Creative Connectivity

London. The Nexus of Big Data and Data Science

Over the past few years I’ve been working more and more with the large volumes of data that come from M2M and the Internet of Things. It wasn’t that long ago when “Big Data” was a novelty that was largely a vision of the future – more talked about than done. In a few short years it’s morphed into the “next big thing” that everyone needs to have and which will save our planet and our health systems. Of course, Big Data itself is of limited use. What changes the game is the insight which can be extracted from it. That’s why the headline description of big data can be unhelpful. By concentrating on the “big”, it places the spotlight on the mechanics of database structures, diverting attention from the real skills that the industry needs to make it valuable.

I’d like to share some things I’ve learnt from my experience working in this area. The first is the continuing hype. When I put together a conference on the use of big data at the Cabinet Office last year I was hard pressed to find anyone really doing it commercially – the hype was still far greater than the practice. I don’t think that much has changed since then. We’re still on the lower, gentle slope of the Gartner hype curve. My guess is that the only companies making significant money from big data at the moment are conference organisers and consultants. But attention is being paid.

The second is the type of skills we need to cultivate. We talk about Data Scientists as the new breed of practitioner, but that’s largely a self-invented title from data analysts who want more recognition. Extracting value from big data, or broad data if you want to be more accurate, is more than that. The best definition I’ve heard is that it’s about telling stories with Matlab. It’s not about Hadoop or Cassandra – they’re just the mechanics. The reality is that Big Data needs to be about Data Storytellers if it is going to be transformational.

The third thing is that this is something we do exceedingly well in London. Other places may collect more data, build bigger server farms or invent more capable database structures. But we tell better stories. So if you want to generate value from big data, London’s the place to set up your business.

Smart Metering is FCUKED

Having delayed the Fiendishly Complicated United Kingdom Enduring Deployment** of smart meters earlier this year because of technical delays, you might expect that the British Government would have spent some time reviewing the technology they had mandated. If they had done so, it would have become clear that the program was out of control. Under the surface, too many cooks have ratcheted up the technical complexity to the point where it is no longer fit for purpose. However, it appears that no-one wants to point out that the Smart Metering Emperor is stark naked. That’s largely because those overseeing the programme don’t have the depth of technical knowledge to understand the implications of what is going on.

As always with big Government driven IT programs, whilst there’s money to be made by the metering industry and consultants, momentum rules. It seems perfectly justifiable to carry on and saddle consumers with a £12 billion white elephant which will further inflate domestic energy bills. As a result of this lack of due diligence, smart metering is firmly on course to be the next big UK Government IT disaster.

It’s not that there’s a fundamental problem with smart metering, but there are massive mistakes in the way that the UK has decided to do it. When the programme started, it was seen as world-leading. It should have set a global standard for smart metering, giving UK plc a commanding lead in exporting expertise to the rest of the world and creating long term employment opportunities. Instead it has resulted in an out-dated, over-complicated system which will be incompatible with any other solution in the world, cost more than any other, fail to deliver the promised customer benefits, add risk to our energy security, threaten jobs, further alienate customers and make the UK energy industry a laughing stock.

If we look at the issues, the GB smart metering program appears to have a unique capacity not just to duplicate major errors from previous Government disasters, but to combine many of them into one overarching Government- destroying fiasco.

The Siren Call of the Negawatt. Justifying Ratepayer Funded Energy Efficiency Schemes

The energy industry has got a new religion – that of the Negawatt. Over the past decade it’s gone from a small following to becoming the new Messiah of capacity planning. It’s one of the few things where utilities and regulators come to worship at the same shrine. In fact they like it so much, they’re happy for an increasing number of consumers to pay for it. The only problem is that like other faith based beliefs, no-one really knows whether it exists or if it delivers what it promises.

If the negawatt is new to you, it’s a very neat scheme. The theory goes that if you can persuade consumers to use less energy, then you need to build fewer new power stations. Each kWh of energy saved is a negawatt (suggesting its name was coined by a marketing person, rather than someone who understood the difference between power and energy). Hence each negawatt achieved means less generating capacity is required to support demand. As power stations are expensive to build and operate, lots of negawatts are an attractive prospect as they represent an effective reduction in the need for new power stations, or the opportunity to put off building them. In other words negawatts mean utilities save money, which should be reflected in lower energy bills for consumers.

As it appears that this is so obviously a win-win concept, regulators have increasingly been willing to support what are called Ratepayer Funded Energy Efficiency Schemes. These allow energy suppliers to increase the cost a user pays for a unit of energy on the condition that the suppliers use this extra revenue to promote energy efficiency schemes which reduce consumption. If that sounds a bit Ponzi-like, it is. But in the short term, if it works, everyone should win. Consumers pay more per unit of electricity, but use less, so save overall. Utilities need to invest less, so future energy price rises should be contained, but the rate increase keeps their profits up. And as less energy is used, CO₂ emissions are reduced, keeping the regulator and Mother Earth happy.

But does it work? In areas where these schemes operate, consumption has gone down, so negawatt proponents claim it’s effective. But energy usage has also gone down elsewhere. Which begs the question of whether we are measuring a real effect or not? Has the siren song of the negawatt befuddled both utilities and regulators, removing their ability to make rational judgements? In the US, billions of dollars are being spent on these schemes, whilst in the UK, DECC has built its justification for smart metering on the same unproven promise of jam tomorrow. So how do we separate belief from reality?

The Green Approach to Energy Theft

I’ve spent the last few days at the Utility Analytics Week conference in Atlanta, where energy companies come together to discuss what they can do with the data they’re beginning to collect from smart meters. Despite the range of interesting and useful things that are possible, the majority of speakers converged on one application – reducing the level of energy theft. Specifically that seemed to mean stopping people stealing electricity to grow marijuana. A speaker from the Canadian supplier BC Hydro even went as far as saying that detecting marijuana growers was the main reason they’d decided to install smart meters.

The reason marijuana growers bypass their meters is that it traditionally takes quite a lot of power to run the growing lights for a loft-full of cannabis plants. Apparently 1,000W agricultural lights are needed for a set of fifteen to twenty plants. And now that the Canadian utilities are cracking down on energy thieves, the illicit trade is moving to the US. Which really got the US utility representatives hot under the collar. There’s nothing that riles a Southern utility manager as much as the knowledge that those pesky Canadians are turning his kids into reefer smoking zombies.

Hence the amount of effort being poured into revenue protection data analytics in an attempt to differentiate a closet pot grower from a faulty transformer. However, I think that by concentrating on theft, the utilities are missing an opportunity.

Google Glass, Robot Surgery and Drones

There’s a lot of hype around the first Google Glass operation, performed last week at the Clinica Cemtro in Madrid. Although Glass was used in this instance for training purposes, it doesn’t take much imagination to see its potential for guiding a surgeon. That’s a step which fulfils much of the original promise of remote robot surgery, which we now see in a somewhat emasculated form in the Da Vinci robots, which are arguably adding more glamour than technology to routine procedures.

If we take that mental step towards guiding and assisting surgeons through Google Glass, it leads us to ask the more important question of how we select and train surgeons, and what patients should expect of them. If we want the best manual technicians we may not want to retrain our current surgeons, but look for a new breed. That resonates with George Brandt’s play Grounded, which won awards at Edinburgh this year. It looks at the issues in reassigning fighter pilots to operate drones. It has a magnificent performance from Lucy Ellison and has relevance to many other areas, particularly the brave new world that Clinica Cemtro are letting us glimpse. If you’re in London before 3^rd Oct, go and see it at the Gate Theatre.

Let’s look at how those three things come together.

Smart Wrist Good. Smart Home Bad.

Or so it appears if you look at where the funding’s going. This week Jawbone, maker of the Bluetooth headset and more recently of the UP wristband, managed to raise $93 million in debt financing based on sales of its new products, with the rumour of a further $20 million in VC funding to come. It’s not alone. Earlier this year Fitbit, founded on clip-on devices, but now another player in wrist real estate had VCs falling over themselves to give it an additional $43 million.

In contrast, the smart home market has begun to look decidedly unexciting. After the Nest love-in, which raised them $80 million at the start of the year, their German rival tado only managed a measly $2.6 million from its previous investors. I’d always tended to discount the Nest fundraise, not because of the product, but because of their heritage. Ex-Apple staffed start-ups in California with slick products seem to get VCs wetting themselves in much the same way as followers of the cult of Apple do at the launch of a new iPhone.

If you take a look at the media coverage, it’s also pretty obvious where everyone considers the action to be. It not what we live in – it’s what we wear on our wrist. Investing in Smart Home looks rather dumb.