Reliability, resilience and safety are critical for effective switchgear

Power availability and reliability remain major and persistent problems for all applications, as they involve a high cost of outages for businesses. “To address this, it is essential to innovate in switchgear that ensures reliability and resilience, with safety as the key performance parameter”, says Nikhil Pathak, Vice President at Schneider Electric India.
How is switchgear innovating with the increasing demand for constant power supply?
At Schneider Electric, innovation is one of our key drivers for delivering value to our customers. With the innovative technologies embedded, our switchgear is equipped to help customers prevent downtime, monitor their installation status, and recover fast in the event of an outage.
We make this possible by enhancing the core of our product and by leveraging digital technology. Our connected switchgear, ranging from the grid to the plug, makes fault localisation possible, allows root cause analysis, and makes power recovery much easier. Our connected switchboards also make it possible to collect useful data from the passive components (busbars and cables) with wireless sensor technology, thereby guaranteeing the demand for a constant power supply.
How is the Indian switchgear industry faring in the global energy market?
India is poised to grow faster with the Government of India’s targeted focus on “Make in India” and “Atmanirbhar Bharat.” We are witnessing swift growth in our manufacturing capabilities, and this growth is supported largely by key investments in segments such as infrastructure, transportation, data centers, renewables, etc. In this changing energy landscape, the prosumer economy will go up, and we will see that the switchgear segment will witness upgrades at every level.
An increased focus on smart grids and smart meters for accurate billing and fraud reduction will also be major driving factors for this accelerated growth in demand.
Today, energy companies worldwide depend on our switchgear for smart, reliable, and efficient systems to transmit energy to users. This growing demand in the Indian switchgear industry will uplift all stakeholders by providing access to safe and reliable energy.

What are the advantages of advanced switchgear that maintains voltage fluctuation and power supply performance?
Today, digital is making the invisible visible, and through constant innovation and incorporating more digital technologies into switchgear, we can ensure significantly reduced downtime and enhanced energy efficiency.
 A lot of useful data can be collected from switchgear that reduces downtime and enhances energy efficiency, which can then be utilised for asset management, predictive and preventive maintenance, energy management, etc. It can be relayed to cloud applications and processed for detailed analysis, thereby driving more informed decision-making and improving overall efficiency.
What are maintenance procedures in place to improve the safety and reliability of switchgear?
The continuous operation of switchgear in the power distribution networks is of paramount importance owing to their contribution to the safety of the overall system. It is, therefore, imperative to constantly maintain these critical components so that they perform their intended purpose.
With advancements in digital technologies, predictive maintenance has become the way forward for the future of switchgear maintenance. Predictive maintenance ensures that only the necessary components are replaced or repaired at the appropriate intervals, without compromising operational efficiency or safety, and at the lowest possible cost to the user.
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