TE Connectivity partners CNIguard to advance smart grids

Enhancing overhead and underground grid monitoring with real-time data, visualisation and analytics for utilities and industrial customers across the Americas.

TE Connectivity, a world leader in connectors and sensors, and CNIguard, an industry leader in Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) platforms for underground environmental, safety and reliability monitoring and data analytics are integrating their smart solutions for overhead and underground grid infrastructure. Together, the companies’ sensing and data visualisation technologies offer customers end-to-end grid monitoring solutions to enhance grid reliability by providing real-time situational awareness, enabling predictive maintenance and rapid response when faults or other events occur.

Utilities are actively investing to keep pace with expanding consumer and commercial demand, while integrating renewable and distributed energy sources. The U.S. grid spans 5.5 million miles of distribution lines. Aging grid infrastructure, extreme weather events and underground monitoring are among the main challenges they face. TE’s smart grid solutions can retrofit onto existing equipment, leveraging CNIguard’s platform to offer added transparency and intelligence on real-time network conditions. This helps utilities identify safety and reliability concerns above or below ground, enabling them to pinpoint and repair faults, identify critical levels of gases and find cable hot spots.

Since its January 2023 acquisition of Kries, a leading producer of smart grid technologies, TE has expanded its product lines and doubled production capacity, innovating in-step with customer needs. With this new partnership combining TE’s smart connectivity solutions with CNIguard’s IoT platform, utility customers are now able to access an end-to-end digital smart grid solution that can help transform their legacy power infrastructure into a future-ready network. Both TE Connectivity and CNIguard offer ruggedized, IP68 rated hardware to withstand harsh environmental conditions, and CNIguard’s digital architecture is secure by design and ISO 27001 certified for customer data security and integrity.

“We see strong global momentum in the smart grid sector with demand growing rapidly in the Americas, especially as more distribution infrastructure is added underground. Our utilities and industrial customers are looking for real-time data connectivity solutions to enhance grid reliability, optimize power distribution and minimize downtime. With this partnership, we are adding a crucial piece to our offering – a powerful platform that simplifies grid management,” said Christian Pellon, chief technical officer of TE’s Energy business unit.

“CNIguard’s platform provides advanced detection and analytics of hazards in utility underground confined spaces, one of the toughest domains in the electric grid, that affect safety and reliability, shifting our customers’ risk posture while maximizing value. Partnering with TE enables us to offer an advanced solution for electric power system monitoring and analytics,” said Chris Quire, chief executive officer of CNIguard.