IBM and the City of Dubuque, Iowa have announced the availability of the Smarter Energy Cloud in Dubuque, Iowa.
The cloud computing service is expected to enable citizens to access information about their energy usage and habits and share best practices through an electricity portal/website over a six-month period.
Dubuque is the first city in Iowa where 1000 smart electricity meters have been installed at volunteer households, said IBM.
The application is part of the Smarter Electricity Pilot Study in which data will be collected and analysed over the next several months, providing these volunteer households with information, insights, and actionable intelligence to potentially lower their energy costs.
IBM said that its technology will interface automated metering technology from Alliant Energy to monitor energy consumption data and provide near real-time visibility into the overall city energy consumption.
"Based on the success of the Smarter Water Pilot Study completed earlier this year, we look forward to learning the insights the Smarter Electricity Study will offer our citizens and our city," said Dubuque Mayor Roy D. Buol.
"Dubuque is honored to be IBM’s partner in this research to create a model for communities across the country and around the world."
IBM said that the smarter electricity meter system will monitor energy consumption every 15 minutes and will collect and securely communicate anonymous data to the IBM Research Cloud.
Smarter City Services Research Program Director Milind Naphade said, "One of many enhancements that automated meters provide is real-time data collection. With help, consumers can understand their usage patterns and make informed decisions on how to adjust those habits to save money and conserve resources."
"Our energy portal has these unique personalized decision support capabilities based on advanced analytics and social computing. This portal can be used by any utility deploying smart meters."
The study was a collaboration of IBM, the City of Dubuque, Alliant Energy – Interstate Power and Light, and the Iowa Office of Energy Independence. The study will run from July to November 2011 and initial study results will be available by December 2011.
