Bloomberg Business:

RWE is contracting the services of a partnership between IBM and Apple as utilities in Europe’s biggest power market suffer from the lowest power prices since 2002. An unprecedented shift to renewable energy, fed into the grid preferably, is squeezing the margins at traditional plants burning coal, gas and nuclear. It presents a business opportunity for the two tech giants whose partnership had never had an energy and utility customer before RWE.

And:

Field workers at RWE’s Hambach coal mine started using software on Apple iPad mini devices in December. They’re already saving 30 minutes a day by cutting down on paperwork, said Andreas Lamken, chief information officer of RWE’s generation unit. The company has deployed a “couple hundred” of the handheld tablets and plans to distribute more at its two other mines and then to utility workers in the coming months, with a goal of reaching as many as a thousand, he said.

Perfect use case for the iPad and a sign of the fruitful nature of the Apple/IBM alliance.