On the Environment Variables podcast we co-produce with the Green Software Foundation, Chris was was recently joined by Phillip Weisner, a research associate and PhD student of Technical University Berlin, to talk about his recent research building testbeds to measure the savings from carbon aware software.
Episode 80 – Exploring Vessim, a carbon aware testbed
In this episode we explore Vessim, a project that and his team at TU Berlin have been working on for the last two years, to build testbeds that simulate the grids that carbon aware software designs might run in, and respond to.
Carbon aware software is designed to adapt how it behaves based on local conditions affecting the electricity grid that software is running in, so it can be difficult to test. Phillipp describes his work building testbeds that simulate the grid, to help us understand the likely savings that carbon software would achieve in conditions representative of the electricity grids they would be deployed onto, and what measures might be the most useful in the whole lifecycle of a software project.
We also explore which kinds of software and hardware lend themselves to an approach relying on carbon aware software to reduce their environmental impact, and which ones don’t, as well as the many factors need to be taken into account with this new approach to building software.
As ever, the interview is accompanied by a transcript and extensive show notes linking to papers, open source projects and more.
Where to listen to the episode
You can see the dedicated episode page with an in-browser media player, shownotes, and transcript, as well as links to all the common ways to subcribe to the podcast for future episodes.
