Tuesday, 09 February 2010 10:07

IBM introduced its new POWER7 system on February 8 that it says will support the most demanding smart grid applications.  POWER7 is built around technologies unique to the smart grid industry and is designed to handle an immense number of transactions and analysis of those transactions in real time.

POWER7, with its built-in advancements in virtualization and efficiencies, also allows for customers to manage other applications and services at lower costs.  The system is built around the UNIX platform that has been around for more than 40 years.  The market for UNIX products is estimated to be worth $14 billion.

Smart grid deployments require a constant stream of data to allow for the most efficient transmission of electric power in real time at the utility end.  Customers must also be provided with information in real time that allows them to monitor their energy consumption and make informed decisions based upon the current price of energy.

This enormous amount of data represents a major leap for utility companies – one major utility says it processed less than a million meter reads per day previously and will now have to support more than 85 million reads in a day.  All of this data must be collected, analyzed, and presented in real time to five million customers in a way that is useful to them.  Previously the utility collected meter reads overnight.

eMeter, a major developer of smart grid-supporting software, uses IBM Power Systems to process the mountains of data transmitted from millions of smart meters.  As the data comes in the data is analyzed.  The Canadian province of Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) installed eMeter’s software on IBM Power Systems to process hourly consumption data for customers supplied by more than 90 utility companies.  IESO plans to increase the time interval to 15 minutes in the near future.

“eMeter ran a successful benchmark on IBM POWER6 systems for more than 20 million smart meters – more than four-times scale of any other utilities industry benchmark,” said Scott Smith, client business manager at eMeter.  “We know that there are already markets in the world that are scaling significantly.  Combining eMeter and IBM’s POWER7 we are confident we can hit much higher numbers to meet their needs”

POWER7 hardware varies from the Power 750 Express for mid-market clients to the Power 780 which is a new category of high end server that features a modular design containing as many as 64 cores, or central processing units (CPUs).  The 780’s TurboCore optimization feature can deliver twice the performance, per CPU, as the preceding POWER6 systems.

Energy efficiency within the new system is delivered using Unique Intelligent Energy technology.  The system allows customers to turn power on and off to different parts of the system.  Doing this increases or decreases the processor clock speeds based upon internal heat and how the system is being utilized.  Unique Intelligent Energy technology can be used within a single server or across multiple servers.

IBM
One New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504
http://www.ibm.com

eMeter
2215 Bridgepointe Parkway
San Mateo, California 94404
http://www.emeter.com

Independent Electricity System Operator
Station A, Box 4474
Toronto, ON M5W 4E5
http://www.theimo.com

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