IBM is implementing another piece of its initiative to put smart networks in place, ones that retrieve and exchange information to allow intelligent decision-making.
The latest project involves putting OMRON sensors into shipping equipment in Japan. OMRON is a Japanese company that makes automation hardware and sensors.
IBM programs will calculate optimized shipping routes to minimize costs and carbon emissions based on the OMRON information. The best shipping, airfreight, train and truck routes will all be analyzed for minimum energy consumption, cost and time. Much of the GHG emissions associated to products is due to their shipping across the planet.
IBM is also implementing part of a $170 million Australian smart-grid project with EnergyAustralia, to monitor the electricity distribution network via 12,000 sensors placed on transformers and some of the 30,000 electrical substations in the Australian electrical network. IBM will collect, collate and synthesize the data to be used to avoid distribution reliability problems by identifying performance variations in the hardware and to improve power quality.
The IBM Australia project is called a "Smarter Planet" initiative to use information technology to improve energy efficiency. The Australian system provides bi-directional communication between the smart sensors and the energy supplier’s operations centre, using 800kms of fibre-optic links. It will be the world’s first system that can monitor customer-level power consumption.
By the middle of 2009, the customer level sensors will be linked into the network, maybe using WiMAX (Worldwide Inter-operability for Microwave Access) as in their trial study for the 100,000 customers in Newcastle. Other tests have used the power line itself as a data network and mobile cellular communications systems.
The health effects of the various forms of wireless and microwave technology on humans and animals continue to be hotly debated with two sharply divided camps. Electro Magnetic Sensitivity is a growing phenomena and a recognized illness in Sweden.
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