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Supporting Energy Supply, Reducing Carbon Emissions with David Holmes, General Manager of Energy at Dell Technologies
In this episode, David discuss how edge computing and technology can help improve sustainability.
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A pragmatic climate optimist, David leads Dell Technologies Energy business with a focus on accelerating the energy transition, advancing decarbonization and maintaining energy security. David leads a global team responsible for solutions development, energy sustainability, partnerships, product strategy, and go to market. The team is known for its industry expertise, and they’ve shown the transformational impact of technology in the Energy industry. A firm believer in the value of community led open industry standards, David was elected to The Open Group OSDU Forum Management Committee and is also a member of the GridWise Alliance Policy Committee. He has previously served on industry bodies including the European ECIM Management Committee and SPE’s “Petabytes in Asset Management.” He has delivered several technical papers at conferences around the world and holds patents for his work on the remote visualization of geotechnical applications and workflow optimization.
This episode of Over the Edge features an interview between Matt Trifiro and David Holmes, GM of Energy at Dell Technologies. David is involved in advancing decarbonization and the transition to sustainable energy. He works to understand the problems that energy companies are facing, so that operators and regulators can be more aligned when reducing their carbon footprints.
In this episode, Matt and David discuss the challenges of a global increase in energy consumption. David explains the need to advance energy systems and technology in order to reduce CO2 emissions. He dives into the importance of making energy not only sustainable, but abundant, affordable, and reliable. David also details how edge computing and use of certain technologies can help improve sustainability.
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Key Quotes:
“As demand for energy is dramatically growing, we need to completely transform our energy systems to reduce CO2 emissions on a massive scale. And it’s that tension that gets me out of bed every morning – understanding the role of technology in supporting the growth of supply of energy, whilst at the same time dramatically reducing carbon emissions.”
“For me, a lot of what edge computing is really about is thinking: “How can we bring the best capabilities of operational technologists and informational technologists together to build a contemporary IT environment that supports the needs of the energy industry for national, critical infrastructure.”
“It’s the wild frontier of managing our energy systems, and solving some of these problems is going to be critical. But guess what? None of it is going to work without a huge amount of edge technology deployed at scale with much greater computational capability than is available today.”
“There’s two problems that the OT industry faces: reliability and resilience, which are absolutely critical. They have to keep the lights on. And in the current world in which we live, that means cyber resilience becomes one of the most important challenges that any energy company has to address.”
“There is going to be compute and data across the entire continuum, right from that little valve all the way up to a hyperscale data center. And the people who are going to be successful are the people who work out the right technical and economic places to run all of these different workloads.”
“I’ve got three goals. Number one, accelerate the energy transition. Number two, advance decarbonization. And number three, ensure global energy security. And I have the entire resources of Dell’s engineering portfolio to help me build the solutions that are going to let me do those three things.”
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Show Timestamps:
02:12 – David’s technology origin story
06:58 – The increasing demand for energy
08:08 – The climate consequences of technology
11:07 – Applying technology to help reach sustainability goals
19:47 – Edge computing in the power industry
22:07 – The intersection of IT and OT
24:02 – Challenges the OT industry faces
24:48 – Taking a contemporary approach to edge computing
33:18 – Aligning operators and regulators
35:58 – The wild frontier of energy systems
38:14 – Adopting realistic cloud computing principles
40:09 – David’s team’s goals
47:26 – Defining where the edge is
52:05 – The future of computing
53:22 – David’s daily motivation
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Sponsor:
Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/edgefor more information or click on the link in the show notes.
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Links:
Connect with David on LinkedIn
Learn More:
- 5G and edge computing’s remarkable role in global decarbonization (2-minute video)
- Remarkable energy starts at the edge (eBook)
- Decarbonizing with data (infographic)
- www.dell.com/energy
