Energy-Efficiency Solutions Deliver Major Cost Savings, says Schneider Electric

by | Sep 30, 2010

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Schneider Electric North America expects that energy-efficiency solutions and services will deliver much greater cost savings for industrial and commercial facilities than alternative energy, reports IndustryWeek.

Jeff Drees, Schneider’s U.S. president said while speaking to reporters at a recent product launch that energy-efficiency projects and solutions can deliver payback in one to three years, compared to ten years for a standard solar project or five to seven years with incentives or rebates, reports IndustryWeek.

Drees also said that system integration offers one of the largest energy-savings opportunities, which includes integrating industrial automation systems with building automation controls so heat or air is not used in idled plant-floor areas.

One of the company’s major initiatives is EcoStruxure, an integrated energy-management architecture that enables greater collaboration between facility and building managers, IT managers, plant supervisors and engineers, reports IndustryWeek.

For data centers, APC by Schneider Electric’s newly launched next-generation InfraStruxure data center architecture offers a 25 percent increase in data center capacity using 15 percent less floor space, while reducing cycle time and complexity from design concept to installation.

InfraStruxure offers a modular form factor that optimizes power, cooling and floor space within an integrated energy management system, and is a building block of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure energy management architecture portfolio.

A core feature of the InfraStruxure architecture is the InfraStruxure management software which provides an open, vendor neutral management platform for data center physical infrastructure. This portfolio helps companies optimize availability by balancing safety margins and risk tolerance to conserve energy and cut costs, says the company.

APC by Schneider Electric says active and open management across all key domains of the data center, including power, cooling, rack systems, and security systems has become necessary in order to avoid unplanned downtime and to maximize energy efficiency.

A new version of the InfraStruxure management software enables virtualization and reduces enterprise carbon footprints through monitoring and automated response to data center events.

As an example, through InfraStuxure Efficiency 1.1, IT managers can report on monthly energy consumption of their data center subsystems including CO2 emissions, power usage effectiveness (PUE) and Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency (DCIE). Carbon footprint and energy costs are user configurable or can be automatically calculated to correlate with local power generation CO2 emission and local public utility data, providing a more accurate representation of emissions and energy costs.

An example of the increased integration capabilities of the software includes the real-time communication between InfraStruxure Operations 6.1 with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 via a PRO Pack. This new capability automatically migrates virtual machines to secure host server environments and provides visibility into how virtual machines relate to physical servers.

InfraStruxure Operations also ensures Virtual Machine Manager is aware of critical physical infrastructure alarms and events, including power, cooling, security and environment, and can execute corrective actions to move virtual machines to non-impacted areas within the data center.

With these new features, InfraStruxure management software enables IT managers to align capacity with demand at row, rack, and server levels; monitor the data center physical infrastructure with instant status notifications and alarms; and reduce non-IT power consumption and wasteful excess capacity in order to increase overall data center efficiency, says the company.

Earlier this year, Schneider also introduced a new solution to add data center visibility to electrical monitoring systems in critical power applications. The company’s Data Center Module for ION Enterprise enables users to collect and store data from key distribution points across an electrical network. The new solution is aimed at helping businesses save energy and improve overall efficiency and productivity without new hardware.

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