IBM, Cable and Wireless Offer UK Utilities Smart Energy Cloud

IBM has found a network and communications solutions provider to partner with for its smart meter monitoring software. They have announced a partnership with Cable and Wireless to develop a UK Smart Energy Cloud to support the UK’s smart meter implementation programme.  Using its smart meter data gathering and analytic platform and supported by Cable and Wireless communications infrastructure IBM hopes to collect and store data gathered from the 50 million smart meters to be install in the in UK homes and business over the next nine years.

The IBM smart meter platform allows data gathering and analysing of data generated by smart meters. According to IBM, in a previous announcement, the intelligent Metering Management software offers greater visibility, automation and control of the smart metering infrastructure.

The UK Smart Energy Cloud will have the ability to gather data many times per day, from any smart meter in the country and store the data in a central location, securely. The data can then sent or request by the energy retailer for assessment to generate customer bills and informs the smart grid infrastructure. The data will be stored locally in a UK based hosted cloud environment.

The solution will allow utility suppliers to concentrate more on their backend infrastructure and they will not need to make high upfront investment in resources, because a lot of the work would have already been done, such as the communication infrastructure. Customers also stand to benefit by getting none estimated bills and making switching supplier easier and more transparent.