Schneider Electric addressing the global energy crisis through sustainable solutions

While giving an overview of the energy dilemma that India along with the rest of the world is facing, Dan Wall, VP Power Solutions - Software, Systems & Services Marketing, Schneider Electric explains to VARINDIA about its EcoStruxure platform and how it is impacting the industry in particular -

There are two big mega trends seen in the world today -Digitization and Energy. As this whole digitization process unfolds, it puts a stronger demand on energy resources in the world. Both these phenomena intersect as companies are looking to become more energy efficient and implementing more energy efficiency initiatives. They are doing that with digital assets like new HVAC systems, LEDs and these new technologies that they are deploying are creating power reliability issues.

Schneider Electric provides the products that can detect these issues and can also correct them, says Dan Wall, VP Power Solutions - Software, Systems & Services Marketing, Schneider Electric. “So while we are trying to become more energy efficient and making investments for that, if we don’t do it with the right partners and the right expertise we end up having power reliability issues that can wipe out the savings from the energy efficiency initiatives that we expected in the first place.”

Schneider Electrics is thus working through partners, training them at the same time about this connection and the dependency that energy management and power reliability have.

“We are providing products and solutions in this new IoT world to all our partners to solve these problems customers have related to energy efficiency initiatives impacting power reliability,” says Dan.

Schneider EcoStruxure Platform

Schneider’s EcoStruxure Power is its platform to deliver the energy management and power management systems. It works similar like Industry 4.0 and can be applied to electrical distribution. At the very base there are the IoT devices. These devices can be things like smart circuit breakers, meters, UPS and any sort of electrical assets that are running a facility like a datacenter or a hospital. “This is a very active space for us and our partners,” Dan says.

The first layer all of these IoT devices create a lot of data, which need to be collected into a place where it can be monitored and set up for reporting for learning the kind of applications in use. This then moves to the 2ndlayer which is called the edge control. An edge control is typically a software system like a building management system or a power management system. Schneider has power management software and gateways that collect all of the data from these IoT devices and allows the on premise staff to understand and thereby respond to some reactive situations, diagnose it and resolve that. It also helps to understand the energy consumption of the facility and plan some strategy to reduce that energy consumption.

“One very basic example of that is with an industrial customer- when they start the process they need to start up these very big motors that draw a lot of current from the circuits. We can really bring down the peak demand, the peak energy consumption for that site, thereby reducing the overall energy bill. This strategy is one which can be applied with the edge software, helping the facility team to identify these peak demand situations and then build a mitigation strategy,” explains Dan.

The 3rd layer is the cloud layer, which uses machine learning and analytics to find opportunities for increasing power reliability and energy efficiency in complex electrical networks. Schneider Electric is investing heavily in this area and together with partners, is unlocking new levels of performance.

Schneider in India

Schneider Electric India is the market leader in energy management solutions. It has deployed these solutions at very large multinational manufacturing facilities and is also working closely with very large multinational companies in the F&B industry and other manufacturing related industries in India. It targets hospitality, healthcare, data centres and buildings and manufacturing and has solutions for all these segments.

“Schneider is a pioneer in working in the smart city project. PM Modi just inaugurated the Naya Raipur smart city venture and Schneider built that smart city project as well. So we are working with a lot of smart city projects along with our partners and sometimes direct as well,” says Dan.

He continues further, “We are also launching the world’s most advanced meter in India in the month of August which is called the ION 9000. This is an IoT based advanced configurable meter and is the first of its kind that is going to be launched in India as well.”

Schneider has the eco expert partner programme where it identifies the key partners, trains them, enables them and also shares opportunities with them that it generates. Almost 80-90% of its business is through its partners and it works with the partners to address the customer opportunities.

“Schneider runs the eco expert partner programme for its partner community in India as well as across the globe. This is an award winning programme where we have got recognition from all over the world. This program allows the partner to use our technologies to ensure that he bring value to his customers,” Dan concludes.