Schneider Electric has announced the introduction of EcoStruxure Power, a digital architecture for energy management in buildings.
The system delivers significantly enhanced value to professionals in the power industry, including contractors, consulting engineers, panel builders and their end customers.
With open integration, real-time operations and analytics and increased levels of cyber security, the next generation architecture enables power users to make the most of new opportunities created by intelligent devices and digitisation to deliver improved reliability, safety, efficiency, sustainability and connectivity for
customers across multiple industries.
EcoStruxure Power is part of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure architecture, an open and interoperable system architecture for building, grid, industry, and data center customers. It brings together the company’s industry leading connected products, edge control, apps, analytics and services into a connected and integrated framework for all areas of the power distribution and management chains.
“One impact of IoT is that customers are going to expect buildings to be smart. They’re going to demand
data-driven solutions that improve energy and operational efficiencies, facility planning, preventative
maintenance, fault detection, occupant comfort, and safety in buildings…but this requires more than sensors. You need data integration. The data may be in various formats, with different naming conventions and syntaxes coming from a variety of devices, sensors and systems” said Edouard Heripret, General Manager, Schneider Electric East Africa.
“We are leveraging advances in IoT, mobility, sensing, cloud, analytics, and cyber security technologies into a set of connected tools for the power management industry. By acting on data in real time from any number of IoT-enabled sources, our customers can improve operational and energy efficiency and bring their operations directly into the future.”
In large and critical buildings, uptime is paramount. At many large facilities, for example, power outages can cost more than $1 million+ per day while endangering the lives of employees and visitors. In addition, operations and maintenance costs can represent as much as 80% of the total lifecycle cost over a
50-year period. EcoStruxure Power improves power availability and safety in such buildings by monitoring
the entire network and boosting protection against shock, fire, and explosion.
In large industrial facilities, reliability is paramount for ensuring productivity and operational efficiency.
Moreover, for companies looking to expand, a high level of productivity and efficiency can be the keys
that unlock growth. Equipped with the proper data, insight, and optimisation, industrial facilities can ease
the cost of expansion and open new avenues of innovation.
One Schneider Electric customer, a paper mill, estimates that it saved over $1 million in the construction
of their new co-generation plants. Extensive monitoring, analysis, and control were used to optimize the
electrical systems and avoid unnecessary downtime. Thanks to EcoStruxure Power Management
software, they could improve site planning and operational reliability for the expansion of their facilities.
In addition, because small and medium buildings usually have limited staff on site, EcoStruxure Power
also provides simple cloud-based tools to make it easy to automate more reliable maintenance
operations and quickly apply corrective action in case of an outage. For example, facility or property
managers can receive automatic outage notifications and monitor energy consumption through a simple
dashboard.
One Schneider Electric customer realized 30 percent savings by installing connected panels, monitoring
them, and applying corrective actions based on an analysis of the received data. Another customer
receives automatic outage notifications for 60 connected facilities and can track energy consumption
through a simple dashboard.
“Our customers realize they can unlock new levels of efficiency and create a competitive differentiation by
leveraging the new opportunities created by digitization and IoT,” concluded Heripret. “EcoStruxure
Power gives them scalable, measurable, agile solutions to work with and succeed in today’s fast paced
digital world.”
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