Transforming the energy industry through disruptive innovation
Building on the same example of PG&E, which I referenced earlier; through our collaboration, piece by piece progressively, we are building the backbone of a sustainable, digitized, and reliable energy future in California with the deployment of EcoStruxure DERMS. As grid reliability and flexibility become more important, DERMS enable us to keep pace with 21st-century grid demands as they evolve.
Another critical component of moving fast is embracing open systems and platforms, creating an interoperable ecosystem. By adopting open standards, you empower a wide range of experts to collaborate together, including startups, large organizations, senior decision-makers, and those on the ground. This future-proof investment ensures flexible and scalable solutions, that avoids expensive upgrades in the future and obsolescence. That is why at Innovation at the Edge we’re creating a win-win partnership to push market adoption of the innovative technology available today, but laying the foundation of an even more innovative tomorrow. Innovation at the Edge today provides the space to nurture those ideas, collaborate together, iterate, learn, and grow at pace.
Laurel: What’s your strategy for investing in, and then adopting those disruptive technologies and business models, especially when you’re trying to build that kind of innovation for tomorrow?
Nadège: I strongly believe innovation is a key driver of the energy transition. It’s very hard to create the right conditions for consistent innovation, as we discuss short-term and long-term. I want to quote again the famous book from Clayton Christenson, The Innovator’s Dilemma, about how big organizations can get so good at what they are already doing that they struggle to adapt as the market changes. And we are in this dilemma. So we do need to stay ahead. Leaders need to grasp disruptive technology, put customers first, foster innovation, and tackle emerging challenges head on. The phrase “that’s no longer how we do it,” really resonates with me as I look at the role of innovation in the energy space.
At Schneider, innovation is more than just a buzzword. It’s our strategy for navigating the energy transition. We are investing in truly new and disruptive ideas, tech, and business models, taking the risk and the challenge. We complement our current offering constantly, and we include the new prosumer business that we’re building, and this is pivotal to accelerate the energy transition. We foster open innovation through investment and incubation of cutting-edge technology in energy management, electrical mobility, industrial automation, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, sustainability, and other topics that will help to go through this innovation. I also can quote some joint ventures that we are creating with partners like GreenStruxure or AlphaStruxure. Those are offering energy-as-a-service solutions, so a new business model enabling organizations to leverage existing technology to achieve decarbonization at scale. As an example, GreenStruxure is helping Bimbo Bakeries move closer to net-zero with micro-grid system at six of their locations. This will provide 20% of Bimbo Bakeries’ USA energy usage and save an estimate of 1,700 tons of CO2 emission per year.
Laurel: Yeah, that’s certainly remarkable. Following up on that, how does Schneider Electric define prosumer and how does that audience actually fit into Schneider Electric’s strategy when you’re trying to develop these new models?
Nadège: Prosumer is my favorite word. Let’s redefine it again. Everybody’s speaking of prosumer, but what is prosumer? Prosumer refers to consumers that are actively involved in energy management; producing and consuming their own energy using technologies like solar panels, EV chargers, EV batteries, and EV storage. This is all digitally enabled. So everybody now, the customers, industrial customers, want to understand their energy. So becoming a prosumer comes with perks like lower energy bills. Fantastic, right? Increase independence, clean energy use, and potential compensation from utility providers. It’s beneficial to all of us; it’s beneficial to our planet, it’s beneficial to the decarbonization of the world. Imagine a future where buildings and homes generate their own energy from renewable sources, use what’s needed, and feed the excess back to the grid. This is a fantastic opportunity, and the interest in this is massive.
To give you some figures; in 2019 we saw 100 gigawatts of new solar PV capacities deployed globally, and by last year this number had nearly quadrupled. So transformation is happening now. Electric vehicles, as an example, their sales have been soaring too, with a projected 14 million sales by 2023, six times the 2019 number. These technologies are already making a dent in emissions and the energy crisis.
