The green frog from silicon valley

I want my green plug too

Have you ever lost your nerves looking for your cell phone charger? Have you ever misplaced your laptop power supply, to find yourself running frantically to a store and struggling to find a replacement? Well, you are not alone. Even if you say no - and I don't believe you - look around your home or your office: we are surrounded by these power eating bugs that spread in front of our eyes. I have more than a dozen of them home myself, and I'd like to get rid of them.

That is what Frank Paniagua, the CEO of Green Plug, thought too when he and his wife went away for a friend's wedding. They struggled to find plugs in their hotel room for all their devices. He realized that the situation with consumer electronics was getting our of hand. "There must be a solution!" he told himself. Frank had solved a similar problem twenty years ago when he led the VESA standard to make personal computers and monitors compatible accross manufacturers.

Green Plug is a 3 year-old star-up based in San Ramon.The 15-people crew developps an innovative and secure digiltal communication protocol between devices that need power and their power sources. I first heard about them at a Clean Tech Open gathering last summer. Since then, they have made progress on their quest to provide a universal power supply to the consumer market. I decided to catch up with them last week and chatted with Seth Socolow, Green Plug VP of Corporate Marketing.

 "It takes time to get large manufacturers on board. But they are getting it." Seth explains with enthusiasm. Despite early skeptiscm, HP, Apple and the likes are slowly coming to the realization that this is the way to go. To help accelerate the adoption cycle, Green Plug tweaked their business model: they provide the communication protocol for free to consumer electronic makers and they are selling the communication chip to the power-supply manufacturers.

The first impact of such a technology is to limit the amount of energy consumed as the protocol allows the devices to get the energy that they need. No need to remove chargers when power up is complete or overheating them. The bigger impact is likely to simply save the waist of energy and materials into making a charger for every new consumer electronic device. The new Alliance for Universal Power Supplies reports that 3.2 billion power supplies were designed and shipped in 2008 alone.

Just prior to the new year, Innergie introduced mCube90G, the first implementation of the Green Plug protocol dubbed "Greentalk". The Greentalk-enabled device aims to be the world's smallest universal power adapter. The year 2009 is starting with hope for Green Plug who also launched "I want my green plug" e-community to help build consumer awareness and gather support. Well, I want mine too! 

When part of Green goes White

Efficiency has been on my mind in the last few weeks. The effects of the economic downturn start to sink in and are affecting the high-tech sector: tightened capital budget, frugal spending, and reduction in forces… the trend is clear. The recent failure of the banking system crisis is forcing everyone to do more with less. And energy efficiency is becoming one of the hottest Green subjects.

During a recent business trip in Southern California I decided to stop by and visit the Energy Efficiency Institute at my Alma Matter, who incidentally had asked me to look at their new outreach program. As I was walking among the numerous new buildings, I was caught by the reminiscent smell of eucalyptus trees all around campus. I realized how much the place had changed and grew from the Party School it once was. The reputation of UCSB's recent Nobel Prize winners has now replaced the notoriety of its Halloween parties…

Lost, I found comfort in seeing Engineering I building where I did my graduate research. One of the first four buildings to be connected to ARPANET project that led to the Internet, it is now surrounded by the California Nanotechnology Institute and the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management that hosts the Institute. UCSB decided to focus on Energy Efficiency last year and is once more on the leading edge with other California campuses. Stanford announced several weeks ago the creation of $100M Energy research institute. UCSD just hosted the “Greening the Internet Economy” symposium.

Finally, the Program Director of the Institute saved me from my campus wandering and walked me to her office to meet the Executive Director. “Hi Dan! How was your flight?” I asked. Dan Colbert, a pioneer in carbon nanotubes before joining one of the first VC funds focused on clean-tech, still looked haggard from his last trip. We quickly warmed up as he talked to me about the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi he had just attended.

Despite the presence of keynote speakers like Tony Blair, the conference turned out to be disappointing. The highlight of the event was the announcement by the Crown Prince of the new "Masdar city" (named after the local energy giant; imagine “Exxon Mobil" town!) and the target to get 7% of energy consumption (only!) from renewables… We both agreed that if everybody understands that the “Green train” has left and that nobody can stop its course, some definitely want to slow it down.

This type of PR events also poses another challenge: diluted among the mass of empty if not fallacious green news, many green worthy initiatives are having difficulty to find their voice. As we are talking through their e-community project, I quickly got excited and Dan came up with the term “White Room” for their new web-page. He explained to me that in Europe energy efficiency programs are tagged “white” while “green” is kept for clean technologies. “White? It is the plant you don’t need to build…”