‘First Major Project’ for GB Energy Announced

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‘First Major Project’ for GB Energy Announced

A release posted on the UK government website on Friday announced that the “first major project” for Great British Energy (GB Energy) “is to put rooftop solar panels on around 200 schools and 200 NHS sites, saving hundreds of millions on their energy bills”. Hundreds of schools, NHS trusts and communities across the UK will […]

Hundreds of schools, NHS trusts and communities across the UK will benefit from new rooftop solar power and renewable schemes to save money on their energy bills, thanks to a total GBP 200 million ($258.6 million) investment from the UK government and Great British Energy, the release stated.

“In England around GBP 80 million ($103.4 million) in funding will support around 200 schools, alongside GBP 100 million ($129.3 million) for nearly 200 NHS sites, covering a third of NHS trusts, to install rooftop solar panels that could power classrooms and operations, with potential to sell leftover energy back to the grid,” the release noted.

The first panels are expected to be in schools and hospitals by the end of summer 2025, according to the release.

The release stated that local authorities and community energy groups will also be supported by nearly GBP 12 million ($15.5 million) to help build local clean energy projects. A further GBP 9.3 million ($12.0 million) will power schemes in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland including community energy or rooftop solar for public buildings, the release added.

“Great British Energy’s first major project will be to help our vital public institutions save hundreds of millions on bills to reinvest on the frontline,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in the release.

“Great British Energy will provide power for pupils and patients,” he added.

“Parents at the school gate and patients in hospitals will experience the difference Great British Energy can make. This is our clean energy superpower mission in action, with lower bills and energy security for our country,” he continued.

Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said in the release, “with this investment we are backing our teachers and delivering for our young people – saving schools thousands on their bills to reinvest in a brilliant education for each and every child”.

Minister of State for Health Karin Smyth said in the release, “this investment in clean energy will power our NHS while saving the taxpayer millions in energy bills”.

“Crucially, we will divert the savings to where it matters most for patients and staff – frontline services,” Smyth added.

Great British Energy Chair Juergen Maier stated in the release, “this is the first step in Great British Energy’s work with local communities to help them generate their own energy”.

“By partnering with the public sector as we scale up the company, this will help us make an immediate impact as we work to roll out clean, homegrown energy projects, crowd in investment and create job opportunities across the country,” he added.

Great British Energy is backed by GBP 8.3 billion ($10.7 billion) over this Parliament, the release highlighted, adding that the company will own and invest in clean energy projects across the UK.

A separate release posted on the UK government website on Monday revealed that GB Energy’s start-up board members would meet in Aberdeen that day “to discuss scaling up the company and kickstarting investments, to deliver the government’s Plan for Change and clean energy superpower mission”.

The release highlighted that Energy Minister Michael Shanks would convene the meeting, alongside Start-up Chair Juergen Maier and interim CEO Dan McGrail, “to discuss next steps for the organization and building up an investment portfolio that will return a profit for the British people”.

“We now have a fantastic team in place to lead Great British Energy and establish the company in Aberdeen,” Energy Minister Michael Shanks said in that release.

“By unlocking homegrown clean power projects, Great British Energy will support thousands of well-paid jobs in Scotland and across the country, and deliver energy security for the British people,” he added.

“Today’s meeting of the new board members marks another step forward for the company as it gears up to make its first investments,” he continued.

Maier said in that release, “we are working on a plan to invest in and deliver homegrown clean power, supporting the next generation of energy jobs”.

“We are already engaging with industry on exciting investment opportunities so we can hit the ground running once Great British Energy is fully established,” he added.

“Together we will back British innovation and support the creation of thousands of jobs in clean energy projects and their supply chains in the North East of Scotland alone,” he went on to state.

Interim Great British Energy CEO Dan McGrail said in the release, “Great British Energy is perfectly placed to take advantage of the clean energy revolution for the benefit of the British people”.

“As I take up post as interim CEO today [Monday], I’m pleased to bring our new board members together in Aberdeen to discuss our plans to invest in secure, homegrown clean power – unleashing jobs and crowding in private investment,” he added.

This release also revealed that, on March 18, Maier would convene a skills roundtable “to work with industry to help oil and gas workers in north-east Scotland access opportunities in clean energy jobs”.

In a release sent to Rigzone by the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) last month, the organization announced that Dan McGrail had been appointed as the interim Chief Executive Officer of GB Energy.

In this release, DESNZ revealed that McGrail will be based in Scotland and work from GB Energy’s Aberdeen headquarters.

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Nvidia’s silicon photonics switches bring better power efficiency to AI data centers

Nvidia typically uses partnerships where appropriate, and the new switch design was done in collaboration with multiple vendors across different aspects, including creating the lasers, packaging, and other elements as part of the silicon photonics. Hundreds of patents were also included. Nvidia will licensing the innovations created to its partners and customers with the goal of scaling this model. Nvidia’s partner ecosystem includes TSMC, which provides advanced chip fabrication and 3D chip stacking to integrate silicon photonics into Nvidia’s hardware. Coherent, Eoptolink, Fabrinet, and Innolight are involved in the development, manufacturing, and supply of the transceivers. Additional partners include Browave, Coherent, Corning Incorporated, Fabrinet, Foxconn, Lumentum, SENKO, SPIL, Sumitomo Electric Industries, and TFC Communication. AI has transformed the way data centers are being designed. During his keynote at GTC, CEO Jensen Huang talked about the data center being the “new unit of compute,” which refers to the entire data center having to act like one massive server. That has driven compute to be primarily CPU based to being GPU centric. Now the network needs to evolve to ensure data is being fed to the GPUs at a speed they can process the data. The new co-packaged switches remove external parts, which have historically added a small amount of overhead to networking. Pre-AI this was negligible, but with AI, any slowness in the network leads to dollars being wasted.

Critical vulnerability in AMI MegaRAC BMC allows server takeover

“In disruptive or destructive attacks, attackers can leverage the often heterogeneous environments in data centers to potentially send malicious commands to every other BMC on the same management segment, forcing all devices to continually reboot in a way that victim operators cannot stop,” the Eclypsium researchers said. “In extreme scenarios, the net impact could be indefinite, unrecoverable downtime until and unless devices are re-provisioned.” BMC vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, including hardcoded credentials, have been of interest for attackers for over a decade. In 2022, security researchers found a malicious implant dubbed iLOBleed that was likely developed by an APT group and was being deployed through vulnerabilities in HPE iLO (HPE’s Integrated Lights-Out) BMC. In 2018, a ransomware group called JungleSec used default credentials for IPMI interfaces to compromise Linux servers. And back in 2016, Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) feature which is part of Intel’s Management Engine (Intel ME), was exploited by an APT group as a covert communication channel to transfer files. OEM, server manufacturers in control of patching AMI released an advisory and patches to its OEM partners, but affected users must wait for their server manufacturers to integrate them and release firmware updates. In addition to this vulnerability, AMI also patched a flaw tracked as CVE-2024-54084 that may lead to arbitrary code execution in its AptioV UEFI implementation. HPE and Lenovo have already released updates for their products that integrate AMI’s patch for CVE-2024-54085.

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John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

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