A microgram is a group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources within clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid.

Chaired by Tim Martinson, VP of Emerge Alliance, the working group’s charter will be to define operational practices and standards for microgrids, and to facilitate communications between service providers, industry partners and other standards orgs about the technology.

The group will also be charged with educating the cable industry on the applicability and use of microgrid technology in cable operator facilities, and to demonstrate that the technology is deployable and manageable for service providers.

“While much of the industry’s focus in recent years has been on reducing power costs and consumption, sustainability and the ability to maintain operations in the face of grid power interruptions are topics that are key to operators’ businesses,” said Martinson, in a statement. “Microgrids can contribute new solutions in three key areas that have been raised during the Energy 2020 meetings—energy cost, energy availability, and the seamless ability to incorporate renewable technologies into the power portfolio.”

Derek DiGiacomo, senior director of energy programs and business continuity for the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, added: “As we’ve shown with our own projects at SCTE•ISBE headquarters, photovoltaic systems, fuel cells, storage batteries, and other sources can maintain essential powering when the utility grid is unavailable. The expertise of the Microgrid Working Group will jumpstart the ability of the Energy Management Subcommittee to provide the industry with standards and operational practices related to hardened availability and renewability of power supplies.”

Technologies competing for two $10,000 prizes, as well as access to top cable operator decision makers:

• Alpha Technologies’ Enhanced Power Systems, which would enable operators to extend the amount of time a system will last on standby power—often even without generators—by leveraging additional run time available with nodes in a reduced-power setting. 

• Energy Cool’s Energy Cloud, which would utilize distributed UPS batteries to deliver demand response services to the power grid. Field tested in Denmark, the solution could aggregate a high number of individual sites, presenting and controlling them as one combined site to the power grid and allowing testing and monitoring of UPS batteries for high reliability. 

• SOFC.nl Holding B.V.’s Distributed Negative Emission SOFC Power, which would address demand by using small Solid Oxide Fuel Cells to directly supply additional power at the location where it is required. The solution would allow power resources to be kept to a minimum while enabling power to be delivered when necessary. 

• Technetix’s Intelligent Power System, which would reduce current through high-power amplifiers (hybrids), saving up to 10% power per device as well as reduced power losses within the cabling, enabling significant power savings without reducing service quality.

• Teleste’s Make Sense, offering three alternatives for operating existing amplifiers with lower bias current when lower network usage allows amps to run below their 1.2 GHz maximum capacity. Teleste maintains that in those situations, power can be reduced while keeping the quality of end-use experience intact. 

• Robert F. Cruickshank III’s Grid over Broadband: Jointly Optimizing Electric Power Generation and Residential Electrical Use, which supports the power grid by using the superior speed and two-way connectivity of the broadband network to enable the existing electrical grid to deliver and manage power in a more effective and efficient way, creating new business opportunities for cable operators while simultaneously addressing environmental concerns. 

The Adaptive Power Challenge was created by the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), in partnership with Comcast and Liberty Global.

Winners will be announced at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta on Oct. 23. 

Of course, as is usually the perspective of the tech press, the the linear pay TV industry’s glass is half empty.

Related: NCTA: More Than 100M OTT Devices Were Used in 2017 to Access Pay TV Services sans Set-top

As noted by VentureBeat, the typical power-saving mode on the average pay TV DVR delivers a minuscule energy savings—a dynamic the site compared to the “close door” button on elevators, which have generally been inert since the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed.

“They knew people feel better with a button to push when they are feeling impatient,” VentureBeat writer Joe Bamberg noted. “It seems cable and telco companies have taken their cues from elevator manufacturers in the design of their DVRs.”

Bamberg analyzed data compiled by D+R International, the independent auditor who has analyzed the six-year energy savings progress generated by the pay TV industry-wide consortium. He also factored in energy-use data from pay TV companies including Comcast.

An Arris-made Xfinity DVR, he noted, consumes 24.5 watts while on power-save/standby/sleep mode—just 5.7% less juice than the 26 watts it uses when it’s in its full operational setting.

This is unnecessary, Bamberg noted, given that other video devices figure out how to power up and down quickly with significant energy savings. Sony’s PlayStation 4, for example, gobbles up 137 watts while powered on, but only 8.5 watts while it’s sleeping.

Bamberg said that many pay TV set-tops use Broadcom BCM 7425 chip, which has four different sleep modes. “One of the sleep modes would bring your cable box back to full operation from an extremely low power, deep sleep in five seconds,” he wrote. "A simple software tweak could enable low power mode and significantly reduce energy usage while imposing negligible manufacturing costs on the cable providers.”

Interestingly, Bamberg based his findings on D+R’s August 2017 report, which studied 2016 set-tops and not the latest D+R report issued last week--and cited by the NCTA in the cable lobbying org’s much more positive spin on pay TV set-top energy use.

While both reports support the author’s conclusion, the most recent one studying 2017 set-tops has a few green shoots in terms of sleep mode energy performance.

For example, the Charter’s Technicolor-made model 8640HDC2 DVR delivers nearly a 22% electricity savings while in sleep mode. DirecTV’s H44-500 saves only 9.6% of power in sleep mode, but it only uses 10.4 watts while in full operation.

The pay TV industry seems to disagree that its DVRs can be powered up quickly from more energy-efficient levels of sleep.

“While some power scaling successes have been achieved, set-top boxes in ‘light’ sleep mode typically use much of the power that they consume in on mode, and trialed ‘deep’ sleep modes had re-start times too lengthy to be tolerated by consumers,” D+R noted in its latest report.

Bamberg seems to shoot down this industry-side assertion effectively. But perhaps the focus on sleep mode efficiency misses some larger points.

Overall, pay TV DVRs used 11% less power than they did in 2016, according to the latest D+R report, and a whopping 46% less than they did in 2012, when the industry-wide power-saving collaboration started.

The list of set-tops studied by D+R in 2017 includes an increasing number of thin-client devices, most of which use less than 10 watts in full operation.

While U.S. pay TV operators had around 52,673,000 DVR set-tops in the market in 2016, the number declined to 49,891,000 last year. In fact, the number of thin-client and “non-DVR” pay TV set-tops declined, too, as cord cutting and the rise of virtual services began to transform consumer engagement habits in earnest. The number of all U.S. pay TV set-tops in the market dropped about 5.6% to 201.7 million.

Is the point moot?

“Smart TVs are absolutely part of our strategy and our vision,” said Comcast’s Xfinity services chief Matthew Strauss, telling Fast Company last month that the No. 1 cable operator is now full onboard with streaming its X1 platform to connected TV’s instead of delivering it with a leased proprietary set-top. “When you look at the video landscape today, there are more choices than have ever been available before at the touch of a remote. It’s a good time to be alive if you like television.”

The contest, called the Adaptive Power Challenge, aims to spur development on new technologies and solutions that can help manage energy across broadband networks.

The contest will award winners in two categories – Established Enterprises (includes companies with 250 or more employees), and Breakthrough Organizations subs as labs, universities and startups. Each winner will get $10,000. Per the fine print, applicants must be 18 years or older. Applicants retain all rights to the documents submitted and all content.

There’s no fee to enter. An application deadline has been set for Friday, June 29. Organizers said the industry is particularly interested in solutions that address access networks and edge facilities, which represent between 73% to 83% of a cable operator’s energy consumption.

Entries will be evaluated in Q3 2018 by a panel of judges that includes Debbie Fitzgerald, principal architect at CableLabs; Mark Glaser, senior engineering, critical facilities engineering and operation at Cox Communications; Mark Hess, SVP of business and industry affairs at Comcast Cable; Sam Khola, director of sustainability at Liberty Global; Todd Musat, director, critical infrastructure service, Shaw Communications; and John Dolan, senior guideline specialist at Rogers Communications.

Finalists in each category will be announced September 12 at the SCTE-ISBE Standards Energy Management Systems Plenary in Louisville, Colo.

Six finalists will compete by presenting their solutions on Tuesday, Oct. 23 at the Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta, with two winners to be announced on-site.

The presentation portion of the contest among the six finalists will use a Shark Tank-type format, noted Chris Bastian, SVP and CTO at SCTE-ISBE.

Winners will also be invited to MSO labs to work on ideas that, hopefully, develop into scalable solutions, he added.

The Adaptive Power Challenge ties into the SCTE-ISBE Energy 2020 program. The current goals are to reduce power consumption by 20% on a unit basis, reduce energy costs by 25% on a unit basis, and to reduce grid dependency by 5%.

Bastian said the current goals of the program, which hit its mid-point in 2017, are on track.

That work also has connections to the Adaptive Power Systems Interface Specification (APSIS), also known as SCTE 216, which aims to give MSOs a way to adjust power consumption on converged cable access platform (CCAP) devices during peak and non-peak periods.

RELATED: Comcast Tests ‘Turning the Knob’ on CCAPs

“The Adaptive Power System Interface Specification and other APSIS-related standards were created to give cable communications providers a universal framework for reduction of unnecessary energy usage,” Frank Sandoval, chair of the SCTE-ISBE Standards Program’s APSIS Working Group, said in a statement. “The Adaptive Power Challenge’s incentives are intended to encourage anyone with a creative energy idea to help us expedite innovative applications that can deliver real results for the broadband industry and the communities it serves.”

Balan Nair, the chief technology and innovation officer at Liberty Global, has been appointed president and CEO of the company’s Latin American and Caribbean operation, and will take that role once the unit is split-off from Liberty Global.

Liberty Global expects to complete that split-off of that unit as a separate, public company around the end of the year.

Liberty Global said a search for a successor to Nair in the CTO role is underway. Nair will remain in his current position at the company until the split-off is completed.

RELATED: Liberty Global Weighs Financial Impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria

Nair, who has been overseeing a workforce of 7,500 and a capital budget of $5 billion-plus in as Liberty Global’s CTO, currently sits on the boards of Charter Communications and Adtran, and is co-chair of Energy 2020, an SCTE/ISBE initiative dedicated to reducing cable’s network power requirements.

“Balan is an exceptional technologist and operating executive who has delivered tremendous value to our company as CTO,” Mike Fries, Liberty Global’s CEO, who will serve as executive chairman of the Latin American unit of the company, said in a statement. “He has led us into the future with next-generation broadband, video and mobile products, and has transformed our entire technology operating model. I am excited that Balan has agreed to lead this new company into the future, and I look forward to continuing our close working relationship as part of the broader Liberty family.”

RELATED: Cable-Tec Expo: The Network is Industry’s ‘Secret Sauce,’ Liberty Global CEO says

“It’s been a privilege to work with and learn from Mike Fries and John Malone, and I am proud and humbled to have the opportunity to continue collaborating with them in my new role as President and CEO of Liberty’s Latin American and Caribbean operation,” Nair added. “I plan to leverage my experience to build operating and strategic momentum for us in one of the world’s most exciting growth markets.”

In addition to Fries and Nair, the board of the new company is expected to include John Malone, currently chairman of Liberty Global; Liberty Global directors Paul Gould and Miranda Curtis; and Liberty Global CFO Charles Bracken.

Liberty Global said it has also identified three additional directors -- Eric Zinterhofer, lead independent director and former chairman of Charter Communications; Alfonso de Angoitia, Co-CEO of Grupo Televisa N.A.; and Brendan Paddick, former board member of Cable & Wireless Communications Plc, and founder and former CEO of Columbus Communications.

DENVER — Comcast’s downtown Denver lab is spinning up a proof of concept (PoC) involving the Energy 2020 “APSIS” initiative, which aims to give operators a way to “turn the knob” on energy used by critical network components — in this case, CCAP (converged cable access platform) devices.

RELATED: SCTE/ISBE Goes Open-Source for Adaptive Power Play

“APSIS” stands for Adaptive Power System Interface Specification. It matters because it ultimately addresses the biggest part, by far, of any operator’s electricity bill: The physical infrastructure, from the side of the home to headends and data centers, which represents up to 75% of what’s spent on power.

RELATED: Arris, WES, Concurrent Thinking to Demo Adaptive Power Tech

The APSIS news came out of the Energy 2020 program, which launched at the 2014 Cable-Tec Expo, and met earlier this week. Tracy Baumgartner, executive director of sustainability for Comcast (and yes, she’s married to Multichannel News technology editor Jeff Baumgartner), noted during her update that “just a few blocks away from here, we are in the midst of a PoC on an APSIS program, specifically with a CCAP device … because we’re looking to prove that we can adjust energy usage with software.”

If everything works out as intended, the APSIS PoC will prove that service flows on a CCAP device can be measured, and, as a consequence, those flows can be programmatically activated and deactivated in the lab.

RELATED: Operators Seek Sustainability, Savings

“It also includes a web app … which makes APSIS more visual and approachable, because it shows how energy can be controlled, and it shows the reduction in energy usage,” Baumgartner said. “It demonstrates how this is really all about just turning the knob,” to turn down electricity consumption on certain components — like CCAP, to start — when the network isn’t actively being used.

DENVER — The pursuit of lower electric bills and systemic sustainability is again a solid undercurrent (pun intended) at this year’s Cable-Tec Expo, in sessions, on the show floor, and within the Energy 2020 community, now in its fourth year.

“We think there’s a $10 million bucket to go after,” said Dan Marut, director of national sustainability for Comcast — which recently created an “office of sustainability,” led by Susan Jin Davis, the company's chief sustainability officer.

Related: Comcast Conducting Proof of Concept Involving Energy 2020 ‘APSIS’ Initiative

When seeking top-level support for sustainability projects internally, “it’s important to lead with the business case,” Marut said. “We have to speak the language of the people around us.”

Here’s a roundup of this year’s energy-related trends:

Airflow is everything: The best way to lower energy costs in facilities, like headends and data centers, is to keep the cold air supply separate from the hot return air. Technologies that can help include computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, which use sensors to measure air temperatures at different places in a facility, then display the results with color-coded “plumes.”

“It gives you clues as to whether there’s enough cooling” or too much cooling, said John Dolan, senior engineer for Rogers Cable Communications, during a Wednesday morning Cable-Tec Expo session. Dolan detailed a “set point study” he conducted to determine the cost savings of raising the temperature (and thus spending less on cooling) in a facility. Results: A $2,000 savings in 1.24 years or $1 million if extended to 50 facilities.

Read More: Complete Coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2017

A similar approach: Contain things that need a colder environment, like batteries, then raise the set point (temperature setting) for the rest of the gear, which may not be as heat-sensitive. That’s what Liberty Global did in Switzerland, noted Sam Khola, director of sustainability for the operator. “For every single Celsius degree (raised), we could see a 6% savings in electricity,” he said. “That’s quite a lot, at very little cost.”

Being energy efficient doesn’t have to cost a lot of money: A recurring theme, as the energy-minded engineers here continue to secure top-down support for sustainability: Being energy-efficient doesn’t have to break the bank. For instance, hot/cold air containment can be as simple as installing curtains, drilling holes in the bottoms of racks and removing unused cabling underneath raised floors.

“Not having capex doesn’t have to stop you from integrating energy efficiency into your business,” said Liberty Global’s Khola, who encouraged attendees to group all sustainability efforts into an “energy management plan” to better organize available resources.

Other cost-neutral strategies that work: Using Mother Nature. Air is still free, and in cooler climates, it’s a great way to reduce indoor temperatures. “In Canada, it gets hot for maybe a week, then it’s back to freezing,” quipped Todd Musat, director of critical infrastructure services for Shaw, which is using 10 free-air cooling units in its Calgary data center “with remarkable results.”

Equipment refreshes, like moving from “traditional” CMTS units to CCAP devices, are another good way to lower the electric bill inexpensively, Musat said. The proof: By moving to CCAP, energy consumption came down by 31%, even as the number of serving groups increased by 28%. Critical to this technique is the decommissioning of older and unused equipment. “It’s been a key to our success.”

SCTE•ISBE said a case study showing how data center cooling techniques can be applied to cable system headends will be featured this week at the Energy 2020 plenary meeting in suburban Philadelphia.

The organization said the case study will discuss several of the “top 12” opportunities for energy savings identified by Energy Star, including technological advances such as using smaller fiber-optic interconnects rather than larger copper interconnects, and opportunities through back-up powering. The case study will also delve into the cost of heat removal from an air handling perspective, as well as by removing heat from the headend to other distributed portions of the plant.

The Energy 2020 meeting and plenary is set for April 18-19, at Comcast’s Chesterbrook, Pa., facility.

RELATED: Energy2020 in 'Show Me the Money' Phase

The meeting stems from the broader Energy 2020 initiative, which targets a reduction in power consumption by 20% (on a per unit basis), a 25% reduction of energy costs (also on a per unit basis), a 20% optimization of the technical and datacenters footprint 20%, and a 10% reduction in grid dependency. Tony Werner, president of technology and product for Comcast Cable, and Balan Nair, EVP and CTO of Liberty Global are Energy 2020’s co-chairs.

RELATED: SCTE/ISBE Names Co-Chairs for Energy 2020

“While the continuing evolution of data center equipment has greatly improved capacity and performance, there has been an accompanying significant increase in power requirements and, therefore, the need to efficiently remove the resulting heat,” David Kozischek, manager, Applications and Market, Corning Optical Communications, who prepared the case study for the Energy 2020 plenary session, said in a statement. “Service providers are facing the reality that a new cooling architecture is required to extend the life of existing facilities and infrastructure, while enabling continued growth.”

SCTE/ISBE said Tony Werner, president of technology and product for Comcast Cable, will co-chair the organization's Energy 2020 program together with Balan Nair, executive vice president and CTO of Liberty Global.

Nair previously co-chaired the group with John Schanz, the former EVP and chief network officer at Comcast who has since moved into an advisory role at Atairos, the investment vehicle set up by former Comcast vice chairman and CFO Michael Angelakis.

Energy2020 in 'Show Me the Money' Phase

As the new co-chairs of Energy 2020, Werner and Nair will work together with Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE, as members of the Steering Committee for the program. Mark Hess, senior vice president, business and industry affairs for Comcast, will serve as program technical advisor.

Energy 2020’s is targeting  a reduction in power consumption by 20% (on a per unit basis), a 25% reduction of energy costs (also on a per unit basis), a 20% optimization of the technical and datacenters footprint 20%, and a 10% reduction in grid dependency.

SCTE/ISBE also announced that Simpson Cumba, vice president, data center services for Comcast Cable, and Sam Khola, director, sustainability for Liberty Global, will serve as chair and vice-chair, respectively, of the Energy Management Subcommittee (EMS) within the SCTE/ISBE Standards Program.  That subcommittee also includes representatives of Alpha Technologies, Arris, Cisco Systems, CommScope, CableLabs, Hitachi Consulting, and Metrocast, as well as other operators and technology partners.

RELATED: SCTE Plugs Standards Into ‘Energy 2020’ Program

“One of the most important drivers of Energy 2020’s success has been the willingness of the MSO community to commit the time of some of their most talented executives to the program,” Dzuban said in a statement.  “I’m particularly grateful for the way leading technology executives—including Tony Werner, Balan Nair, and others—have pledged their wholehearted support for the program.”

Two years into its mission, the SCTE/ISBE Energy2020 initiative has made progress toward achieving its first two goals, but its third and fourth objectives remain elusive.

That’s the take of Chris Bastian, the senior vice president and chief technology officer of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers/International Society of Broadband Experts in offering a progress report on the effort.

Launched in 2014 by SCTE/ISBE with the support of cable MSOs, vendors, and CableLabs, Energy 2020 set four ambitious goals in a bid to reduce the cable industry’s multibillion-dollar energy bills. They are:

• Reduce MSO power consumption by 20% (on a per-unit basis).

• Cut cable-operator energy costs by 25% (also on a per-unit basis).

• Optimize technology facilities and data centers to cut power usage by 20%.

• Reduce cable’s dependence on the main power grid by 10% by using alternative energy sources.

“When it comes to reducing power consumption and energy costs, participating MSOs are making real headway,” Bastian said. “But finding methods to cost-effectively reconfigure existing technical facilities and data centers to cut power usage isn’t as easy to do. Nor is finding realistic off-grid power options that can be implemented with rapid return on investments.”

In some cases, the MSOs’ reduction of power usage and energy costs have been achieved through a mix of better facility management practices — including religiously shutting off equipment when not in use — and the deployment of new, energy-efficient systems and technology such as DOCSIS 3.1 and Remote PHY over their transmission networks.

A case in point: An existing MSO analog fiber hub could achieve power savings of 61.5% by moving to a Cisco Remote PHY Device 2X CCAP density model; according to a study Cisco Systems provided to Multichannel News.

LOWERING UTILITY BILLS

In other instances, cutting cable providers’ energy costs “has just been a case of utility billing audits,” Bastian said. “This means MSOs are no longer paying for power that they aren’t using.”

In contrast, the push to reduce HVAC costs using “ducted cooling” (providing cool air directly to the devices needing cooling, rather to the entire facility) and other smart energy approaches is proving more difficult to roll out.

“So is the sourcing and adoption of alternative power sources,” Bastian said, primarily because doing so is both a major financial and technological leap.

That said, options such as fuel cells and solar-based microgrids are already practical realities to reduce grid reliance, according to Daniel Howard, director of Hitachi Energy and Environmental Efficiency, a participant in the Energy2020 program. He added, “we have recently found cost-effective solutions for reducing edge facility HVAC consumption that are in pilot programs now.”

On a larger scale, it doesn’t help that “73% to 83% of the industry’s total energy costs are related to the section of the transmission network between the local distribution hub and the consumer,” Bastian said. “Of course, pushing fiber deeper into the network allows MSOs to remove amplifiers and other powered devices, which makes a difference. However, MSOs will not make the leap to fiber-to-the-home based on energy advantages alone. Architecture decisions need careful examination on an MSO-to-MSO basis.”

All of these factors notwithstanding, Energy2020’s results as the program is in its “sophomore year” have still been significant, Debbie Fitzgerald, CableLabs’ principal architect and director of CableLabs’ Energy Program, said. “A number of specs have been published; MSOs are sharing great case studies and lessons learned; several research programs have been kicked off with organizations including NREL and Villanova; and, most importantly, the program is working to raise awareness across MSOs and their suppliers,” she said. “This was especially evident at the SCTE/ISBE Energy 2020 Meeting and Energy Management Subcommittee Plenary at CableLabs last month.”

Bastian noted progress made with the Adaptive Power Systems Interface Specification (APSIS), which aligns power consumption with usage and is being developed within the OpenDaylight open source community.

Meanwhile, cable companies such as Comcast, Cox Communications, Liberty Global, and Time Warner Cable (acquired earlier this year by Charter Communications) have made tangible efforts to realize energy savings through new system-management approaches and energy-efficient technology (see sidebar). Their Energy 2020 results so far were covered earlier this year at the SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia, during an update session held Sept. 28.

SAVINGS START TO ROLL IN

Among those results were $12.5 million in energy savings achieved by Energy 2020-member MSOs since 2015, “which, compared to what we all spend on energy, isn’t a big number, but it’s a start,” said Dan Cooper, chair of the SCTE/ISBE Sustainability Management Subcommittee. He also noted that Charter is working with two New York utilities to source 12 megawatts of renewable energy (estimated to save the MSO more than $5 million) and is building a data center in Charlotte, N.C., where solar panels will reduce annual energy costs by 10%.

On a broader scale, Energy 2020’s already-delivered benefit to the cable industry is a change in mindset. Cable executives are moving from putting new-service rollouts and expansions first with little thought given to energy usage, to regarding cable infrastructures as integrated ecologies where the cost of providing content to subscribers is as important as how attractive that content is to driving sales over time.

The same shift is occurring at the vendors who sell to All Arris products are being designed with lower power consumption per bit and higher functional cable providers. Arris is now designing products with “density in mind,” chief technology officer of network solutions Tom Cloonan told Multichannel News. “With the introduction of the SCTE Energy 2020 initiatives, we have made all of our design teams across the company even more aware of this need.” A similar power-saving design philosophy has been adopted by Cisco’s product design teams as well.

Two years in, Energy 2020 is making headway, even if full realization of SCTE/ISBE’s four ambitious goals seem a long way off.

“We are on the right path, and our members are taking their efforts seriously,” Bastian of SCTE/ISBE said. “It is more than a good start.”

SIDEBAR: Translating Goals Into Action

Two years into the Energy 2020 initiative, cable companies including Time Warner Cable (now part of Charter Communications), Comcast, Cox Communications and Liberty Global are making real efforts to cut their energy costs. Here are five of projects they’ve undertaken.

Comcast Pushes Into Fuel Cells: Comcast’s new headend in Berlin, Conn., is an 80,000 square-foot building for receiving and processing television signals for distribution over its Western New England network. (The facility is also the company’s regional headquarters for five New England states.)

The new Berlin facility is expected to consume 800 Kilowatt hours of power annually. In a bid to obtain some of that electricity from off the grid, Comcast has teamed with Bloom Energy to install a 400-kW fuel cell system, the first of its kind for Comcast.

When operational, Comcast’s fuel-cell system will reduce the Berlin facility’s carbon emissions by an estimated 1.93 million pounds a year, by reducing the facility’s use of power drawn from the grid. This carbon level is equal to what is produced annually by 121 homes, or 185 cars.

Cox Becomes a Utility: Cox is offsetting its energy costs by becoming a power producer in its own right. It’s doing so by installing solar arrays at two of its Rhode Island facilities: one in Porstmouth, with 1,694 solar panels across nearly two acres; and one in West Warwick (see above) with 638 solar panels mounted on two buildings.

Combined, these two solar power plants generate 681 kilowatts of DC electricity for Cox. Under the $0.316/kilowatt price it has arranged with its local utility over 15 years, Cox is slated to earn $270,000 annually from these solar facilities, over the life of the contract.

Liberty Global Leverages Heat-Retaining Chemicals: Liberty Global’s Ziggo is the largest cable TV operator in The Netherlands. In a bid to economically heat its new series of edge facilities, Ziggo chose phase-change material heating systems made by Tizzon. Phase-change materials are encased substances that absorb high levels of heat when they go from solid to liquid, and release that heat when the ambient temperature drops and they solidify again.

As used by Ziggo, the Tizzon phase-change materials melt when the outside air temperature exceeds 77 degrees; providing additional cooling support to the edge facilities’ HVAC systems that kick in at 64.5 degrees. At night, when the outside air cools substantially, the liquefied phase-change material solidifies once again; releasing its heat into the building.

Charter Adopts CCAP to Reduce Operational Costs: If you can make it in New York City, sang Frank Sinatra, you can make it anywhere. If true, the decision made by Charter’s former Time Warner Cable system in New York to replace its CMTS and edge QAM architecture with a Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) from Casa Systems has proven the moneysaving power of this new technology.

Consider: By consolidating all of its data, voice and video services on the Casa Systems’ C100G CCAP platform, Charter is projected to use 30% less power across its 25 New York City hub sites, while almost doubling the bandwidth they can offer to users; thus allowing it to boost the data rates it offers to its Internet subscribers. Based on data gathered on Charter’s behalf by the New York State Energy and Development Authority, this MSO has also confirmed that it has reduced its energy usage in NYC by more than 11 million Kilowatt hours annually.

Comcast Cuts Vehicle Weight: The more a cable service truck weighs, the more fuel it must burn move itself. Bearing this truth, Comcast is working with its truck customization partner Knaphiede to reduce he weight of the MSO’s vehicles without degrading functionality. (The approach is known as “Right Vehicle, Right Job.”) It’s also looking into incorporating alternative fuels into its fleets.

To see the full list of Energy2020 projects, visit multichannel.com/Nov21.

Now every household and office has multiple devices online at any given time. These devices are used for more data-intensive tasks: streaming video, voice-over-IP, video conferencing, watching TV.

A large amount of this traffic travels over broadband -- almost 800 million people worldwide use broadband to access the Internet, according to the Society for Broadband Professionals. And in North America, broadband use is expected to quadruple by 2020 based on research from the same organization. Since broadband uses electricity to transmit data, you won't be too surprised to learn that $1 billion in electricity is used for broadband access today in North America alone. Quadruple that and it’s a whopping $4 billion in 2020.

This growth is simply unsustainable. Currently, the world’s broadband power supplies can be divided into three generations. Generation No. 1, which were deployed between 1984 and 1997 and have line efficiencies of about 86%; Generation No. 2 (1999-2011) features line-interactive ferro technology for uninterruptable power – this technology holds energy long enough to cover the time between switching from line power to battery power, nearly eliminating transfer time and bumping line efficiency up to 89%.  Generation No. 1 and No. 2 make up a vast majority of the power supplies used by broadband providers (up to 84% in North America, according to an Alpha case study). If this continues, subscribers will start to feel the squeeze, through higher prices and unreliable service.

Generation No. 3 power supplies have been around since 2012, and feature some very real upgrades that can help cut broadband power usage extensively. Cable operators have begun to deploy Gen. 3 power supplies, but the legacy technology in place provides plenty of room for improvement. The new power supplies decrease power by maximizing network efficiencies in three specific areas:

1. Line Efficiency (percentage of source power converted to available load power)

Improving line efficiency directly reduces energy consumption. Generation 3 transformers utilize intelligent tap switching right at the input. This optimizes performance and minimizes secondary saturation energy loss.

2. Inverter Efficiency (percentage of battery power converted to available load power)

Improvements in inverter efficiency increase battery run-time and reduce battery string count. By moving the inverter winding to the output side of the ferroresonant transformer, it can be isolated from the input winding, which gives the inverter power electronics protection from utility spikes and surges. This minimizes conversion losses in the transformer and improves inverter efficiency. Additionally, this improved efficiency decreases overall operating temperature of the power supply, eliminating the need for an internal fan to help maintain a safe operating temperature, which decreases points of possible wear and tear for longer life.

3. Output Voltage and Regulation

Output voltage and regulation gives each power supply greater reach, reducing network cable loss.

Through these efficiencies, generation No. 3 power supplies can up line efficiency to 94%, and inverter efficiency to 91%. Now, on a single power supply this may not seem like much – after all, each power supply doesn’t use that much energy. But, over a network of power supplies? Then the savings are very real, and something that can help the bottom line of any broadband supplier.

Broadband continues to make the world feel smaller, allowing people everywhere to communicate. However, the power needed to accommodate the large number of people using broadband is great. By upgrading to Generation 3 technology, broadband suppliers can decrease energy use.

Dean Tryon is the product manager at Alpha Technologies, a designer and manufacturer of power technology products. With more than 23 years in the power and electronics industry, Tryon has held previous engineering roles in manufacturing, sustaining, testing, and finally as an application engineer. He is a member of the SCTE, and part of the 2020 Energy Metrics, Data Collection & Reporting committee, responsible for defining energy metrics for facilities, outside plant, fleet, non-grid, financial and an overall company metric.

PHILADELPHIA — The old axiom that the only constant is change was in play at last week’s annual SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo, as operators keyed on new technologies and platforms that will drive the industry forward in the years ahead.

And many of those discussions and new products aren’t emerging just to help technology take a leap forward for technology’s sake, but because MSOs will need them to keep their future business models from breaking.

With that as the backdrop, workshops, panels and keynotes spanned cable’s engineering gamut, but there was a particular emphasis this year around areas such as network virtualization and distributed access architectures, multiyear power savings and reduction initiatives, as well as next-generation, speedy platforms like DOCSIS3.1, and a new annex for D3.1 in the works called Full- Duplex DOCSIS.

THE FUTURE WILL BE VIRTUALIZED

The industry’s shift to distributed and virtualized networks is one that is not just filling a technology gap, but one that apparently will be necessary from a business perspective as MSOs are required to tack on capacity to keep up with the bandwidth demands of consumers and business customers alike.

An opening session panel featuring top industry engineering executives offered some hard truths on why distributed architectures and the virtualization of network functions have rapidly moved to the forefront of cable’s tech agenda.

Boiled down: Older, legacy models, driven by purpose-built hardware, simply won’t work anymore.

There’s a huge “disconnect” between the data that people are consuming and what cable operators must spend to keep up with that demand, Balan Nair, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Liberty Global, said in a wide-ranging panel session that was moderated by Bob Stanzione, executive chairman and board chairman of Arris.

In terms of network capacity planning, Liberty Global is already allocating enough bandwidth to deliver an average of about 1 Mbps per sub. With annual capacity growth in the range of 30% to 40% per year, it won’t be long before that hits 2 Mbps per subscriber.

For Liberty Global, that would equate to about 25 8-MHz-wide channels, or “like half of our whole plant,” Nair said. This trend causes MSOs to keep “feeding this beast” with capital just to expand capacity to stay ahead, he said.

“That’s a problem for all of us,” he said. “That’s not sustainable.” And it doesn’t add up with a business that grows revenue at 4% to 5% per year. “Eventually, it breaks,” Nair said. “The math will never work.”

The historic practice of buying specialized devices from traditional suppliers that cost a lot to build and buy won’t work anymore. “That model has to change,” Nair said.

The shift is toward cheap, commodity hardware running on very specialized software.

“So, we’re going to ask our vendors to think about the software and to run it on some cheap hardware because, at the current rate, it’s not sustainable,” he said.

Vendors appear to have gotten that message loud and clear. Last week, Nokia, Casa Systems and Harmonic all announced virtualized versions of Converged Cable Access Platforms that can work in tandem with distributed architectures that move away from traditional monolithic access devices.

Fellow panelist Jim Blackley, executive vice president of engineering and IT at Charter Communications, called Nair’s characterization of the situation “spot on and accurate.”

He added that, when it comes to capital, “you can’t spend it everywhere. … You can’t spend it in the home and spend it in the network and spend it on content and all of the other things we need to deal with.”

It’s also important to think about virtualizing the functions of the consumer premisesequipment (CPE) and move the compute, storage, encryption, and packaging into cloud-based centralized systems, he said.

Charter is moving in that direction with ActiveVideo (a vendor it owns as part of a joint venture with Arris). Virtualizing the CPE means “you can put out devices that will last longer,” Blackley said. “The reality of our business is, the day you [deploy] something, it’s legacy.”

He said Charter is a “huge fan” of network virtualization and separating out the MAC and PHY elements.

Zoran Stakic, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Shaw Communications, said he’s also keying on these trends and listening to partners on “how the future is going to land.”

But when it comes to a move toward virtualization, “the starting point becomes remote PHY,” he said. “The old model is not sustainable. It’s not a choice really, anymore.”

Nair said the migration to software-driven models is one of his top worries. “It requires a skill-set change in all of our businesses,” he said. “The change is not just the skill sets in our employee base, but the skill sets of our vendor base as well.”

Vendors, meanwhile, prefer to innovate on their own platforms. The interests of the two sides might not match up, and that could become a source of tension.

Nair thinks it’s best to solve that problem, “or else you’re going to see more and more operators building their own stuff, and that won’t be very good for the industry.”

The industry is starting to see MSOs exert influence on products and product road maps in other creative ways. Last week, Harmonic joined a growing group of vendors to ink warrant agreements with Comcast that give the MSO an opportunity to buy shares in those suppliers based on product sales and deployment milestones.

The warrants agreement is based on specific sales to Comcast and other “deployment milestones” involving products such as Harmonic’s new CableOS virtual CCAP platform.

Comcast has similar warrants deals with key suppliers such as Arris and Universal Electronics, a key supplier for Comcast’s voice remote for the X1 platform.

FILLING NEED FOR MORE SPEED

The panel also focused on the turn toward Gigabit-level billboard broadband speeds — something that is seemingly morphing into an option cable operators must make available for consumers, whether the vast majority of them actually need it.

Still, Nair doesn’t see 1-Gig going “mainstream” until 2018 or 2019. By that, he means it won’t become a “bullseye” product for Liberty Global that is backed heavily by marketing and promotion. Today, that’s relegated to the operator’s 250-Mbps product, he said.

“We’re looking at increasing it,” Nair said, noting that MSOs have the luxury to press two levers with broadband — price and speed — while competitors with less robust networks can only fiddle with price. “Speed wins.”

Blackley said Charter is already getting positioned for the 1-Gig future. Its all-digital migration is freeing up capacity and Charter is also plunging fiber deeper into the network.

He added, “It’s not just about speeds; it’s about latency, and it’s not just about inhome; it’s out of home.”

Blackley hesitated to say when consumers will actually need 1-Gig speeds, but said he won’t be surprised to see it happen eventually. “Like your garage, if you build it, it will get filled,” he said.

Stakic, meanwhile, warned against “irrational behaviors” occurring in the United States, largely “triggered by Google,” that might cause MSOs to rush prematurely to 1-Gig.

He questioned if adoption rates will be high enough to justify the returns, noting that there aren’t many apps now that require three-digit megabit speeds at this point, let alone 1-Gig.

DOCSIS 3.1: BELIEVE THE HYPE

The DOCSIS 3.1 era is in its early days, but the results so far indicate that the new multi-Gigabit platform for HFC networks is delivering on its promises, particularity when it comes to producing gigabit-class speeds alongside improved bandwidth-efficiency.

All 3.1-based modems have shown they can support a Gigabit-class service, initially in the downstream path, no matter the modulation profile the device is using, Jorge Salinger, vice president of access architecture at Comcast, explained during a workshop that offered a status report on DOCSIS 3.1’s deployment progress.

As a quick recap, DOCSIS 3.1 is designed to be 50% more bandwidth efficient (from a bits-per-hertz-per-second perspective) than DOCSIS 3.0 via the use of blocks of tiny OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) subcarriers in tandem with an improved forward error correction scheme called Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC).

Comcast now has “hundreds” of customers online with DOCSIS 3.1 in markets such as Nashville, Chicago and Atlanta, where Comcast is conducting advanced market trials-of the technology, he said.

Those initial, solid performance results are important, because DOCSIS 3.1 modems and cable modem termination systems (CMTSs) can dynamically tap into multiple “modulation profiles” (up to 4086 QAM) depending on the condition of the spectrum they’re using. The use of OFDM subcarriers for DOCSIS 3.1 enables operators to shift to different modulation profiles depending on the signal-to-noise ratio that’s present in the spectrum.

Operators will be able to set up multiple profiles that can be adjusted “multiple times per day” as new automated tools to manage them enter the market, Salinger said, noting that 3.1 modems are set up for five modulation profiles (four, plus one for testing), while CMTSs can handle 16 modulation profiles per downstream per service group.

Midco has also seen promising results from its early D3.1 trial work in Fargo, N.D., the first of many as the MSO looks to offer gigabit speeds to all subscribers by the end of 2017.

DOCSIS 3.1 “worked well in the lab, it worked well in the field,” Jason Miller, technical marketing engineer at Cisco Systems, which has been working with Midco on the trial, said.

In the Fargo trial, Midco used a 144-MHz block of OFDM combined with eight DOCSIS 3.0 single-carrier QAM channels and produced sustained downstream speeds of about 1.57 Gbps.

Jay Rolls, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Charter Communications and session moderator, wondered if operators would need a legion of gurus to operationalize DOCSIS 3.1, which is still a relatively new technology for the industry.

Salinger stressed that MSOs will need to adjust their operations for DOCSIS 3.1, particularly in areas such as installation and maintenance.

He also acknowledged that setting up multiple modulation profiles is a “daunting task,” noting that it takes time — sometimes a week — to do that by hand, “and we’re good at it.”

However, he said, tools are being created to automate that process on a continual basis, and he expects them to be ready for deployment this quarter.

Further out on the horizon is Full Duplex, a coming annex to DOCSIS 3.1 that will create a “dual use” band that will help cable operators deliver multi-Gigabit symmetrical speeds. Under the current spectrum model, spectrum for the upstream and downstream are split; Full Duplex will allow upstream and downstream traffic to travel in the same block of spectrum.

CableLabs announced that project, called “Full Duplex” (FDX) DOCSIS, in February. If all goes to plan, FDX is poised to become an extension to the DOCSIS 3.1 specs sometime next year, Belal Hamzeh, vice president of wireless technology at CableLabs, said in a recent interview.

There’s an expectation that existing DOCSIS 3.0 bands will not overlap with the FDX band, but those implementations will vary from one operator to another and perhaps even within the same operator, Hamzeh said.

Tom Cloonan, chief technology of network solutions at Arris, said spectrum allocation for an eventual migration to FDX is still an active discussion among MSOs and vendors.

However, a possible deployment scenario could see an MSO set aside a band for the legacy DOCSISupstream (at 5-85 MHz or 5-100 MHz), another band for the legacy downstream (perhaps at 700 MHz to 1.2 GHz), with a band sandwiched in the middle (say, 100 MHz to 700 MHz) that’s dedicated to the FDX operation.

“There might be some variations there, but at a high level, that’s the kind of spectrum some people are talking about,” Cloonan said, noting that FDX could be initially targeted to plant that has already deployed N+0 along with a move to remote/distributed architectures that move the PHY or the MAC and PHY closer to the edge.

Though the specs for FDX are still in f lux, Cloonan said there’s some optimism that the technology could be ready by as early as 2018, but sees 2019 as the year when it sees its true heyday.

“There’s a force-function to make it happen quickly,” he said. “At a very high level, there’s an awful lot of interest in Full-Duplex DOCSIS among the MSO community.”

Cisco Systems is also placing bets on FDX. Last month, Cisco introduced a silicon reference design for Full-Duplex DOCSIS alongside a pledge to contribute the design on a royalty-free basis to the cable industry to accelerate the speed of the technology’s development and eventual deployment.

Nokia, meanwhile, has also been keeping its fingers on the pulse of FDX. It demonstrated a prototype of the concept, calling it “XG-CABLE,” in May at the INTX show in Boston.

Denver On Deck

Cable-Tec Expo 2017 is set to run Oct. 17-20 in Denver, and carry the theme, “The Big Deal,” with a focus on new technologies that can power next-gen services.

SCTE/ISBE has tapped Terry Cordova, executive vice president and chief technology officer of AlticeUSA, and Charter’s Jim Blackley to co-chair the program committee for next year’s show.

SIDEBAR: Werner Calls for Industry Innovation, Collaboration

PHILADELPHIA — Calling 2016 a “foundational year” for the industry, 2017 is poised to be the year of “innovation and collaboration,” Tony Werner, president, technology and product for Comcast Cable, said in opening remarks at the show.

On the foundational side, he noted examples such as the closing of the Charter Communications- Time Warner Cable merger, with Charter now pushing ahead with a cohesive technology and service plan that covers the combined company’s new, broader footprint.

“I think the industry has got a very solid year under [its] belt,” Werner said, pointing to cable’s continued broadband growth, with accelerated rollouts of multi-Gigabit DOCSIS 3.1 technology on the horizon.

2017 is “the year that we can seize as an industry,” added Werner, who last week was re-elected as chairman of the SCTE/ISBE board for the 2016-2017 term. “The wind is at our back as we go into 2017, and I think it’s the time for us to really capitalize as an industry and as a society. … The industry has gotten knocked a few years back that we couldn’t innovate. I think we’re showing everyone that’s not true.”

Reiterating next year’s anticipated theme for MSOs, Werner said the industry’s “secret weapon” is its ability to work together.

“We collaborate, we work across,” he said. “We are not competitors, at present … It allows us to punch above our weight, which I think is so absolutely critical.”

He also presented what he said are key ingredients for the industry’s future success.

Chief among them, again, was collaboration, with Werner giving some credit to X1, Comcast’s cloud-based platform, which relies on agile and DevOps models, attracting top engineering talent and creating a culture and environment “where people like to show up and work…and build great products on top of powerful platforms.”

And Comcast is collaborating outside of its ecosystem, Werner reminded the crowd, pointing to syndication deals it has with Cox Communications and Shaw Communications.

“The collaboration back and forth [with those partners] is powerful,” Werner said.

— Jeff Baumgartner

SIDEBAR: Energy2020 in ‘Show Me the Money’ Phase

PHILADELPHIA — The Energy2020 community met on Tuesday at Cable- Tec Expo for its third annual progress report, saying that in “show me the money” terms, the initiative is working. But with only three years or so until the “2020” part of Energy2020, there’s still a ton to do.

“What the SCTE has done with Energy2020 is extremely critical,” said Balan Nair, CTO of Liberty Global and a co-founder of the program. “If we can hit the goals stated, it will make a huge difference — to us, to our management teams, to our customers.”

The initiative’s four stated goals: To reduce power consumption by 20% (on a per unit basis), cut energy costs by 25% (also on a per unit basis), optimize tech facilities and data centers by 20%, and reduce grid dependency by 10%. All of that, by 2020.

“We’re the engineers … and like any good engineer, you don’t build something for waste,” Nair said.

So far, the savings are small, but poised to grow. Dan Cooper, chair of the SCTE’s Sustainability Management Subcommittee, noted $12.5 million in energy savings since last year, ”which, compared to what we all spend on energy, isn’t a big number, but it’s a start.”

Cooper highlighted two new Charter-initiated efforts since the last E2020 update, both solar: A partnership with two utility companies in upstate New York to provide 12 Megawatts of renewable energy, estimated to save $5-plus million over the life of the project, and a new national data center in Charlotte, N.C., where the use of solar energy will offset 10% of annual energy costs.

“The key is that it’s not always capital intensive to move the bar” on energy efficiency, he said.

Sam Khola, senior manager of sustainability for Liberty Global, and the recipient of this year’s Energy2020 award, noted that energy costs are “already colossal, and they’re not staying level — year over year, they grow.” That’s what prompted Liberty’s work with Phase Changing Materials (PCMs) — a sort of thermal battery that works by capturing and storing a structure’s heat (in this case, hub sites) during the day, then discharging it at night.

“When we talked here last year, it was a tiny implementation in one of the 14 countries we serve,” Khola said. But after Liberty saw a 33% reduction in TCO, and a 43% improvement in energy efficiency, an expansion plan was evident. “The plan is to expand both geographically [beyond the Netherlands, to Ireland and the U.K.], and technologically,” Khola said.

Comcast, which typically experiences 4% growth in annual energy costs, kicked off an overhaul of its utility bill management and energy procurement processes, said Daniel Marut, director of national sustainability. “With over 200,000 utility accounts, it can be a little overwhelming for an accounts payable team, whose role is to pay the bill,” he said.

That’s what prompted a systematic way of auditing outside plant, to get an accurate count of power supplies, to start. “The idea is to systemically eliminate costs that are incurred by just basic mistakes in utility bill processing,” Marut said.

— Leslie Ellis

Get complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2016.

PHILADELPHIA -- The Energy2020 community met on Tuesday at Cable-Tec Expo for its third annual progress report, saying that in “show me the money” terms, the initiative is working. But with only three years or so until the “2020” part of Energy2020, there’s still a ton to do.

“What the SCTE has done with Energy2020 is extremely critical,” said Balan Nair, CTO of Liberty Global and a co-founder of the program. “If we can hit the goals stated, it will make a huge difference -- to us, to our management teams, to our customers.”

The initiative’s four stated goals: To reduce power consumption by 20% (on a per unit basis), cut energy costs by 25% (also on a per unit basis), optimize tech facilities and data centers by 20%, and reduce grid dependency by 10%. All of that, by 2020.

“We’re the engineers … and like any good engineer, you don’t build something for waste,” Nair said.

So far, the savings are small, but poised to grow. Dan Cooper, chair of the SCTE’s Sustainability Management Subcommittee, noted $12.5 million in energy savings since last year, ”which, compared to what we all spend on energy, isn’t a big number, but it’s a start.”

Cooper highlighted two new Charter-initiated efforts since the last E2020 update, both solar: A partnership with two utility companies in upstate New York to provide 12 Megawatts of renewable energy, estimated to save $5-plus million over the life of the project, and a new national data center in Charlotte, N.C., where the use of solar energy will offset 10% in annual energy costs.

“The key is that it’s not always capital intensive to move the bar” on energy efficiency, he said.

Sam Khola, senior manager of sustainability for Liberty Global, and the recipient of this year’s Energy2020 award, noted that energy costs are “already colossal, and they’re not staying level -- year over year, they grow.” That’s what prompted Liberty’s work with Phase Changing Materials (PCMs) -- a sort of thermal battery that works by capturing and storing a structure’s heat (in this case, hub sites) during the day, then discharging it at night.

“When we talked here last year, it was a tiny implementation in one of the 14 countries we serve,” Khola said. But after they saw a 33% reduction in TCO, and a 43% improvement in energy efficiency, an expansion plan was evident. “The plan is to expand both geographically (beyond the Netherlands, to Ireland and the U.K.), and technologically,” Khola said.

Comcast, which typically experiences 4% growth in annual energy costs, kicked off an overhaul its utility bill management and energy procurement processes, said Daniel Marut, Director of National Sustainability. “With over 200,000 utility accounts, it can be a little overwhelming for an accounts payable team, whose role is to pay the bill,” he said.

That’s what prompted a systematic way of auditing outside plant, to get an accurate count of power supplies, to start. “The idea is to systemically eliminate costs that are incurred by just basic mistakes in utility bill processing,” Marut said.

Pictured left to right: Dan Marut of Comcast, Sam Khola of Liberty Global and Dan Cooper of SCTE. Photo by John Staley for Multichannel News.

Get complete coverage of Cable-Tec Expo 2016.

SCTE/ISBE said it will offer a mix of exhibits, a special session, tours and workshops dedicated to its Energy 2020 initiative at the 2016 Cable-Tec Expo, set to run Sept. 26-29 in Philadelphia.

SCTE and its membership outlined the goals of Energy 2020 in 2014, highlighting a plan to reduce energy costs and energy consumption by the end of the decade using a range of best practices, new technologies, and standards, including the Adaptive Power Systems Interface Specification (APSIS/SCTE 216 2015)), an open-source effort aimed at reducing power consumption in next-gen network equipment.

RELATED: SCTE/ISBE, Villanova Connect on Energy Management

Here’s a sampling of Energy 2020-facing elements on the agenda:

--Two exhibits on the show’s Innovation Avenue area – one by Technetix and another by Liberty Global and Ericsson – showcasing how cable system operators can reduce unnecessary power consumption in the headend and in the network, in conjunction with the principles of SCTE/ISBE’s APSIS standard.

--A 90-minute Energy 2020 special session (Sept. 27, 11-12:30 p.m. ET) featuring  insight from Comcast, Liberty Global and suppliers such as Alpha Technologies, Arris, EnerNOC and VMware. The session will also unveil a new Energy Chapter Engagement Program for SCTE/ISBE chapters, and present an update on new energy management standards.

--An Energy 2020 Lab that will feature hands-on solutions from such vendors as EnerNOC, Villanova University’s NSF Center for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems, QuantaCool Corporation that are designed to change the way facilities or networks consume power.

--Energy 2020-themed workshops that will include presentations Charter, Comcast and Liberty Global, as well as strategies on reducing energy usage, particularly in headends, hubs and networks.

--An Energy 2020 Tour that will showcase energy efficient products and services -- from Alpha Technologies, Arris, Cable Technologies International, CableLabs, Eltek, Nokia, Technetix, Tempest Telecom Solutions and WES. One participant will get an opportunity to win the grand prize from Alpha— an Apple iPad Mini 4 and a $500 Gift Card; and for their company, 10% or up to $10,000 off a 30kW PV System.

“Energy 2020 rapidly is bearing fruit by spawning new approaches to energy management for our industry,” Chris Bastian, senior vice president and CTO of SCTE/ISBE, said in a statement.  “The exhibits and discussions on the Cable-Tec Expo agenda represent next-generation thinking that will help cable to exert increased control over energy costs and consumption in the future.”

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), said they are expanding the resource base for the cable industry’s energy management activities by joining Villanova University’s RISE Forum. 

RISE (Resilient Innovation through Sustainable Engineering) is dedicated to advancing the sustainable enterprise through engineering and is the industry consortium of the College of Engineering’s graduate program in Sustainable Engineering.

SCTE/ISBE said the mission of RISE aligns with the goals of Energy 2020, a cable industry initiative that has identified targets that include a 20% reduction of power consumption on a unit basis, a 25% reduction in energy costs on a unit basis, a 10% reduction of grid dependency and an optimization of technical facility and data center footprints by 20%. 

Through RISE, SCTE/ISBE and members of the Energy 2020 program will work together with faculty and graduate students from Villanova’s graduate program in Sustainable Engineering. 

They said a  team of graduate students from Villanova is making a formal presentation today (May 3) at an SCTE/ISBE Energy 2020 Plenary Session at Time Warner Cable in Herndon, Va., in which it will lay out the first phase of their benchmarking analysis. 

“Energy 2020 is an enormous effort that requires changes in technology and institutional thinking across the entire cable telecommunications industry,” said Chris Bastian, senior vice president and CTO of SCTE/ISBE, in a statement. “The RISE program’s head start in sustainable engineering and the collective knowledge of the RISE Forum membership will provide us with an entirely new set of resources that can help us drive energy planning and achieve our goals on schedule.”

“As the leading applied-science organization in the cable telecommunications industry, SCTE/ISBE is driving thought leadership for some of the largest communications and entertainment companies in the world,” added Keith Argue, Villanova College of Engineering Assistant Dean of External Relations. “Our partnership with SCTE/ISBE provides both the College and the University relationship-building opportunities with an entire sector of the economy that we were not exposed to previously.”

New Orleans -- Participants in the SCTE’s Energy 2020 program, which aims to substantially reduce energy consumption, cost and grid dependency by the year 2020, packed the room here Thursday at Cable-Tec Expo to check in on the progress of the year-old effort.

Astronaut John Herrington joined Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers president and CEO Mark Dzuban, Comcast executive vice president and chief network officer John Schanz, and Liberty Global EVP and chief technology officer Balan Nair to kick off the discussion, in part to underscore the universal importance of energy conservation.

Dzuban summed it up this way: “Energy 2020,” he said. “is the future.”

Herrington, who’s done three space walks, including one in 2002 involving a stream of ions to serve as the grounding strap “so that I wasn’t,” said that Energy 2020 resembles space missions, especially from a partnership perspective. “We had 16 worldwide partners when we built the space station - it was a collaborative effort of people who worked in many cases for competing companies, but the mission was the mission," he said. 

Liberty Global spends $180 million annually on energy, said Nair, at a rate of six to 12 cents per kilowatt hour, which will rise to the 20 cent range by 2020. “Business as usual is not looking very good on that trajectory,” he said. “As an industry, we really need to come together and figure this out. That’s Energy 2020.”

As a quick reminder, here are the overarching goals of Energy 2020:

-Reduce Energy Costs by 25% on a Unit Basis;

-Reduce Power Consumption by 20% on a Unit Basis;

-Reduce Grid Dependency by 10%; and

-Optimize Technical Facilities by 20%.

Session highlights:

-      Components in the outside plant, and particularly power supplies, represent close to 80% of on operator’s total power expenditure, said Joe Jensen, EVP and CTO of Block Communications (which owns Buckeye CableSystem).

-       A financial model and template with six variations for network type – hybrid fiber coax (HFC), RFoG (RF over Glass), and the PONs  (passive optical networks) -- is well underway for all operators to use, to assess their current consumption levels, and adapt, said Gary Mitchinson, head of access engineering for Liberty Global.

-       Nearly a dozen short and long term options exist to lower power consumption in outside plant actives, said Dave Fellows, CTO and co-Founder of Layer3 TV, a startup “next-generation” cable operator, and Rob Howald, VP of network architecture for Comcast. Among them: Relaxing amplifier specs for areas like hum modulation, which matters less in an all-digital world; shutting down high frequency modulators under light traffic load; and taking advantage of peak-to-average power reduction when DOCSIS 3.1-based gear arrives.

Dan Cooper, vice president of critical infrastructure at Time Warner Cable, later outlined SCTE 2020’s accomplishments, noting that 15 standards and practices have been published or are now “in-flight., and progress in establishing the industry’s energy baseline metrics.

Energy 2020 has also managed to significantly expand its buy-in from partners. In January, the initiative counted 95 members across 30 companies, and has since expanded to 299 members spanning 70 companies.

The premise of the initiative that  became Energy 2020 was established by the industry in 2009, that “energy should never be an obstacle to our industry’s growth or competitiveness”

“There is a lot more to do,” Schanz added. “It’s why we call it Energy 2020.” 

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers said it will erect an exhibit at next week’s Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans to highlight the progress of its SCTE 2020 initiative, and complement that with a special 90-minute session, demos and workshops that also tie into the project.

The “Cable’s Power Innovators” exhibit, which showcase specific operator-vendor milestones in reducing energy cost and consumption, will be located at SCTE Central, the “gateway” to the show floor. 

Exhibit displays and demos will include:

-Comcast’s deployment with Bloom Energy of a power plant at a headend in Berlin, Conn., that uses the company’s solid oxide fuel cell and building on fuel cell technology invented by William Robert Grove.

-Cox Communications’ corporate-wide cable facility deployments of solar power with partners such as Velo Solar, an implementation of the photoelectric effect for which Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

-Liberty Global/Ziggo’s work on edge facility innovation through the efficiencies of Phase Change Material (PCM) with Tizzon in the Netherlands, extending from Lord Kelvin’s laws of thermodynamics.

-Time Warner Cable’s deployment with Casa Systems of CCAP (converged cable access platform) architectures that boosts efficiency across 25 hubs in New York City.

-Proof-of-concept demos of the Adaptive Power Systems Interface Specification (APSIS) that defines software interfaces allowing allow energy measurement and optimization applications to command and control devices within a service delivery pipeline.

-SCTE’s coordination of the elements of energy management under the Energy 2020 umbrella.

The exhibit will also be home to a combined display featuring fleet optimization case studies, including Comcast and Knapheide’s vehicle enhancements through up-fitting and weight reduction; Time Warner Cable and Derive Systems’ vehicle performance improvements through software; and Liberty Global’s Virgin Media and Fleetmatics’ fleet tracking and routing management.

SCTE will also present updates on Energy 2020 next Thursday (October 15)  during a separate 90-minute session that gets underway at 11 a.m. CT (room 283). During that session, former NASA astronaut John B. Herrington, the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space, will speak on "NASA innovation, technology, next-gen and eye on the future.

SCTE said featured energy case studies will be available on the SCTE Energy 2020 Web site next week just prior to the event.

Introduced last year, SCTE Energy 2020 has identified targets that include a 20% reduction of power consumption on a unit basis, a 25% reduction in energy costs on a unit basis, a 10% reduction of grid dependency and an optimization of technical facility and data center footprints by 20%

“In the 12 months since we launched Energy 2020 at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2014, the program is beginning to hit its stride as an incubator of new energy solutions for the industry,” said John Schanz, executive vice president and chief network officer for Comcast Cable and co-chair of the Energy 2020 program.  “Expo 2015 is a tremendous occasion to highlight the many achievements of our talented Energy 2020 team, and to discuss the opportunities that are ahead to achieve double digit percentage reductions in energy cost and consumption.”

“In order to successfully drive change, all players in the supply chain need to work together to keep energy efficiency front of mind during every stage of the product design and development process,” added Balan Nair, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Liberty Global and fellow co-chair of Energy 2020. “Expo 2015 offers a great opportunity to share best practice, evaluate the progress we’ve made so far and at the same time reflect on the areas where there is still room for further improvement.”

Time Warner Cable said it plans to reduce its carbon intensity by 30% by the end of 2016.

Tied in, the MSO said it measures all three emissions scopes laid out by Greenhouse Gas (GHG) protocol, a broadly used international accounting tool to manage greenhouse gas emissions. TWC will assess its carbon intensity starting early 2015 and focus reduction efforts on fleet management and energy efficiency.

Earlier this year, TWC said it had achieved a 38% carbon intensity reduction, surpassing a 15% two-year goal set in 2012.

The new goal includes a plan to invest in fuel efficient vehicles and continue strategic partnerships such as EPA Clean Cities Clean Fleets. In addition, the company will aim to reduce cooling power consumption, pursue LEED elements in all new buildings and seek new renewable energy opportunities.

Also by 2016, TWC plans to complete its first Water Footprint Analysis with the goal of developing a water-usage reduction plan.

"TWC had great results in our previous goal to reduce carbon intensity so we’ve doubled our goal to 30 percent for 2015 through 2016,” said David Flessas, Time Warner Cable’s SVP of network operations and executive lead of TWC’s Go Green initiative. "TWC is committed to making a positive impact on our environment and will continue to raise awareness about sustainability and environmental issues. We’re excited about the new goal and look forward to bolstering our efforts in the green space.”

Separately, the SCTE’s Energy 2020 initiative has established targets that include a 20% reduction of power consumption a unit basis, a 25% reduction in energy costs on a unit basis, a 10% reduction of grid dependency and an optimization of technical facility and data center footprints by 20%

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) said its “Energy 2020” program took a step forward with an initial batch of standards that focus on baseline and benchmark metrics that will help operators vastly cut down their energy output in the coming years.

Introduced last June and outlined at last year’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, Energy 2020’s targets include a 20% reduction of power consumption a unit basis, a 25% reduction in energy costs on a unit basis, a 10% reduction of grid dependency and an optimization of technical facility and data center footprints by 20%.

As a push toward those goals, SCTE said the program’s Energy Metrics, Data Collection & Reporting Working Group has published four standards that cover the “rack to the system level”:

-SCTE 210 2015 -- Performance Metrics for Energy Efficiency & Functional Density of Cable Data Generation, Storage, Routing, and Transport Equipment;

-SCTE 211 2015 -- Energy Metrics for Cable Operator Access Networks;

-SCTE 212 2015 -- Cable Operator Energy Audit Framework and Establishment of Energy Baseline; and

-SCTE 213 2015 – Edge and Core Facilities Energy Metrics.

Those standards follow SCTE 186 2012 (Product Environmental Requirements for Cable Telecommunications Facilities), developed and published prior to the Energy 2020 initiative that focused but wasn’t limited to cable modem termination systems, receivers, modulators, video encoders, multimedia gateways, servers, routers, and edge QAMs.

The 186 standard is considered a “stepping stone” to the new standards being announced today, Dan Cooper, vice president, critical infrastructure for Time Warner Cable and chair of the SCTE Standards Energy Management Subcommittee, said.

While more standards tied to the program are in development, establishing accepted, unified metrics that underpin the program are “key out of the gate” as MSOs look to measure and track that information on a consistent basis, Cooper explained.

He said establishing these standards were among the group’s top priorities, noting that they’ve been in development for about six months. The next steps are to get them engrained into the process as MSOS work with vendors (who are being encouraged to follow the standards,) implement upgrades and act on other buying decisions that place a greater emphasis on power consumption.

In addition to helping cable become more “green,” the program is also good for business. “Power is a cost,” Cooper said. “The more efficient we can be, the better our bottom line will be.”

He said the project is on track, but acknowledges that “it’s a pretty big undertaking.”

Energy 2020 is co-chaired by John Schanz, EVP and chief network officer of Comcast Cable; and Balan Nair, the EVP and CTO of Liberty Global. Of recent note, Dave Fellows, formerly with Comcast, AT&T Broadband and Scientific-Atlanta, and now CTO and co-founder of Layer3 TV, was named chief scientist of the initiative.

Dave Fellows, the long-time cable engineering exec and co-founder and CTO of “next-generation cable operator” Layer3TV, has joined the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ Energy 2020 initiative in the role of “chief scientist.”

Noting that his interest in energy consumption dates back to the late 1970s, Fellows, who is late of MSOs such as Comcast and AT&T Broadband and suppliers such as Scientific-Atlanta (now part of Cisco Systems), said he reached out to offer his help to SCTE 2020, which is currently being co-chaired by John Schanz, EVP and chief network officer of Comcast Cable, and Balan Nair, the EVP and CTO of Liberty Global.

“This [SCTE 2020 initiative] is important to me, it’s important to my company, and it’s important to the industry,” said Fellows, who has been serving in the role for more than three weeks. 

Introduced last June and outlined at last year’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, Energy 2020’s energy targets include a 20% reduction of power consumption a unit basis; a 25% reduction in energy costs on a unit basis; a 10% reduction of grid dependency, and an optimization of technical facilities and datacenters footprint by 20%.

Fellows’ interest in the energy-savings game stretches back to 1979, when he was doing research for GTE and filed a patent for a digital energy line sensor, which was issued in 1982. The patent, focused on the need for devices to require access to power on a 24/7 basis but do so on an energy-efficient basis, enables a device to power everything down except for a very low power sensor that would then monitor for signals indicating the need for the device to fully power up again.

Though the invention was focused on the telephone networks of the day, the base idea seems more significant today as more and more devices are connected to the Internet. “It was the Internet of Things before there was an Internet,” Fellows said.

In his role as Energy 2020’s chief scientist, Fellows will work closely with the program’s stakeholders to accelerate the industry’s strategic approach to energy resource management. He’ll be responsible for ensuring the work being output by the nine Energy 2020 Working Groups fits with the grand vision of the Energy 2020 Steering Committee and Core Team.

Layer3 TV has not revealed much about its specific service plans, but the Denver-based company, co-founded by another industry vet, Jeff Binder, has a goal to be “the greenest cable company in the world,” according to Fellows.

“A key milestone on the Energy 2020 roadmap is the weaving of new standards and operational practices into our cohesive long-term strategy,” Comcast’s Schanz said, in a statement. “With his vision, industry expertise and organizational skills, Dave Fellows is the catalyst we need to help our working groups come to conclusions on solutions to technical problems.”

“Dave Fellows’ background as a cable operations executive, a vendor, an entrepreneur and a physicist give him a 360-degree view of the industry that will be of great value in working across multiple Energy 2020 constituencies,” Liberty Global's Nair added. “What’s most important, however, is the unwavering commitment he and the Layer3 TV team share to reducing the industry’s energy footprint. We plan on using the Energy2020 specifications in all of our future RFPs as a requirement. This is how critical this initiative is to us.”

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) said it has expanded its Engineering Committee and that it has received reaccreditation under new SCTE Standards operating procedures by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

The Engineering Committee, led by Bill Warga, vice president, technology, and member of the Chief Architecture Group for Liberty Global, has been expanded to 15 members, including for the first time the chairs of each of the five Standards Subcommittees: Data; Digital Video; Interface Practices; Network Operations; and Energy Management, which develops standards that are aligned with the SCTE Energy 2020 program.

Independent third-party accreditation by ANSI demonstrates that the SCTE Standards Program meets the stringent quality requirements for standards development organizations, SCTE said, noting that a key component of the reaccreditation is inclusion of a ballot cycle that has been halved to two weeks from four to accommodate the fast pace of cable telecommunications technology development.

“These two developments together bring tremendous value to our industry,” said Dean Stoneback, senior director, engineering for SCTE and its global brand, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), in a statement. “By expanding the number of individuals and companies involved in the prioritization of standards work and by shortening the approval time, we’re able to accelerate availability of standards that best answer the global needs of the cable industry.”

“As cable explores a growing number of new technologies, it’s important that standards development be positioned to anticipate and strategically facilitate those opportunities,” added Warga.  “Including Subcommittee Chairs on the Engineering Committee ensures that all of the key players in standards have a voice in, and visibility into, the entire development process.”

In addition to Warga, the SCTE Engineering Committee comprises: Tom Cloonan, Arris; Richard Prodan, Broadcom; Joe Jensen, Buckeye CableSystem; Ralph Brown, CableLabs; Nick Segura, Charter Communications; Ron Hranac, Cisco Systems; Theresa Hennesy (Advisor) and Jerry Parkins, Comcast; Kevin Gantt, CommScope; Andy Scott (Advisor), NCTA; George Hart, Rogers Communications; Dan Cooper, Time Warner Cable; Craig Cuttner, Time Warner, Inc.; Paul Hearty, Sony Electronics; Eric Eby, Suddenlink Communications; and David Fellows, Consultant (and CTO and co-founder of Layer3 TV).

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) issued the results of a new report finding that the greatest opportunity to cut energy costs in cable networks is from the headend or hub to the home.

SCTE noted that between 73% to 83% of cable’s overall energy consumption is via hubs and headends, as well as from the access network power supplies that are amping up the active equipment on the hybrid fiber/coax network.

SCTE presented the results of the analysis, generated from a cross-section of major MSOs, on Tuesday (February 3) at an Energy 2020 session in Herndon, Va. Introduced last June and outlined at last year’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, the SCTE Energy 2020 initiative is targeting a 20% reduction of power consumption on a unit basis, a 15% energy cost reduction on a unit basis, and a 10% cut in grid dependency, and to optimize the power used in headends and data centers by 25%. Balan Nair, the EVP and CTO of Liberty Global was recently named co-chair of Energy 2020, joining John Schanz, EVP and chief network officer of Comcast Cable.

“While devices in the edge facilities and in the network individually are not the greatest consumers of power in our networks, the sheer number of those devices makes those areas high priorities for the reduction of consumption and cost on a per-unit basis,” said Daniel Howard, senior vice president and CTO of SCTE, in a statement.

SCTE, citing data usage projections from Cisco Systems Inc. and energy cost estimates from the United States Department of Energy, said annual cable energy costs could rise from more than $1 billion currently to as much as $4 billion per year by 2020.

Howard said the findings represent a two-pronged cost-avoidance opportunity for operators and vendors: the replacement of existing plant and headend gear with more efficient equipment as part of normal operational maintenance, as well as the design and deployment of more efficient equipment as operators migrate to CCAP (converged cable access platform), Remote PHY, PON and other architectures. 

In the report, SCTE also found that market data centers and national distribution centers represent 3% to 7% of the industry’s power usage, despite the presence of servers, video processing equipment, routers and other higher-consumption equipment. Backbone and co-location sites (1% to 2%) and administrative offices (10% to 21%) represent the remainder.

Pace announced that one of its new cable broadband gateways, the D5001 Ultra, has become the first DOCSIS 3.0 modem to receive Energy Star 1.0 certification in the Small Network Equipment category.

The D5001, one of a set of D3 gateways announced by Pace earlier this year, is capable of bonding 24 DOCSIS 3.0 downstream channels, enabling it to supply downstream bursts in the neighborhood of 1 Gbps. The model, which can bond up to eight upstream channels, is also equipped with 802.11ac WiFi and an integrated MoCA 2.0 technology for high-speed networking over a home’s coax network.

“As a company at the forefront of digital TV and broadband technology, being an environmentally responsible business is extremely important to Pace. We are delighted to be the first company to launch an ENERGY STAR qualified DOCSIS 3.0 gateway to add to our long list of ‘firsts’ in energy efficiency,” said Robert Turner, Approvals Manager, Pace Americas, LLC.

“Environmental responsibility delivers value to our customers and our business. We fully appreciate the partnership with the EPA, and look forward to continued collaboration to support energy-efficient design and innovation across our entire portfolio of products,” said Robert Turner, approvals manager for Pace Americas LLC, in a statement.

“The EPA congratulates Pace for continuing to put energy efficiency at the forefront of its product design,” added Una Song, Program Manager, ENERGY STAR Program. “Using ENERGY STAR certified products helps consumers reduce their utility bills and protect the environment.”

Pace’s certification comes as the cable industry moves forward on a larger project centered on energy conservation and reduction. The Energy 2020 initiative aims to reduce power consumption by 20%, drop energy costs by 25%, and lower grid dependency by 10%.

DOCSIS 3.1 is making big progress:  If it wasn’t clear enough heading into the show, it’s now crystal clear – cable’s pushing hard on DOCSIS 3.1. With interoperability plugfests slated for later this year and official certification/qualification testing anticipated to get underway as early as mid-2015, the industry is pushing the ball forward on a platform that will put cable operators in position to offer multi-gigabit services on a wide scale.

U.S. cable will play WiFi to the hilt: With a half-day dedicated to the topic, consider WiFi a front-burner project for the industry. While WiFi will continue to be used as a way to extend the reach of cable’s high-speed infrastructure inside and outside the home, there’s a subtle drumbeat that cable will indeed use WiFi as a voice platform, perhaps following the “WiFi First” cellular-fallback approach that Scratch Wireless is advocating.

Layer3 TV is the industry’s new cool kid:  DOCSIS 3.1 and WiFi were the talk of the show, but Layer3 TV dominated the chatter – everyone seemed to be talking about this Denver-based startup, which is billing itself as a next-generation cable operator, but is still being coy about its overall strategy. Multichannel News caught up with the company in Denver and will be posting an update on its progress shortly.

Cable’s getting energized about energy conservation: A keynote from Comcast’s John Schanz and the follow up panel on the industry’s Energy 2020 plan to reduce power consumption by 20%, energy costs by 25% and grid dependency by 10% shows that the industry is pretty darn serious about this initiative.  The goals are set. Now comes the hard part: Executing on them.

Signs Of consolidation were all around us: Despite a fantastic showing at the DOCSIS 3.1/WiFi pre-show Symposium and a nice boost in terms of vendor support and a jump in international attendance, overall attendance, at about 9,100, was down from the 9,800 who were on hand at last year’s gathering in Atlanta. Private conversations with MSOs and suppliers indicated that there’s much wariness on how the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable will affect the industry.

No one (who we talked to, anyway) at Cable-Tec Expo was jazzed about the new name of The Cable Show:  Or at least I couldn’t find anyone who had a positive reaction to the decision to shift the name of The Cable Show to The Internet and Television Expo (INTX) starting with next year’s confab in Chicago. In fact, many of the private responses relayed to me can’t be printed here, as some cable people were downright peeved that the new show will include “Expo” in the name, and concerned that it will dilute the brand of the SCTE gathering. At the same time, most also realize that the decision wasn’t made in a vacuum, and that the industry’s higher-ups obviously saw a good reason to make the change and to broaden the scope of the annual confab. And it's going to take some time before the new name and moniker sinks in...a number of showgoers I talked to couldn't recall the call letters of the newly-named event, but did toss out that it reminded them of this once-popular band.

And the public comments about the change in The Cable Show’s name were about as diplomatic as one might expect.  In comments made at this week’s Chairman’s reception at Cable-Tec Expo, Terry Cordova, the executive vice president and chief technology officer of Suddenlink Communications and the recently re-elected chairman of the SCTE board, offered assurances to those gathered that there are absolutely no plans underway to combine the two shows.

In an interview heading into the show, Mark Dzuban, SCTE’s president and CEO, said he had no issue with the new show using “Expo” in its name, noting that it’s a generic enough term that is used for a lot of trade shows, and that the goals and the scopes of the two annual events are so distinct that it shouldn’t be a problem.

While INTX places a focus on legal, regulatory and policy, with new technology and services mixed in, Cable-Tec Expo  differentiates with its education and training slate and its focus on applied sciences, or “where the rubber meets the road,” as Dzuban puts it.

“They show some of the cool, front end forward-looking stuff and we show what it takes to actually execute and operate. It’s actually very complementary once you think about it,” Dzuban said.

I’d counter that Expo, when uttered in cable circles, has always meant Cable-Tec Expo. Now it could mean something else and be open to market confusion. But it’s early…we’ll have to how the market reacts to the change next year and if some of the knee-jerk reactions are unwarranted.

So, that’s a boiled down view of the big topics and what else was buzzing this week in Denver. But there was lots more going on. Please visit our SCTE Cable-Tec Expo micro-site for an in-depth rundown of what made news this week.

Specifically: A reduction of power consumption by 20%, while dropping energy costs by 25%, and grid dependency by 10%. But wait! There’s more: The program aims to optimize the power used in headends and data centers by 25%.

“This is a huge event that this industry must lead, to drive us to where we want to be” in the competitive environment and to both catch up and take the lead in sustainable energy, Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, said. “We’re talking really large scale, with almost all MSOs. With passion, not just a toe in the water — we cannot fool around with this.”

John Schanz, chief network officer for Comcast and the chair of the Energy 2020 mission, urged attendees to envision the mission as one that reaches from access plant through the core network, infrastructure and all the way to the cloud. “This is not just a data-center emphasis. It’s everything,” he said.

The work of it starts with defining measurements and metrics, so as to quantify progress towards the goals, Theresa Hennesy, senior vice president and group technical adviser for Comcast, and the moderator of the session, said.

“Energy is potentially the hidden inhibitor to us in the future,” she said. “This is about how we ensure that energy does not become the inhibitor — not because we can’t get it, but because we can’t afford it.”

The work of it is parsed into 10 work streams, all of which are chaired by MSO executives, most of whom were at the Wednesday session. It commences immediately.

“We’re going to move fast, we’re going to define goals — short-term and longer-term — we’re focused on delivering results and meeting the objectives that we’re setting out today,” Marty Davidson, the SCTE’s vice president of engineering and network operations, said. “Together, we will lead this industry into an energy revolution.”

Coblitz, speaking at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers' Smart Energy Management Initiative Forum here Thursday, said focusing on long-range energy efficiency will ensure sustainable growth and contain costs as costs per kilowatt continue to rise.

"As we project consumer demand for our services in the future, we see an impending risk several years down the road -- the possibility that, without taking some important steps, we cannot always be assured of a sufficient and reliable supply of locally available power," Coblitz said.

Within the next five to ten years, Comcast "will be faced with the reality that our ability to grow will be constrained by the quantity and timing of obtaining electrical power," he said. "We simply do not have control over the availability of the energy we will need to sustain our rapid future growth."

The cable industry has become "one of the lightning rods in debates about managing in-home energy consumption," Coblitz said. He was alluding to a June 2011 report from advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, which claimed that cable and satellite set-top boxes consumed approximately 27 billion kilowatts in 2010 -- equivalent to the output of nine coal-fired power plants.

Unlike Internet content providers such as Google or Apple, MSOs operate local broadband networks, which require the availability of sufficient energy to power each local headend, hub, node and amplifier at the neighborhood level.

For Comcast, increasing demand for broadband in particular has driven up energy requirements. Over the past decade, Comcast has seen annual growth rates of Internet usage topping 40%. That's led the MSO to install more than 3,000 physical servers in more than a dozen data centers in 2011 alone, according to Coblitz.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of Internet-connected devices -- including TVs, tablets, smartphones and game consoles -- promises to keep pushing broadband consumption higher. In addition, cable operators are adding more commercial services customers, putting further demands on data center power.

Already, Comcast had encountered situations in which local energy is not reliably keeping pace with the demands of its growing networks. Coblitz said in one city (which he didn't identify) the local power company couldn't deliver enough electricity to a data center location, resulting in delays and forcing Comcast to put "hundreds of physical and virtual servers in suboptimal locations."

Comcast and other cable operators are migrating toward delivering video services over Internet protocol networks, with a growing number of services hosted in "the cloud."

That has the potential to cut household energy usage by, for example, moving digital video recording into the network. "But while the network DVR is more efficient than millions of in-home devices, it also implies some transfer of energy consumption from the home power supply to our networks," Coblitz noted.

The design of network-based services has a huge bearing on overall energy consumption, he said. For example, Cablevision Systems' Remote Storage DVR service, for legal reasons after a copyright challenge from content owners, requires a separate copy of each program subscribers want to record.

That's grossly inefficient, according to Coblitz. He estimated that if the entire cable industry served 30 million set-tops or connected devices with an RS-DVR system, that would require about 300 megawatts of power. By contrast, a network DVR supporting as many as 2 million different titles that keeps one copy of a TV show for multiple users eats up just 5 megawatts.

"The difference in energy consumption between the network DVR strategy versus Remote Storage DVR is fully one-third of the output of a nuclear plant," Coblitz said.

To be sure, cable operators have made "some enormous strides in energy savings," Coblitz said, in both electricity consumption and more efficient cooling methods. For example, Comcast's newest data center, in Chicago, uses ambient air for cooling 70% of the time.

And vendors are heeding the industry's call. Broadcom this week introduced two new system-on-chip solutions -- one for gateways and the other for HD digital terminal adapters -- that can reduce energy consumption up to 65% over a 24-hour period with power-management features that put the devices into "stand-by" mode when they're not being actively used.

Cutting in-home energy consumption of customer premises equipment, Coblitz said, "will allow operators to recognize measurable savings in equipment cost and maintenance."

Coblitz likened the industry's need to plan for energy efficiency to the way it has prepared for the years-long transition to the next-generation Internet protocol, IPv6. CableLabs made IPv6 a mandatory part of the first release of the DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem spec, and Comcast and others specified IPv6 in products they bought and also invested in training their engineering and operations teams.

"Now it is time to take the long view about energy," he said.

The entire industry -- including cable operators, vendors, programmers, broadcasters, CableLabs, SCTE, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and others -- must all consider power consumption as an up-front consideration in the earliest planning and design phases, Coblitz said.

"We need to move energy considerations to the front ranks of our industry's concerns," he said. "We must give consideration to the efficiency, availability and reliability of energy throughout the network and product-planning process, right from the design phase."

Coblitz was introduced by SCTE president and CEO Mark Dzuban, who noted that the association has adopted energy-efficiency measures at its Exton, Pa., headquarters. "We have to eat our own dog food," Dzuban said.

SCTE said almost 160 people registered for the SEMI Forum event.