Smart meter cloud announced by IBM and Cable & Wireless

21.03.11

IBM and Cable & Wireless are set to jointly offer a 'smart energy cloud' to aid the UK's new smart meter rollout.

Some 50 million smart meters are being rolled out to UK homes and businesses, to give consumers more control over their energy usage and make for a more efficient energy grid.

Branded as the UK Smart Energy Cloud, IBM and Cable & Wireless' technology is a 'cloud-based hub', a data platform which will gather information many times a day from smart meters across the country. That data will then be held centrally in a UK data centre.

"The challenge is for smart meters to reach the entire UK population and this will require a combination of enabling solutions, such as GPRS, radio and Power Line Carrier to make sure it's cost effective," said Matt Key, enterprise managing director at C&W. "However, it is the network connecting it all and intelligent data management that are central to the smart agenda's success."

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