Developing a NREN and Higher-Ed Network architecture for upcoming

winter blackouts

EU 2014 Brussels

Bill St. ArnaudBill.st.arnaud@gmail.com

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Executive Summary• This winter’s possible power blackouts because of shut down of reactors is a precursor of future

challenges with Climate Change. We need to start to prepare for many more significant power outages in the coming years

• Climate Change Preparedness or Adaptation is recognition that we are already committed to at least average 2°C temperature increase and if we continue business as usual we will 6°C temperature increase

• Rather than thinking about how to prevent climate change we need to face reality and develop plans to adapt to a much warmer world with more severe weather and greater probability of power outages and flooding

• R&E sector is the largest consumer of electricity in most countries. ICT consumes 20-40% of electrical power at R&E institutions. Easy target for regulators in event of rolling blackouts.

• NRENs and higher ed institutions need to develop climate change preparedness plans in line with national or regional climate change preparedness initiatives in anticipation of frequent power outages and flooding

• New Internet and Energy network architectures will be required using local highly resilient distributed solar panels

• A proper adaptation or preparedness strategy should also result in a good mitigation strategy

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Nuclear Shutdowns Put Belgians and Britons on Blackout Alert this winter

• 3 of Belgium’s nuclear reactors out of commission because of defects in pressure vessels

• UK has found cracks in 4 of its reactors

• Rolling blackouts planned for both countries this winter

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/nuclear-vulnerability-sends-belgians-scrambling-for-winter-power-supplies

R&E biggest consumer!!

Australian Computer Society Studyhttp://www.acs.org.au/attachments/ICFACSV4100412.pdf

Per employee Per sector

The ICT energy consumption inhigher-ed

• Campus computing 20-40% electrical energy consumption on most campuses– Studies in UK and The Netherlands– http://goo.gl/k9Kib

• Closet clusters represent up to 15% of electrical consumption– http://isis.sauder.ubc.ca/research/clean-technology-and-energy/green

-it/

• Campus data center alone represents 8-20% of electrical consumption– http://www.iisd.org/publications/pub.aspx?pno=1341

Impact of ICT sectorAccording to IEA ICT will represent 40% of all energy consumption by 2030https://www.eiseverywhere.com/file_uploads/fc2e1a5cac349cb69baa4fee4f656697_ITR_Dallas_Keynote_-_Frederic_Chanfrau_Schneider_Electric.pdf

ICT represent 8% of global electricity consumption

74Tw of electricity consumed by Internet alone in USAFuture Broadband- Internet alone is expected to consume 5% of all electricity http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/people/rst/talks/files/Tucker_Green_Plenary.pdf

Digital vs Traditional appliances

IEA Gadgets and Gigawatts http://www.iea.org/Textbase/nptoc/Gigawatts2009TOC.pdf

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Biggest threat to NRENs and Higher-Ed

• Reliability of the Electrical Grid– Extreme weather outages of

power grid have escalated dramatically

• Flooding from Atmospheric Rivers (ARs)– North Atlantic ARs are

projected to double and become stronger

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Scary reading• “US Energy sector vulnerabilities to climate change and extreme

weather” US Department of Energy July 2013– http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/07/f2/20130716-Energy%20

Sector%20Vulnerabilities%20Report.pdf

Recent Sample outages

• Rising water temps forcing power plant shutdowns

• Coal and nuclear power generating capacity will decrease by between 4 and 16 percent in the United States and a 6 to 19 percent decline in Europe due to lack of cooling water.• http://www.reuters.com/ar

ticle/2012/06/04/climate-water-energy-idUSL3E8H41SO20120604

Atmospheric Rivers

• Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) are the key synoptic features which deliver the majority of pole-ward water vapour transport.

• Associated with episodes of heavy and prolonged rainfall.

• ARs are responsible for many of the largest winter floods in the mid-latitudes resulting in major socioeconomic losses;

Source Lavers et al 2013 Environmental Research Letters

Climate Forecasts

• MIT report predicts median temperature forecast of 5.2°C– 11°C increase in Northern

Canada & Europe– http://globalchange.mit.edu/

pubs/abstract.php?publication_id=990

• Nearly 90 per cent of new scientific findings reveal global climate disruption to be worse, and progressing more rapidly, than expected.• http://www.skepticalscience.c

om/pics/Freudenburg_2010_ASC.pdf

Currently we are on track for worst case scenario

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What does 1C average temperature mean?

• In the 1700s – when global average temperature was .8C colder than now, New Yorkers could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island on ice as thick as 8 feet– http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/31

/in-the-little-ice-age-lessons-for-today/

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Why focus on preparedness and not prevention?

Equivalent to one new nuclear power plant per day for next 50 years!!

Presentation title

Government Mandated Climate Preparation Plans

• USA: President Obama’s Executive Order on Climate Change Preparedness– All US government departments, agencies, data centers, etc must develop climate change

preparedness plans– States, municipalities, universities and other institutions are also encouraged to develop similar

plans– Disaster preparedness plans must cover range of scenarios of severe flooding, droughts, hurricanes,

long term power outages, etc– http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/01/executive-order-preparing-united-states-i

mpacts-climate-change

• Europe: EU Adaptation Strategy Package– http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/adaptation/what/documentation_en.htm

• UK Government has developed a risk assessment and national adaptation program for all sectors including Telecom and Higher Ed– Distance education and Telecoms a critical component

• Belgian National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy– http://www.lne.be/themas/klimaatverandering/adaptatie/nationale-adaptatie-strategie/Belgian

%20National%20Adaptation%20Strategy.pdf

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Lessons from Hurricane Sandy• Many classrooms and research facilities at NYU and Polytechs were flooded

• It took months to restore and repair facilities to remove mold and other damage

• Distance education and remote research critical for surviving climate change severe weather– Distance education has been identified as a key element in any national climate

change preparedness framework

• But need a reliable and robust network to sustain reliable distance education– Flooding also took out campus network gear, but core optical NREN network

continued to function

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Lessons from Sandy about backup diesels

• Make sure fuel is changed every year– Diesel fuel deteriorates much faster than gasoline

• Arrange for long term, high priority fuel contracts from a number of refineries

• Make sure IT staff know how to change fuel and air filters

• Make sure fuel pumps are self priming, collocated with diesel and connected to UPS

• Make sure all electrical cabling, transformers and switch gear are in water tight compartments – Double check all egress and ingress ports through

walls

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First step• NREN and/or institution should

determine if there already exists a national or regional preparedness framework, and how they fit within those plans

• Measure your institution’s readiness with Notre Dame Adaptation Index

• Some national preparedness plans expect tools such as distance education and NREN networks to serve as critical services during severe weather events

http://gain.org/

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Possible Solutions • There are a range of outcomes and solutions to climate change risk due to

weather extremes– Decision factors include degree of risk, tolerance to risk, etc

• The simplest is to deploy local independent sources of electricity (e.g. micro grids) that are not dependent on fossil fuel deliveries and are loosely coupled to electrical grid such as solar panels and windmills– Many companies will pay for capital cost in return for guaranteed purchase of

power– Power from local renewable power sources can be sold to grid under Feed In Tariff

(FIT) programs– UCSD saves $850K per month because they deployed their own micro grid

• http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-17/ebay-to-ellison-embrace-microgrids-in-threat-to-utilities.html

• Next step is to develop an energy routing architecture and policy– Local independent renewable power will unlikely be sufficient for most institutions

so power will need to be routed in a priority basis– Using SDN-P to integrate micro grids with data networks on campus and NRENs

http://goo.gl/SFaW6p

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Why de-couple from the Grid?1. It saves money

– Cost of solar power cheaper than grid power

2. It provides for greater resiliency of electricity supply (see Belgium)

3. It reduces GHG emissions

4. May be forced to use solar power if governments get serious about global GHG treaty

• Biggest challenge (and opportunity) is unreliability of solar power

3 hours of sunshine hitting the plant equals our total annual energy consumption

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ITU recommendations• Decouple communication infrastructure from electric grid infrastructure to the extent possible, and make

both more robust, resilient, and redundant.

• Minimize the effects of power outages on telecommunications services by providing backup power at cell towers, such as solar-powered battery banks, and “cells on wheels” that can replace disabled towers. Extend the fuel storage capacity needed to run backup generators for longer times.

• Assess, develop, and expand alternative telecommunication technologies if they promise to increase redundancy and/or reliability, including free-space optics (which transmits data with light rather than physical connections

• Develop high-speed broadband and wireless services in low-density rural areas to increase redundancy and diversity in vulnerable remote regions.

• Perform a comprehensive assessment of the entire telecommunications sector’s current resiliency to existing climate perils, in all of their complexities. Extend this assessment to future climate projections and

• etc

• Resilient pathways: the adaptation of the ICT sector to climate change– http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/climatechange/Documents/Publications/Resilient_Pathways-E.PDF

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ITU Preparedness Checklist -1

Source: Resilient pathways: the adaptation of the ICT sector to climate change

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ITU Preparedness Checklist -2

Source: Resilient pathways: the adaptation of the ICT sector to climate change

MIT to build data center independent of the grid

• The data center will be managed and funded by the four main partners in the facility: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cisco Systems, the University of Massachusetts and EMC.

• It will be a high-performance computing environment that will help expand the research and development capabilities of the companies and schools in Holyoke MA– http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/06/11/ci

sco-emc-team-mit-launch-100m-green-data-center

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Solar powered student cell phone and computer charging stations

Street-charge.com

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eVehicle energy storage and micro grids for university

UCSD 2nd life battery program

University Delaware use of eVehicles for power

Grand Challenge – Building networks and services using renewable energy only

• How do you provide mission critical services when energy source is unreliable?– Ebbing wind or setting sun

• Back up diesel are not an option because they are not zero carbon and power outages can last for days or weeks

• Need new energy delivery architectures and business models to ensure reliable service delivery– R&E networks and clouds can play a critical role – Not so much in energy efficiency, but building smart solutions that

adapt to availability of renewable power

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Research Initiatives- Self Reliant Internet

• Building an Internet architecture powered solely with renewable power

• Virtually all routing and forwarding done at edge using local solar panels– E.g. aBitCool

• RPON – reverse passive optical networks, distributed FIBs

http://www.slideshare.net/apnic/abitcool-a-vast-array-of-smallscale-service-providers-with-gigabit-access-by-tony-hain-apnic-38-apops-3

Internet Powered at the Edge

Passive OpticalSplitter

TDM or WDMreturn

Aggregator (AOL or RBOC))

Google

NeighborhoodColo Node

OXC

Customer Controlled or Owned Fiber

Active laser & optional CWDM at customer premises

Only the contractedSP provides return signal

Yahoo

Service provider can be several km away

Active laser and CWDM at customer premises. Customer controls routing of lambdas

Neighbourhood Colo

OXC

Service Provider A

Service Provider B

Edge router with distributed FIB

GreenStar NetworkWorld’s First Cloud/Internet Powered solely by renewable energy independent of

the electrical grid

Cloud Manager

Host Resource

Cloud Manager

Network Manager

VM

Mantychore2

Host Resource

Canadian GSN Domain

European GSN Domain

Dynamically ConfigureIP Tunnel

• Shudown VM• Copy Image • Update VM Context

• Start VM

Export VM

VMVM

Internet

Notify EU Cloud Manager

Cloud Proxy Host Cloud Proxy

Lightpath

Optical switch Optical switch

Shared storage

Shared storage

Host

INTECUGhent

Virtualisation Applied to Networks

VR2A DB C

ii) Path of Traffic after Virtual Router Migration

Host AHost B

VR3VR1 VR4

Virtual Router MigrationSleeping Router

VR2A DB C

i) Path of Traffic before Virtual Router Migration

Host AHost B

VR3VR1 VR4

Physical Router Platform

Virtual Router (VR) Instance

Optical Transport Switch

Optical Lightpath (A D)

Host

Physical Link

Y. Wang, E. Keller, B. Biskeborn, J. van der Merwe, and J. Rexford, “Virtual routers on the move: live router migration as a networkmanagement primitive” in Proc. ACM SIGCOMM, 2008

A key constraint is to maintain the logical IP topology

Use a combination of virtual router migration, infrastructure sleeping together with traffic grooming in the optical layer

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Research Initiatives-Energy Internet• With SDN-P it is assumed that many energy consuming devices power have their

own local power source e.g:– WiFi spot with its own solar panel– Backup battery power on computer– Electric vehicle with its own battery bank

• Many possible virtual and real power circuits. – PoE, USB, Traditional 110/220, 48V Dc,Pulse power over Cat 5– Power routing across devices following path of virtual power circuit

• Ideal for existing intelligent networked devices like computers, switches, routers, servers, Wifi hot spots , electric vehicle charging stations, etc– Most of these devices have their own on board storage and so techniques such as round-

robin power distribution are possible

• Network engineers & researchers have to start thinking how to deploy networks that are powered solely by solar power–

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/rob-insight/an-earth-day-look-at-the-sunny-state-of-solar/article18101176/#dashboard/follows/ …

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The benefits of challenges of SDN-P for NRENs and data centers

• The Benefits:– Providing dynamic workload redistribution– Providing dynamic reallocation of resources to optimize the use of power and

finding the least costly power– Providing resource-consumption planning, allowing for bulk purchases of

power and demand planning– Automating responses to environmental changes or other trigger events– Adjusting to changing power needs based on application demands

• Key takeaways from this report include:– Because of software-defined power’s ROI and reliability benefits, it can pay for

itself in a short time.– Innovative companies are leveraging software-defined power to increase

reliability and reduce costs.The benefits and challenges of software-defined power SDN-P http://dlvr.it/5TGrR5

The role of eVehicle in Future Network Architectures

• With dynamic mobile charging, the eVehicle can be charged as it is travelling along the highway using power from roadside solar panels and/or windmills– Technology already in use for public bus

transportation in various cities

• eVehicle can then be used to deliver this energy as a backup or primary power source to the network, rather than consuming electricity at destination

• eVehicle becomes competitor to electrical grid for delivery of renewable power to homes and business

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The Future – “Energy Internet”• eVehicle becomes more than a human transportation system –

it also becomes an energy transport system to transfer renewable energy between dynamic charging stations– E.g. power from under utilized charging stations can be delivered by

eVehicle to charging stations that are heavily used– Or power can be brought to the home to provide backup power to

the home

• Dynamic charging station becomes energy packet router/switch!

• Rather than eVehicle coming home with depleted batteries, instead it comes home fully charged in order to provide power to the home

• eVehicle becomes competitive alternative to the electrical grid

• http://Green-broadband.blogspot.com

EU Funded Program

• Project addresses directly the technological feasibility, economic viability and socio-environmental of dynamic on-road charging of electric vehicles

• Advanced solutions, conceived to enable full integration in the grid and road infrastructure within urban- and extra-urban environments for a wide range of future electric vehicles, will be implemented and tested.

• http://www.fabric-project.eu/

Cyber-infrastructure in a Carbon Constrained World

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0960.pdf

Let’s Keep The Conversation Going

E-mail

Blogshttp://green-broadband.blogspot.com

Twitterhttp://twitter.com/BillStArnaud

Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com

Bill St. Arnaud is a R&E Network and Green IT consultant who works with clients on a variety of subjects such as green data centers and networks. He also works with clients to develop practical solutions to reduce GHG emissions from ICT (See http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/) .