Schneider Electric: Smart Cities, IoT & Digitization, Smart Grids

Schneider Electric’s perspective on smart cities is based on several pillars: leveraging IoT to create smart buildings – a central element for a smart city; smart grids- which are able to respond efficiently to the electricity demand of the city and smart technologies which make access to information and public services easier and more convenient for the citizens. In other words, we consider that connectivity, energy efficiency and sustainability play a crucial role in a smart city.

With buildings being responsible for around 70% of global energy consumption and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, no wonder a smart city needs more smart buildings to promote the well-being of their inhabitants, to decrease energy consumption and build a more sustainable tomorrow. This is achievable by collecting and analysing data from buildings with the help of connected technologies and then converting these data into real actions.

A smart city management system needs policymakers who understand that the city’s systems should be able to cooperate with other systems and to be monitored in order to become more efficient.

Smart grids are also an important part of a smart city’s structure and a big challenge, considering the continuously increasing energy demand. Only a flexible intelligent grid, able to adapt to fluctuations of energy consumption and react in real time, can support other innovative technologies – like electric vehicles – which can reduce carbon emissions and ensure a greener world.

The growing energy demand, preserving Earth’s limited resources, and limiting climate change are three big challenges that the world has to find an answer to. Clean, renewable energy (solar, wind, wave, tidal, hydraulic, biomass) seems to be the best alternative to fossil fuels which are still widely used today.

One way to introduce more renewable energy sources is to update the outdated infrastructure and be able to deliver energy continuously.  Turning the existing infrastructure into smart grids would mean adding sensors and software to the grid in order to make it react more quickly to changes and limit the damage as much as possible, whenever an incident occurs.

As we migrate to more-and-more electric and renewable energy systems, a lot of the waste from traditional systems will be eliminated, so the system will be able to respond better to the increase in energy demand.

Utilities and consumers have to work together for a better future. Utilities – by digitizing networks to better integrate green energy resources with smart grids and microgrids. On the other side, consumers can do their part by becoming prosumers and changing their patterns of energy consumption.

Microgrids allow, for the optimization of energy costs and use, flexibility and a better integration of renewables.

IoT & Digitization

Nowadays we are going through the fourth industrial revolution – or industry 4.0 – which is leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT). In other words, more and more manufacturing and industrial facilities are relying on sensors that collect data with the aim of optimizing operational processes. Unlike the previous industrial revolutions, the power of the new industrial revolution doesn’t capitalize on a single asset – e.g. steam power or assembly lines, but on connected machines which generate thousands or even millions of bytes of data which need to be analysed and put into action. These figures are not at all overestimated if we consider IoT Analytics’ prediction that there will be over 22 billion IoT connected devices by 2025.

Having access to data in real time and being able to make decisions on the spot is imperative today for businesses that want to improve operational efficiency, productivity and the overall quality of their products – by speeding up deliveries, for example. Moreover, in industries like food or beverage full traceability is required at any time to ensure the best possible final product and the fastest response in critical situations, like: a piece being broken.

With so much data and so many things in stake, the full visibility of infrastructure also helps maintain security and prevent any attempt of unauthorized access – combined with endpoint security and restriction of access in the most vulnerable areas.

Digitization or the digital transformation is having a profound impact in each industry, with many companies investing in emerging technologies such as AI or augmented reality. They do this not because they simply want to follow a trend, but for their goals to become more profitable, more agile and better prepared to face competition. A successful digital transformation process will optimize the processes and operations in the company and will empower people to take better decisions, by having quick access to quality information.

(From the print edition)