Job ads show Google wading deeper in clean energy

One of the job openings at Google is to work on heliostats, or sun-tracking mirrors used to concentrate light and produce heat in concentrating solar systems.

(Credit: BrightSource Energy)

Google has invested significant money and employee time in clean-energy technologies over the past few years but recent job openings point to stepped-up efforts to build its own products.

There are currently five renewable-energy engineer job openings listed on Google’s job site, including a top manager position at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters that hints at Google’s bigger ambitions.

The “head of renewable energy engineering” will lead a research and development team within Google to lower the cost of renewable energy. “As the engineering leader of Google’s clean energy initiative, you will be responsible for building a team of top technologists to develop disruptive new technologies that dramatically lower the cost of renewable electricity – with the goal of making renewable energy cheaper than coal within a few years,” according to the job posting.

The other job openings specify skills in designing and prototyping utility-scale renewable-energy systems. Google is seeking people able to assess and create different renewable-energy technologies with the potential to be cheaper than coal-generated electricity, including solar, wind, enhanced geothermal, and other “breakthrough technologies,” according to a listing. Another job is geared at making Google’s operations more sustainable, such as reducing its energy use and achieving the corporate goal of carbon neutrality.

Google first launched its renewable energy cheaper than coal initiative in 2007. The company invested in a few start-ups and took a number of measures to improve the efficiency of its operations. In the past several months, though, Google has sped up its activity in renewable energy.

In April, its Google Energy subsidiary invested directly in a wind farm in Oklahoma located near a planned Google data center. Altogether, Google has also invested more than $400 million in renewable energy, including a large wind farm in Oregon and a large solar project in California earlier this year.

Yesterday, it announced that it is expanding to 450 electric-vehicle charging stations on its campuses, acting as a corporate customer to advance electric-vehicle technology.

Through its philanthropy Google.org, Google invested in start-ups, including high-wind company Makani Power, enhanced geothermal companies, and solar company BrightSource Energy, which filed to go public earlier this year. The company also developed PowerMeter, a home energy monitoring Web application, the only energy-related product Google has released.

In 2010, Google’s green-energy czar Bill Weihl said that engineers had built a prototype of a sun-tracking mirror called a heliostat which could lower the cost of solar energy. Weihl also told Reuters that Google was discouraged in the amount of money going into early-stage renewable-energy technologies.

By expanding its internal research and development around clean energy, Google appears to be stepping up its commitment to develop more technologies internally.

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Case study:

Company ABC has 5 office locations with 100 employees in each office. Each location presently has:

- 1 phone system (5 in total)

- 10 phone lines (50 in total)

- 1 receptionist (5 in total)

Company ABC decides to buy a PBX solution and service from NetworkShape. They will need:

- Digital phones and one server per location (can be leased)

- A digital (virtual) line connected to NetworkShape servers, centrally

- One receptionist (or maximum 2) for all office locations, operating centrally

As a result company ABC will have:

- No phone lines, just a monthly flat fee for all calls (roughly 40% direct savings)

- Significantly less receptionist/employee time (significant indirect savings)

- No long distance charges between offices, no long distance charges in North America

- All extensions are portable, all mobile users can have an extension on their smart phone

- The system can be integrated with different business apps

We migrate you to Google Apps

NetworkShape is a Google Partner.

 

Relevant clips to watch:

We help businesses move their enterprise email to Google apps. Here are some reasons to do so:

 

Security first

Google Apps includes dozens of critical security features specifically designed to keep your data safe, secure and in your control. Your data belongs to you, and Apps tools enable you to control it, including who you share it with and how you share it. Our data center network provides exceptional security and guarantees* reliable access to your data, 24x7x365.25 (that’s right: no rest, even on leap years).

 

Stay connected from anywhere

With Google Apps, all your work is automatically saved in the cloud. You’ll have access to your email, calendar, documents, and sites and be able to work securely, no matter where you are in the world and what device you’re on.

For your business, this means every employee and everyone you work with can be productive from anywhere, using any device with an Internet connection.

 

Work better together

Google Apps helps you and your team work faster and smarter by making it easy for everyone – employees, partners, vendors, anyone – to collaborate effortlessly across teams, companies and locations.

Google Apps lets you share and edit many types of files – docs, spreadsheets, presentations and more – in real time. Forget all the time-wasting email back and forth over multiple file versions; storing docs in the cloud means everyone automatically has the latest version of any file. Doesn’t that make sense?

 

Get stuff done faster

Google Apps can help streamline everyday tasks like invoicing, budgeting, scheduling and more. You can create an invoice template in Google Docs, balance your budget by sharing a single spreadsheet or let Google Calendar suggest times for your team to meet. By removing these time-consuming bottlenecks, Apps frees you up to spend more time on the work that really matters.

 

Invisible IT that just works

Spend less time managing your IT infrastructure. Your employees always have access to the latest software, including the newest features and security updates. You don’t need to buy or maintain servers and everything can be managed from a single interface.

Google Apps is quick to set up, can grow with your business, and costs just $5 per user per month – only two cups of coffee per month.

 

 

Go Green

Moving to Google Apps helps reduce both your company’s overall expenses and its environmental impact. Apps is powered by Google’s energy-efficient data centers, so it’s less energy and carbon-intensive than on-premise servers.

 

 

New Release: Microsoft Windows Thin PC

Partners – Aequilibrium

VMware ties disaster recovery to vSphere

VMware’s Site Recovery Manager now supports vSphere, eliminating one of the obstacles preventing customers from updating to the latest version of VMware’s virtualization platform.

vSphere 4, the succesor to ESX 3.5, was unveiled in April ’09 but until now did not work with Site Recovery Manager, VMware’s software for recovering virtual machines in case of disaster.

VMware has now released SRM version 4, with support for vSphere and other upgrades including a “many-to-one failover (that) protects multiple production sites with automatic failover into a single, shared recovery site.”

Because SRM did not immediately support vSphere, numerous customers have delayed upgrades from 3.5, acknoledges John Bock, productmarketing manager for VMware’s server business unit.

Style1 of fixing… burning ISO images

InfraRecorder—Windows OSs don’t provide graphical tools for burning ISO images. Although InfraRecorder doesn’t support all the DVD and CD drives that are available, it can burn ISO images as well as create data and audio CDs and VDs on most common drives. You can download InfraRecorder from http://infrarecorder.org/?page_id=5

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