Microsoft Power and Utilities Blog

Microsoft has just published the Smart Energy Reference Architecture SERA v2.0 , after many months of diligent work on the part of architects, partners and Microsoft engineers combined. The document has grown slightly from the SERA version 1.0 length...

  We couldn’t help but beam brightly when we saw this headline the other day in the Seattle Times: “ Windows Azure now one of Microsoft’s billion-dollar businesses .” Here’s the summary: It’s a big deal at Microsoft when one of its products or services...

We have written before about the Kinect effect and how it is spurring innovation in industry and specifically how Kinect adds to utility health and safety record performances in nuclear facilities with our partner Siemens. We would like to invite everyone...

Most information age workers have had an experience worth telling about their company’s on-site technology support guru. And most experiences are about the petty tyrannies the support guy leverages over his co-workers, or the small non-monetary favors...

Helping to modernize the world’s infrastructure has been a key focus for us at Microsoft. Whether it’s power & utilities, manufacturing or cities we are working to provide innovative solutions that look beyond the status quo and provide new thinking...

Utilities and utility services companies around the world continue to recognize the value of knowledge and information as dynamos to corporate activity. Harnessing the knowledge of workers and enabling them to collaborate – wherever they are located ...

      Continuing our series of postings on how the cloud is gaining momentum is in Power & Utilities, there is an excellent story posted today by our Environmental Sustainability Team.  The story is about the new Iwami Higashi...

We have written numerous times in this blog on how Microsoft partners are releasing Cloud based applications that can help Utilities reduce costs and increase productivity. Couple this with our last blog where Zpryme Forecasts Cloud Future for Utilities...

Following on our recent blog about our hesitation years ago to introduce the “Utility in the Cloud” concept, we saw recently a report from Zpryme that forecasts a cloud-laden future. What’s interesting about their research is that it independently substantiates...

  It seems to us that Microsoft is a favorite target of many in the media and the software industry. I think our company was predicted to go out of business long ago, early in the history of personal computing. Nonetheless, we’re still here and continuing...

We’ve written in the past here and here about the unique business model of Mainstream Renewable Power, a company that designs and operates renewable energy installations around the world. MRP is unique in that it was an early adopter of the Smart Energy...

  We would like to invite everyone to join us for a free Webcast on how Anglian Water is driving a step change in utilization of structured and unstructured data to enable greater efficiency within core business processes. The Webcast will take place...

We're opening worlds. Today and tomorrow. Find out how by joining us at the Microsoft Global Utilities Virtual Summit Taking the time to join a conference has just been made easier.... Register now and enjoy the benefits of attending a conference – virtually...

A few years ago we were working on the questions to our annual utility survey and this question came up: “Should we include something about the cloud?” We thought long and hard about it and at the end of the day we decided not to include any questions...

Utilities that choose to use Microsoft products know that there is an underlying strength to our solutions – they can be integrated with each other and a wide range of data sources. Take for example SQL Server 2012 , which can access data from any heterogeneous...

  The annual DistribuTECH show, hosted by our good friends at Pennwell, has become one of the biggest in the north American utility industry. This year is likely to be no exception, and we hope that all our dedicated blog readers will take a few...

The December holidays provide an opportunity to reflect on the past and look to the future and for 2012, it has been a very busy year for us at Microsoft. The Power & Utilities team closed out the year with two marquee events. First was our annual...

In early 2012, Microsoft put our Windows Store out on the web to help our customers find, try and buy useful high-quality apps from developers and partners around the world. The Store also encouraged developers to put their products on our site, while...

  From Portugal, we at Microsoft have this very cute video of a young boy demonstrating Windows 8 to people at a store . The video caught our eye for three reasons. First, it’s cute. The reactions of people to the demonstration – given by a 8 or...

To set your expectations, the video we’re going to blog about doesn’t have any daredevils exiting perfectly good helicopters to fix high wires with gazillions of volts passing around them, but there’s still some very good stuff you should know about....

The problem of renewables’ intermittency has long been the Achilles’s heel of wind power. The wind doesn’t always blow, and when it does blow, it can be variable in intensity and duration, or at times when power is not needed. It’s with great pleasure...

We often talk about the data tsunami that results from the creation of data points from smart meters, grid devices, customer interaction and operating performance. But that’s data. What about all the information that is created by the utility’s smart...

We read with interest a short opinion piece in CIO Asia the other day, titled “ Microsoft’s Cloud Services Mix Leaves Many Vendors in the Dust .” The thrust of the piece was that “only Microsoft has the full solution right now. With Azure and services...

  October 26 was our big launch date for Windows 8 and Surface computers. The commercials have been great fun with cool music, great choreography and interesting visuals which you can check out here . Maybe what’s even more interesting is the engineering...

We talk a lot on this blog about how data analysis can help electric utilities make great new discoveries about, say, their network operations but we don’t often get to talk about how data is serving the water utility industry in the same way. Today,...