Electricity + Control May 2019

ENERGY MANAGEMENT + ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

efficiencies and savings on upfront capital costs. AVEVA’s design simulation and modelling software allows for plant design, development and testing before the plant is built. A further advantage is that the process can create and hold the digital twin of the built plant. It allows for continuity of information from design to build, to operations, to maintenance and, in turn, supports the exchange of information from operations and maintenance, back to the original so the design can be adapted to integrate modifications and improvements gath- ered from real-life implementation. As well as ap- plying to industrial automation systems, the same modelling software can be used to design and de- velop customised energy management solutions in all EcoStruxure domains. □

in throughput per year, with energy management benefits too.

Community An important element of EcoStruxure is commu- nity. Schneider is partner-oriented. It seems little known that – in its journey of growth and de- velopment over the years – Schneider acquired Modicon, the company that invented the program- mable logic controller (PLC) some 50 years ago. It also opened up its Modbus protocol to the market and has been a long-time supporter of Ethernet as an open protocol for industrial communications. EcoStruxure already operates with a community of over 20 000 developers and system integrators – all contributing players whether they are individ- uals working on specialised technology aspects or customers building their own solutions – they interact on and feed back into the EcoStruxure platform. At Hannover Messe 2019 Schneider Electric launched a new open online community which will enable more partners to contribute to the EcoStruxure community, build onto it in particular areas of specialisation and share outcomes. The intention is to offer different players with particular interests or relevant expertise an online platform – Schneider Electric Exchange – that enables them to create and collaborate on solutions and scale these with EcoStruxure to suit different and wider applications.

Schneider Electric At the seminar, Albert Fuchet, Cluster Pres- ident for Anglophone Africa at Schneider Electric and based in Johannesburg, pre- sented a brief overview of the company. The Anglophone Africa cluster covers 24 coun- tries across Southern, West and East Africa. Headquartered in Paris and operating on all continents, Schneider Electric has a strong presence in emerging economies. As a global specialist in energy manage- ment and automation, it develops connect- ed technologies and solutions to manage energy and processes in ways that are safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable. The com- pany operates across different market sec- tors and a range of industries. Fuchet made the point that all new products produced by Schneider are connected and that today – within the context of digitalisation and auto- mation – linking objects to people is funda- mental to its business. He also highlighted, as one of the key benefits of EcoStruxure, the platform’s capability to provide insights into all aspects of operations.

Lifecycle tools Another important ele- ment of the platform is lifecycle tools. Since the

merger of Schneider Electric’s industrial soft- ware business and AVEVA in March 2018, Schneider Electric has been working with AVE- VA software to offer an open, ‘agnostic’ software portfolio to its partners and customers. As well as pro- viding efficiencies and savings in customers’ operations, this ena- bles the company now also to deliver

28 Electricity + Control

MAY 2019