French firm unveils tool that predicts power outage in buildings

Buildings in Nakuru town in darkness during a blackout that hit most regions across the country on January 9, 2018. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

Buildings will now be able to better predict power availability and cushion the premises against shock, fire and explosion.

This follows Schneider Electric’s unveiling of a digital architecture for managing power in buildings. 

Named EcoStruxure Power, it will use intelligent devices and digitisation ‘to deliver improved reliability, safety, efficiency, sustainability and connectivity for customers across multiple industries’.

Even though Kenya Power reported that as of 2018, household connections to the national grid stood at 73 per cent of the national coverage, perpetual power outages are still common.

The launched product will be able to send automatic outage notifications and monitor energy consumption through a dashboard.

“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,” notes Schneider Electric East Africa General Manager Edouard Heripret.

Mr Heripret maintains to achieve all that, buildings required more than just sensors and needed data integration.

The new system will connect advances in mobility, sensing, cloud, analytics, internet of things (IoT) and cybersecurity technologies into tools for managing power.

“Our customers realise they can unlock new levels of efficiency and create competitive differentiation by leveraging the new opportunities created by digitisation and IoT,” said Mr Heripret. “EcoStruxure Power gives them scalable, measurable, agile solutions to work with and succeed in today’s fast-paced digital world.”

With the open integration and real-time analysis of the data from the internet-enabled sources, users will be able to improve operational and energy efficiency.

In a press statement, Schneider Electric the system will come with simple cloud-based tools for small and medium buildings that are limited in staff.  The French firm said that will make it easy to automate more reliable maintenance operations and quickly apply corrective action in case of an outage.

It is currently available to professionals in the power industry, including contractors, engineers, panel builders and their customers.