Intellectual Property and Licensing

Keeping the energy flowing

Energy is truly the lifeblood of the modern world. And as demand for it escalates, so does the need to be smart about finding it, harvesting it and delivering it. IBM's intellectual property assets offer a wide variety of solutions and approaches to do just that. Some assets can assess the risk of petroleum exploration by examining 3D data sets of large-scale basin models and improve geologists' productivity through faster, more accurate searches of clients' data. Other approaches analyze data from thousands of sensors and gauges in today's digitized oil fields and warn of impending equipment failures. Intellectual property assets can also make energy supply chains more efficient.

Energy utilities can plan better for peak loads and catastrophic weather events thanks to IBM's intellectual property. The Deep Thunder solution provides extremely accurate local weather predictions, facilitating staffing and transportation decisions. Other technologies predict cascading events—virtually in real time—that can lead to systemic blackouts.

But the energy industry is changing. New smart electrical grids and all-electric vehicles that recharge from the grid have brought challenges along with their obvious benefits. IBM offers a variety of approaches to plan and optimize both smart grids and networks of electrical vehicle charging stations. There are also smarter ways to predict variable renewable energy production.

And to help enterprises make the smartest energy decisions, IBM has a web-based tool that helps organizations make smarter energy choices and economic decisions by showing them the outcome of certain tradeoffs. As a result, they can identify where carbon dioxide emissions and costs can be reduced simultaneously.