World Community Grid

IBM is involved in smart grid projects with utilities around the world, selling hardware and software as well as offering consulting expertise in the utility industry.

Its research group is also active in renewable energy such as solar power, including a few efforts to develop materials for thin-film solar cells. One project done with Harvard University is the Clean Energy Project of the World Community Grid. In this work, computing power from around the world is coordinated to calculate how good certain inexpensive organic materials would be for use in solar cells.