Microsoft’s Environmental Action Award: Recognizing French Smart Grid Pilot

| Josh Henretig

oneEach quarter, Microsoft gives out an Environmental Sustainability Action Award, along with a donation to an environmental charity of the winner’s choice, in recognition of image an employee or team who has shown leadership and provides an inspiring example of how Microsoft and its employees can have a positive impact and change not only on the way we run our business, but also the way our products and services can make a difference for our customers, our partners and for society.

This quarter we are pleased to honor Marc Jalabert, Katia Houbiguian, Benjamin Gauthey and team from Microsoft France, who have been responsible for enabling France’s first smart-grid neighborhood demonstration project aimed at reducing energy use across 200 test homes and four commercial buildings in the community. Based in Issy-Les-Moulineaux at the Microsoft campus, IssyGrid has been created and piloted with the help of 10 partners who own the right skills and competencies to create a unique, innovative and replicable CityNext smart grid.

IssyGrid collects energy consumption data and processes it in real time by using Windows Azure, the Microsoft cloud services development, hosting, and management environment. The consortium analyzes the data by using Microsoft SQL Server 2012. More than 3.5 million data points are stored within Azure, growing 10x every three months. Azure enables IssyGrid to store, secure, and share data based on privacy rules.

IssyGrid provides this data to citizens so that they can see how they are using electricity and this enables them to take specific actions to conserve—by turning off the television or lowering the temperature by two degrees.

The IssyGrid smart grid will soon be adding another 1,600 homes to the demonstration project, and will ultimately extend to the whole town. When that happens, IssyGrid will cover the needs of nearly 5,000 residents and 10,000 business employees in a 160,000 square-meter area.

This project, developed over the course of several years, is a great example of Microsoft technology being used to drive significant change in cities around the world. We applaud the Microsoft France team for working so diligently to bring this project to life and helping Microsoft and the community reduce its environmental footprint in the cities we work and live.

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