Shaping a New Era in Energy

In the last few years, the world has seen the energy & utilities business accelerate into a significant period of transformation as a result of the smart grid and related technologies. Today, with some early proponents leading the way, the industry is on the verge of a step-change improvement that some might even classify as a full-scale revolution. Utilities are viewed not only as being a critical link in solving the challenges we face related to climate change and the care of our planet’s energy resources, but they’re becoming enablers of growth and innovation – and even new products, services and jobs. Clearly the decisions the industry is making today around the world’s electricity networks will impact our lives for decades to come.

If the current economic environment has muted any enthusiasm for this transformation, it hasn’t been much. With the exception, perhaps, of plummeting oil prices temporarily providing some sense of calm in the sector, there are probably few people left who don’t believe the world needs to urgently address its clean, smart energy future. As of this writing, fledgling signs of an economic recovery are emerging, and along with it, increases in fossil fuel prices. As such, enthusiasm is growing over the debate about how countries will utilize billions in stimulus funding to enable the industry to achieve a new level of greatness.

There is a confluence of events helping us along this path of dramatic and beneficial change. IBM’s recent industry consumer survey (selected findings of which are featured in this publication in "Lighting the Way" by John Juliano) signals a future that is being shaped in part by a younger generation of digitally savvy people who care about – and are willing to participate in – our collective energy future. They willingly engage in more open communication with utility providers and tend to be better at understanding and controlling energy utilization.

As utilities instrument virtually all elements of the energy value chain from the power plant to the plug, they will improve service quality to these customers while reducing cost and improving reliability to a degree never before achievable. Customers engage because they see themselves as part of a larger movement to forestall the effects of climate change, or to battle price instability. This fully connected, instrumented energy ecosystem takes advantage of the data it collects, applying advanced analytics to enable real-time decisions on energy consumption. Some smart grid projects are already helping consumers save 10% of their bills, and reduce peak demand by 15%. Imagine the potential total savings when this is scaled to include companies, governments and educational institutions.

While positive new developments abound, they also are creating a highly complex environment, raising many difficult questions. For example, are families and businesses truly prepared to go on a "carbon diet" and will they stay on it? How will governments, with their increased stake in auto manufacturers, effectively and efficiently manage the transition toward PHEVs? Will industry players collaborate with one another to deal with stealth attacks on smart grids that are no longer the stuff of spy novels, but current realities we must face 24/7? How do we responsibly support the resurgence of nuclear-based power generation?

Matters of investment are also complex. Will there be sufficient public/private partnership to effectively stimulate investment in new businesses and models to profitably progress safe alternative energy forms such as solar, tidal, wind, geothermal and others? Will we have the "smarts" – and the financial commitment – to build more smarts into the reconstruction of ailing infrastructures?

Leading the Way

IBM has been a leading innovator in smart grid technology, significantly investing in energy and environmental programs designed to promote the use of intelligent energy worldwide. We created the Global Intelligent Utility Network Coalition, a strategic relationship with a small group of select utilities from around the world to shape, accelerate and share in the development of the smart grid. With the goal to lead industry organizations to smart grid transformation, we actively lead and participate in a host of global organizations including the GridWise® Alliance, Gridwise Architecture Council, EPRI’s Intelligrid program, and the World Energy Council, among others. By coming together around a shared vision of a smarter grid, we have an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the energy industry and our economic future.

The IBM experts who engage in these groups – along with the thousands of other IBMers working in the industry – have contributed significant thinking to the industry’s progress, not the least of which is the creation of the Smart Grid Maturity Model (SGMM) which has been handed over to the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) for ongoing governance, growth and evolution of the model. Furthermore, the World Energy Council (WEC) has become a channel for the global dissemination of the model among its worldwide network of member committees.

IBM’s own Intelligent Utility Network (IUN) solution enables a utility to instrument everything from the meter in the home to miles of power lines to the network itself. In fact, the IUN looks a lot more like the Internet than a traditional grid. It can be interconnected to thousands of power sources – including climate-friendly ones – and its instrumentation generates new data for analysis, insight and intelligence that can be applied for the benefit of businesses and consumers alike.

Our deep integration skills, leading-edge technology, partner ecosystem and business and regulatory expertise have earned us roles in more than 50 smart grid projects around the globe with showcase projects in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Texas, Denmark and Malta (See "The Smart Grid in Malta" by Carlo Drago in this publication) to name just a few. IBM also has a role in seven out of the world’s 10 largest advanced meter management projects.

The IBM Solution Architecture for Energy (SAFE), is a specialized industry framework focused on the management, maintenance, and integration of a utility’s assets and information, inclusive of generation, transmission and distribution, and customer operations. This is complemented by a world-class solution portfolio based on the most comprehensive breadth of hardware, software, consulting services, and open standards-based IT infrastructure that can be customized to meet the needs of today’s energy and utilities enterprises around the globe.

These activities are augmented by the renowned IBM Research organization that engages in both industry-specific and cross-industry research that influences our clients’ progress. This includes new computing models to handle the proliferation of end-user devices, sensor and actuators, connecting them with powerful back-end systems. How powerful? In the past year IBM’s Roadrunner supercomputer broke the "petaflop" barrier – one thousand trillion calculations per second using standard chip sets. Combined with advanced analytics and new computing models like "clouds" we’re turning mountains of data into intelligence, making systems like the smart grid more efficient, reliable and adaptive – in a word, smarter.

IBM Research also conducts First-of-a-Kind research – or FOAKs – in partnership with our clients, turning promising research into market-ready products and services. And our Industry Solution Labs around the world give IBM clients the chance to discover how leading-edge technologies and innovative solutions can be assembled and proven to help solve real business problems. For example, we’re exploring how to turn millions of future electric vehicles into a distributed storage system, and we maintain a Center of Excellence for Nuclear Power to improve design, safety analysis, operation, and nuclear modeling / simulation processes.

IBM is excited to be at the forefront of this changing industry – and our changing world. And we’re honored to be working closely with our clients and business partners in helping to evolve a smarter planet.

Is Your Mobile Workforce Truly Optimized?

ClickSoftware is the leading provider of mobile workforce management and service optimization solutions that create business value for service operations through higher levels of productivity, customer satisfaction and cost effectiveness. Combining educational, implementation and support services with best practices and its industry leading solutions, ClickSoftware drives service decision making across all levels of the organization.

Our mobile workforce management solution helps utilities empower mobile workers with accurate, real-time information for optimum service and quick on-site decision making. From proactive customer demand forecasting and capacity planning to real-time decision making, incorporating scheduling, mobility and location- based services, ClickSoftware helps service organizations get the most out of their resources.

The IBM/ClickSoftware alliance provides the most comprehensive offering for Mobile Workforce and Asset Management powering the real-time service enterprise. Customers can benefit from maximized workforce productivity and customer satisfaction while controlling, and then minimizing, operational costs.

ClickSoftware provides a flexible, scalable and proven solution that has been deployed at many utility companies around the world. Highlights include the ability to:

  • Automatically update the schedule based on real-time information from the field;
  • Manage crews (parts and people);
  • Cover a wide variety of job types within one product: from short jobs requiring one person to multi-stage jobs requiring a multi-person team over several days or weeks;
  • Balance regulatory, environmental and union compliance;
  • Continuously strive to raise the bar in operational excellence;
  • Incorporate street-level routing into the decision making process; and
  • Plan for the catastrophic events and seasonal variability in field service operations.

The resulting value proposition to the customer is extremely compelling:

  • Typically, optimized scheduling and routing of the mobile workforce generates a 31 percent increase in jobs per day vs. the industry average. (Source: AFSMI survey, 2003)
  • A variety of solutions, ranging from entry level to advanced, that directly address the broad spectrum of pains experienced by service organizations around the world, including optimized scheduling, routing, mobile communications and integration of solutions components – within the service optimization solution itself and also into the CRM/ERP/ EAM back end.
  • An entry level offering with a staged upgrade path toward a fully automated service optimization solution ensures that risk is managed and the most challenging of customer requirements may be met. This “least risk” approach for the customer is delivered by a comprehensive set of IBM business consulting, installation and support services.
  • The industry-proven credibility of ClickSoftware’s ServiceOptimization Suite, combined with IBM’s wireless middleware, software, hardware and business consulting services provides the customer with the most effective platform for managing its field service operations.

ClickSoftware’s customers represent a cross-section of leaders in the utilities, telecommunications, computer and office equipment, home services and capital equipment industries. Over 100 customers around the world have deployed ClickSoftware workforce and service optimization solutions and services to achieve optimal levels of field service.