Shanghai Power Chooses IBM Technology for Power Outage Management

Shanghai Power has selected IBM to manage power outages more effectively, IBM (News - Alert) has announced. IBM has developed a new technology for this purpose and the technology can upgrade and transform a power grid by reducing outage frequency and duration of black-out time.

Looking to transform its power grid to minimize power outages, Shanghai Electric Power Company (Shanghai Power) has installed the Integrated Distribution Outage Planner (IDOP). Being of the largest power companies in Asia, Shanghai Power generates more than 20 billion kilowatt per hour of electricity per year, and outages there can jeopardize network reliability and service quality for its customers, IBM stated. IBM is involved in more than 150 Smart Grid engagements in mature and emerging markets.

“Based on IBM's analytics and optimization techniques, IDOP is an innovative offering to help the energy & utilities industry address large scale and complex grid challenges," said Dr. Thomas Li, director of IBM Research -- China & CTO, IBM Greater China Group. "IBM is proud to support Shanghai Power in implementing this significant and ground breaking tool, which is China's first province-wide IT platform of its kind.”

IDOP, an online, real-time outage-planning tool, allows the power grid to draw data across the company to conduct analysis of possible factors causing outage and excessive energy consumption with the help of IBM's analytics and optimization technology. The IDOP project is part of IBM Research's First-Of-A-Kind program (FOAK) where IBM engages clients' experts in research projects. IDOP provides scientific arrangements of outage tasks, including the time frame and load transfer path for each outage task.

In February 2009, Suntel (News - Alert), a major telecommunications company based in Sri Lanka, chose IBM Lotus software to help foster its plans to develop a collaborative environment to enhance worker productivity and communication in a cost-effective way. Before selecting the IBM Lotus suite, Suntel was relying on Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange and Outlook. The company made the switch based on the software’s flexibility, reliability and cost.