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We pretty sure that the expression “drunk on power” was never meant to be taken this literally. Recently the Rothes consortium of whisky and scotch distillers announced that they have partnered with Helius Enery to install a power plant fueled by none other than, well, whisky by-products! We think that we can drink to that.

The next article, Tidal-powered datacenters: A sea of opportunity?, is very interesting specially since the blogsphere is a buzz with article on power consumption of data-centers and efforts to reduce it. Power, for cooling and machines, is one of largest costs for any data-center. Another related article was the announcement by Cisco, Automation initiative starts with computers, networks — but will expand to heat, lights:

Cisco Systems Inc. launched a major green initiative today that includes free software to help customers use their networks to automatically turn off computers and network gear at night and whenever they aren’t being used.

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For example, the software could be used to track how many employees have left a plant or office complex at the end of a shift based on the number of workers with badges who were still inside. If everybody has left, “why keep the systems working?” Kerravala said. “It has a lot of benefits.”

Initially though the software will work with devices which use power over Ethernet. Again, the goal would be reduce power consumption in offices and possibly, data-centers. Another one is IBM Information Infrastructure to meet new emerging green initiatives and needs in IT, a report by IBM on how one could use it products to make the enterprise “greener”. For me the most interesting part in the report is “FIGURE 1. TOP PRIORITY GREEN BUSINESS INITIATIVES IDENTIFIED BY SENIOR BUSINESS EXECUTIVES”. It shows that business care least about carbon credit/offset programs which incidentally all politicians tend to favor. Go figure

The last link is New Catalyst Paves The Path For Ethanol-powered Fuel Cells from Sayan’s BlogWorld.