SEOUL, Korea ¶ Nov 17, 2011 (Whowired) --With likely power shortage challenges weighing on just about all industries around the globe, innovative "smart grid" technologies are emerging -- driven by an increasingly improved level of IT technologies -- to help enhance energy savings or significantly cut down on energy consumptions from one of the main culprits blamed for its huge waste of energy thereby polluting the environment: tall buildings.

SK Telecom (SKT), the leading wireless carrier in South Korea, pushes into what is called "energy management systems" for industrial markets, introducing its proprietary "Cloud BEMS (Building Energy Management Systems)" technology at the upcoming World Smart Greed Expo which opens at COEX, Seoul, on November 18.

SKT's Cloud BEMS performs real-time analysis of electricity and energy consumptions in a building and optimize energy usage pattern automatically depending on the number of people and the ventilation quality of each room. This is possible since the system connects all the energy consuming equipment -- lighting, air conditioning and heating systems -- into a main control center applying high-tech sensor and networking systems.

Among other things, when the state of electricity supply is unstable, this system is very useful; The Cloud BEMs can "switch over" a whole amount of energy use in a building into a "minimum level" of management just in case, allowing to prevent a worst case -- like a black-out -- and restore energy grid swiftly. It is expected to save an average of 5~15% of energy consumption,  when a building is coming equipped with the Cloud BEMS system and SK Telecom said it could save an equivalent of about US$ 220,000 (Korean Won 250 million) since it employed the system in three buildings.

Sam Kim (press@whowired.com)