Smarter energy management

By Cat Yong

Over 70-percent of the world’s population will be living in urban centres, in just over 40 years’ time. What would the implication be on resources? With earth’s natural energy resources steadily depleting, we have turned to renewable sources, but that is hardly enough to keep up with demand for energy. There is an estimated 56-percent increase in demand for energy by 2040.

Clearly, we need to start to conserve with better energy management and Schneider Electric’s East Asia Zone President, Zelkjo Kosanovic said, “As a global specialist in energy management and industrial automation, we look at areas we can contribute to create this new world of connectivity, sustainability, in our homes, cities, buildings, industries and cloud.”

Four to five percent of Schneider’s revenue goes to researching and developing new functions for plants’ facilities so it can harness automated systems for more efficient and profitable industrial processes, said Kosanovic.

Closer to home, a country like Malaysia is also well-served by Schneider’s experience and expertise in energy management.

Malaysia
Malaysia’s 2014 energy tariff hike of 15-percent, saw impacted industries approaching Schneider to find out how to improve energy usage.

“There is a trend of having software do analytics to measure energy usage, and make business decisions on how to use and save energy, instead of relying on just gut feeling,” said Kosanovic.

Seeing how energy is the biggest operating expenditure in data centres and factories, energy management equates to cost management for these industries, and shouldn’t be overlooked. And for energy management to work efficiently, the monitoring and capturing of energy usage in real-time is key.

“The Internet is going far beyond (computers) and into critical national infrastructure. There is also a convergence of information and operational technologies, not to mention there is exponential growth of connected devices,” Kosanovic observed.

Because of all these connectivity and amount of data being generated, there is expectation for businesses to extract more value from increased level of information intelligence to enable better business decisions.

Kosanovic however opined, “It is already a reality.”

In Malaysia, Kosanovic observed that the lack of technologies and solutions, are not the roadblock. “What is the challenge is awareness and readiness to drive change,” he said.

Industry needs
According to the East Asia Zone president, “Malaysia has still one of the lowest tariff rates among Asia countries. In Europe, countries have embarked (more aggressively) on energy management, in order to reduce energy usage and reduce their carbon footprint.”

He admits that the level of adoption (energy management solutions) is not as high as it can be in other countries, but that “…the pace of change is happening very fast, because large MNCs are rapidly embracing it.”

Overall, Kosanovic noted many opportunities in many areas – data centres, oil and gas projects and more.

“In Malaysia, there is opportunity everywhere in all those key segments, which would be served by the complete portfolio of Schneider,” he concluded.