Editor’s note: Kaluza Kaluza is a UK-based technology company that provides energy retailers with real-time billing, smart grid services and a seamless customer experience. In this blog, Tom Mallett, Sustainability Manager, Kaluza, explains how Kaluza is using Google Cloud to improve energy visibility across the company. He also explores how better emissions data is driving the development of sustainability solutions that make the world’s energy system cleaner, smarter and more reliable.
Consumers are going through tough times right now, with electricity bills very real and rising. But in the meantime, the climate crisis hasn’t gone away and sustainability still comes first for consumers and companies alike, as it should. In the UK, 40% of emissions come from households, including electricity, heating and transport. But people often don’t have the time or resources to research and try out the many ways they can save energy, whilst struggling with many other demands at the same time. That’s why at Kaluza we’ve made it our mission to help people save money and reduce household emissions.
Kaluza, founded by OVO Energy in 2019, is a software-as-a-service company that helps accelerate the transition to a zero carbon world. With our Kaluza Energy Retail product, energy companies can put their customers at the center of this transition by providing them with real-time information to help reduce their bills. And with Kaluza Flex, advanced algorithms charge millions of smart devices in the cheapest and most environmentally friendly way possible. Kaluza works with some of the largest energy and automotive OEM businesses around the world, including AGL in Australia, Fiat and Nissan in the UK, and Mitsubishi Corporation and Chubu in Japan.
Use Google Cloud data to achieve your carbon reduction goal by 2030
By 2030, we want to avoid 10 million tons of CO2 emissions, reaching 100 million energy consumers and reducing the cost of serving our retail customers by 50%. And that’s just the half of it. As we accelerate the energy transition for our customers, we also want to significantly reduce our own emissions. As the world rushes to net zero, we are going one step further by committing to be carbon negative by 2030.
But we can only reduce what we can measure. That’s why we’ve developed an internal carbon footprint tool to track the impact of using our cloud. Our technology stack spans a multi-cloud array, and thanks to the Carbon Footprint solution it’s especially easy to get emissions data from Google Cloud applications.
For each individual process that we run through Google Cloud, we receive half-hourly electricity usage information, which enables us to specify the exact carbon emissions for each process we run in Google Cloud. This information has helped us build our own Kaluza carbon tool, which we use to combine information from all of our cloud providers across our multi-cloud system and create much more effective dashboards, which has been invaluable to our data teams.
Reduction of emissions by 97% thanks to Green Development
Today, our teams can use our carbon measurement tool to really drill down into the detail of the data. This enables them to understand what is driving their carbon footprint and how to address it. And that’s where things get interesting, because better data translates into real sustainability projects. We have launched two large-scale initiatives so far.
First is green software development. We created a green development guide that contains a list of guides and best practices that our software developers and engineers can use to make their software greener. For example, using information from our carbon footprint tool, we were able to combine a number of large BigQuery queries into a single query at a greener time of day and location, resulting in a 97% reduction in emissions. This means that we have reduced the amount of CO2 from 200 kg to 6 kg every time we fulfill this request. And this is just one of the ways we are making a difference.
Increasing the efficiency of cloud infrastructure
Our second major initiative concerns our cloud infrastructure. Choosing a cleaner cloud and a cleaner cloud region to run your workloads is one of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Fortunately, Google Cloud publishes carbon emissions data for all cloud regions. This includes the average percentage of carbon-free energy consumed in that particular location on an hourly basis and the carbon intensity of the local electricity grid.
By examining the data, we can identify cloud waste and take action. For example, even though many of our workloads need to run throughout the day, not all of them need to run at a specific time. This creates potential for optimization. We use data from Google Cloud to understand the state of our workloads. By combining this information with carbon intensity data from the network, we can identify and reschedule workloads for lower intensity times and positively impact Kaluza’s emissions.
Using data to help people make an impact
Many of our sustainability projects have one important thing in common: they are bottom-up initiatives developed by our team. With emissions data at hand, we regularly organize hackathons or sustainability days to inspire action and test new ideas.
Making sustainable development practical and accessible to all is part of our core mission and we are communicating this message to our own teams. The feedback has also been encouraging. At a recent Green Development Day, one of our employees said that he now really understands how his role can impact the sustainable development of Kaluga and the world. We put sustainability at the heart of our organization by giving our employees the opportunity to take direct climate action in their positions. And by showing employees the direct impact of their work, we can encourage them to create even more effective solutions that will lead to greater carbon savings for our customers.
Conversion of electric vehicles into green power plants
At Kaluza, there are many ways to make a difference. Our internal pledge to reduce carbon emissions and pass those savings on to our retail customers and their customers is just one of our sustainability pillars. We’re also using Google Cloud solutions for many other exciting projects, such as the world’s first and largest vehicle-to-grid (V2G) deployment we’re leading with OVO Energy and Nissan.
With V2G, drivers can charge their electric vehicles when renewable energy is abundant and sell it back to the grid when it’s scarce. By analysing grid and vehicle data in real-time using Google Cloud, we are essentially turning millions of cars into dynamic batteries to build a greener and more sustainable energy system, helping drivers earn hundreds of pounds a year. In a market like California, this could reduce the load on the grid during peak hours by 40%.
Creating the energy of the future together
From homes to vehicles and beyond, at Kaluza we use technology to make the energy transition an easy and affordable option for our customers and their customers. We are excited to continue working with Google Cloud to expand our business and bring new energy solutions to life. We are committed to being a market leader in sustainability, and with Google Cloud we have found a cloud provider whose sustainability goals truly align with ours. Together we are building a world where net zero is accessible to everyone.
Do you want to consult or try something from Google services? Send your requests to info@wiseit.com.ua or leave a message in the chat at wiseit.com.ua we will definitely contact you!