In today’s hyper-competitive market, companies are tasked with reducing costs, increasing revenue and saving energy to help them retain their competitive edge. Extending the life of a company’s electrical assets is an avenue many are choosing, putting effective circuit protection back in the spotlight. The motivations are clear. Damage from surges or faults endanger the health of the electrical circuit. Potential business disruption and the added cost of repairs are a real danger for today’s businesses. Gary Buckingham, product and segment marketing manager at Schneider Electric explains
To avoid the risk to circuit health and smooth business operation, many businesses are now adopting cutting-edge solutions to enhance circuit protection and facilitate an alternative, predictive maintenance strategy. These innovations in circuit-level energy monitoring are crucial to ensuring a superior level of operational building intelligence, maintenance and circuit protection.
SAME ROLE, NEW DEMANDS
Technological progress can seem both a blessing and a curse for today’s building managers. Advancing sensors and the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has optimised certain parts of their roles while also revealing new challenges and responsibilities. In addition to their familiar role in keeping their facilities operational, they are now expected to cut costs while growing revenues.
This is possible by improving maintenance practices and efficiency to extend the lifespan of their equipment. Yet, when it comes to circuit and equipment protection, many are simply going through the motions. Facing limited resources and an endless, expensive cycle of maintenance, organisations would greatly benefit from being able to predict problems such as electrical faults, cable overloads, short circuits and insulation faults before they become a costly issue. To overcome this challenge, building mangers must have full oversight of their electrical assets at all times. While this is impossible physically, connected devices coupled with remote monitoring offer unrivalled visibility over all electrical assets in the building.
INCREASED RELIABILITY AND EFFICIENCY
Recent advances have produced truly intelligent circuit breaker sensors. They form the foundation of a more effective, conditionbased approach to asset maintenance. Leveraging operational and environmental data, it is key to protecting electrical circuits and reducing the costs associated with frequent repairs.
The advantage of smart solutions, such as Schneider Electric’s PowerTag, is their connectivity. Connected to the Building Management System through the Internet of Things, they provide building managers real-time data on power flow, energy and device health in the moment. They are able to detect problems, such as unstable loads, and identify the source of the issue before it can snowball into a larger crisis.
When positioned to maximum effect, these devices are able to collate the most granular of data from previously untapped and inaccessible parts of a facility’s infrastructure, helping to improve the overall monitoring process. By analysing this data and learning how and when the energy is being consumed across the building, a clearer picture of the infrastructure’s overall health can be collected; providing alerts to any faults, power overloads or even any energy waste.
Connected sensors increase the reliability, efficiency and condition of key electrical assets by helping to monitor and measure currents, voltages, power factors and energy. This is necessary not only for the accurate monitoring of a business’s energy consumption, but also as a means to maintain the health of its equipment.
AN ALTERNATIVE MAINTENANCE STRATEGY
The cost of maintenance and servicing, particularly around switchgear has been an almost universal problem for building managers. However, rather than resulting from the innate challenges of the building itself, high costs more often stem from failings in the current maintenance schedule.
Traditionally, building managers have followed a maintenance plan composed of regular, scheduled check-ups and corrective repairs once a breakdown occurs. The main drawback of this system is its inattentiveness. Equipment is checked at a set time periodically and regardless of its actual health. Wear and tear, damage and faults can certainly be detected using this approach, but it is mostly left to chance whether they are discovered before the damage is done. In the worst case, faults and electrical damage are found after the event and must be repaired, at great cost and disruption.
Recently, however, more effective ‘predictive’ approaches have emerged. These utilise connected sensors to detect faults, and use environmental data to predict when an asset will likely fail. Corrective action is then organised automatically before, and not after, business disruption is caused. The predictive approach prevents asset and facility downtime and can result in considerable savings and efficiencies.
Yet remote monitoring takes this approach to the next level, while accommodating the changing role of the facility manager. As their working practices evolve, building managers may find they are spending more time off-site or working between different sites as their responsibilities increase and the number of sites they control grows. This can mean the maintenance and management of numerous buildings, each with its own occupancy classifications, unique requirements and provisions.
However, remote monitoring tools, such as Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Facility Expert, allow teams to keep on top of monitoring no matter where they are. They can keep track of usage patterns at any time and any place, from the convenience of a mobile device such as a phone or tablet and especially when they are outside of the facility. With a centralised BMS and control capabilities, managers can adjust environmental settings in an instant with a phone swipe.
Using connected devices at the circuit level ensures the safety of a building’s assets by sharing the relevant environmental data, at unprecedented speed, to those who need to see it. The more data they have, the faster and more targeted the responses can be. Connected devices, predictive maintenance and remote monitoring are fast becoming central to corporate circuit protection.