illinois team is perfectly suited to be a power source for tiny computers. It is also the first battery to ever be fabricated with a 3D printer.
The team used a custom printer and ink to produce the batteries. A nozzle one millimeter wide deposited layers of nanoparticle-packed paste in a comb-like shape. A second printed comb nestled into the first, their teeth interlocked. These functioned as the two halves of electrodes, which conduct electricity.
After printing, the electrode layers quickly hardened and were placed in a small container filled with solution. The finished product measured in at less than a millimeter wide. The team published their work Tuesday in Advanced Materials (subscription required).
A battery like this could transform fields like robotics, which are limited by how small they can build product by currently available materials. It would benefit tiny flying and swimming drones that must work autonomously over long distances, plus medical implants and discrete, wearable electronics. (LINK TO RECENT D11 STORY ON WEARABLES AS FUTURE OF PERSONAL COMPUTING.)
Other small batteries are made of layers of thin film, but are too thin to provide much power. This 3D printed variety is dense and thick enough to compete with a traditional battery, and it’s also a lithium-ion battery: the same style as in a cell phone.
“The electrochemical performance is comparable to commercial batteries in terms of charge and discharge rate, cycle life and energy densities. We’re just able to achieve this on a much smaller scale,” co-author Shen Dillon said in a Harvard release.
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