IBM Collaborates with Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) for Smart Grid Research

IBM has joined hands with Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IITK) and Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) to carry out research in Smart Grids. Together they will develop systems that will make power grids more efficient and resilient. The IBM researchers and IITs students and professors will develop open system designs for Phasor Measurement Units (PMU), network architectures to store data from PMUs, and analytical tools to process the collected data. The knowledge and insight gained through this partnership will be available publicly, so that businesses and governments across the world can take the advantage. 

Dr. Manish Gupta, Director IBM Research - India and Chief Technologies, IBM India/South Asia said , "With exploding world population and the increased demand for clean and cheap energy there is a pressing need for making the power grids efficient, intelligent, and secure. The collaboration among IBM Research – India, IIT Madras and IIT Kharagpur aims at reducing inherent inefficiencies of power grid technologies and make them optimally productive," In essence, the partnership is aimed towards creating sustainable energy systems.

According to IBM Press release, "IIT Kharagpur will be primarily involved in developing the new power system applications and software systems for the project. While, IIT Madras will focus on the networking architecture to ensure that the data collected from different locations is appropriately transmitted to one location.  A test bed will be developed to connect IBM Research labs and both the institutes to emulate a smart grid network. The test bed will be utilized to evaluate the network architecture and the open system designs in real-life scenarios". Students from IITs will gain valuable experiences from IBMs collaboration, as the company is engaged in Smart Grid projects across the world. Prof. A.K.Sinha of IIT Kharagpur expressed, "Through our knowledge in the power system application domain and IBM's expertise our students will work towards developing an innovative grid management application to make the power grid more reliable". Also, prof. Krishna Sivalingam from IIT Madras noted that the association will provide a platform to students to learn real-life application development from IBM veterans. 

This is part of the IBM's Open Collaborative Research(OCR) initiative to foster innovation through university-industry partnership.