‘Digitisation is the key to energy efficiency’

Digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart data are the key to energy efficiency. That’s according to Mike Hughes, Zone President for Schneider Electric UK & […]

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Digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart data are the key to energy efficiency.

That’s according to Mike Hughes, Zone President for Schneider Electric UK & Ireland, who spoke to ELN at the company’s Innovation Summit yesterday.

He explained how these disruptive technologies could vastly improve productivity and reduce costs once they allow the widespread linking of industrial and domestic devices and appliances.

He said: “The key impact on the energy space will be having the ability to use those assets in a more efficient way.

“The biggest single factor is actually energy saving, it’s energy that you don’t need to consume in the first place.”

He added IoT technologies would cut costs by allowing proactive and preventative maintenance, as well as identifying inefficiencies that would otherwise go unnoticed.

He also discussed what Brexit could mean for the sector: “A lot of decisions have been made for solid, logical, economic reasons, whether that’s around the energy mix that the UK has decided to use with renewable energies and nuclear or with the interconnectors that are now running between France, the Netherlands and the one that is under development to Norway.

“Still only around 10% of the energy that’s consumed in the UK is coming from there and these decisions were all made for specific economic reasons – I don’t see that changing too much after Brexit.”

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