IBM’s Interest Demonstrates IT's Tie to the Smart Grid

If IBM is interested in the electrical smart grid, you got to believe there’s a strong IT connection to smartly managing the efficient use of energy and the money to be made doing just that. In a posting on GreenTechMedia.com, Draw Clark, director of strategy, emerging markets, at IBM’s Venture Capital Group, is quoted as saying:

"Cleantech may be the only category [of venture investing] that is left relatively unscathed and [VCs] are looking to put new money into traditional IT type of companies and smart grid is exactly that."

As the article author Michael Kanellos points out, IBM's VC group doesn’t invest in startups, but meets with them to determine future trends and promising companies. Then, IBM figures out how best to tie its strategies and services with these emerging trends. As Kanellos writes:

If Big Blue is excited about something, there is a good chance that a channel for bringing a new idea to market is already being assembled.”

Kanellos writes that the IT angle better fits into the VC mold for building companies.

Unlike solar or biofuel companies, most smart grid outfits don't need to build huge factories. They develop software or networking devices for controlling various aspects of power transmission or consumption.

Who’s getting VC money to make the grid smarter: Trilliant, GridPoint, eMeter, Silver Spring Networks, Smart Synch, GainSpan, Grid Net and Onzo.

Today, the electrical grid isn’t too smart; its electrons mostly move in one direction. Making it a two-way highway is a challenge that will need lots of IT smarts.

2009 Prediction: Information TechTurns to Energy Opportunities

2009 is just around the corner, and with the new year, comes predictions. Cleantech Group Executive Chairman Nicholas Parker has come up with nine trends to watch for in 2009. What's dear to Tech2Green's heart is No. 7.

The IT and telecom industries over the last few years have started to get increasingly engaged in clean technology. Companies like IBM, Autodesk, Cisco and Intel are becoming ever more important.

What we’re seeing now, and this was particularly clear in India this year, is that the IT industry is seizing the energy opportunity as a chance to make money in this area. Whether it’s moving towards more integrated energy management systems or platforms, or smartening up the grids, or lowering carbon content in the supply chain, we see the IT industry turning on the taps this year and really rolling out new a range of products and offerings and driving a great deal of innovation in the cleantech space.

2009 will be the year IT turns its eyes to energy opportunities, not just in algorithms and software. For example, Intel is turning its quantum dot people, who’ve been working on next generation processors, to the solar challenge and opportunity, looking to develop new nano-based solar cells. We could well be in 10 years time calling Intel an energy company, in much the same way Applied Materials is becoming better known as a solar company.

Here are all nine of Parker's predictions:

1. Energy efficiency infrastructure boom initiated.

2. Global climate talks bog down—no serious deal until 2011/12.

3. U.S. passes national Renewable Portfolio Standard, but cap and trade bill only in 2010.

4. Wind stocks come back; thin film photovoltaics shakeout.

5. Clean technology venture capital stabilizes at $7 billion globally; private equity more active.

6. Failure rate of clean-tech startups doubles.

7. IT turns to the energy opportunity.

8. R&D stagnates; corporations acquire green growth assets.

9. Energy-water-food nexus emerges.

IBM Tapped to Enhance AEP's Smart Grid

Further proof of the key role IT will play in driving efficient use of energy came Tuesday when the Columbus, Ohio-based electric utility picked IBM to integrate its suite of customer programs to create a new energy delivery system.

According to an AEP release:

IBM will provide AEP with support services across the program, including program management, business process design, systems planning and systeminterfaces. The agreement also leverages IBM's unique capabilities inresearch, software and IT infrastructure, enabling AEP to take advantage of IBM's global investments in developing intelligent utility network solutions.

AEP's initiative, known as gridSmart, focuses on four projects:

• A pilot of advanced metering, distribution grid management, and energy efficiency technologies in South Bend, Ind., which has begun.

•Establishment of up to three model city demonstrations of some 100,000 customers each, where AEP can validate and refine its gridSMART vision.

•Completion of a five-year application portfolio roadmap that will outline how technology will transform AEP's future electricity distribution business.

•Mobilization of several innovative customer service and energyconservation initiatives, including new online energy management tools.

Q: Why Isn't Electricity Like Pizza?

A: Because pizza isn't delivered when no one is home.
IBM puts out this amusing, minute-45-second video that explains the smart grid.