Energy effi ciency critical for Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric (SE) is a major player in energy efficiency services such as air fl ow management for computer servers.

Business Day sat down with the company’s International Trade and Development Sales Director for the Caribbean, Manuel A.

Rodrigues, to find out more about the importance of keeping servers cool and humidity-free.

“Air flow management is very critical because servers have a specific temperature reading that they can work in, and that’s where we come in. We ensure, from a cooling perspective, that air flow is happening properly, that the temperature levels are being maintained. We also provide solutions for humidity; something which is a factor in tropical regions like the Caribbean. Humidity has a big impact on computer equipment and servers in particular because they have specific humidity ranges, outside of which, they can malfunction.” Rodrigues explained that SE’s precision cooling system was designed to address temperature and humidity concerns in an efficient manner.

“This system is our most recommended cooling solution for companies located in tropical conditions; versus typical comfort air that you may see in an office environment, because cooling humans is a very different need compared to cooling computer equipment.” Rodrigues said that while “a lot of people think cooling is about how much cold air you push into a room, it’s actually about how to extract the heat from a room. So it’s a heat extraction system, even though they call it an airconditioning system.” It’s always key to save money on your electricity bills, even more so during an economic slowdown as many countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, are currently experiencing.

Headquartered in Rueil- Malmaison, France, SE has operations all over the world.

As companies, particularly those with lean profit margins, seek to reduce their operating costs as profit margins remain thin, SE has seen an increase in the number of requests for assessments of existing cooling and/or energy efficiency systems.

Rodrigues told Business Day that SE offers several assessments, including “simple walk throughs, free of charge, where we can quickly identify certain problems.

However, when we’re talking about in-depth studies to identify real significant percentages of savings, that’s where our assessment services come in; both from a power quality/power efficiency perspective as well as cooling efficiencies.

“The majority of your energy consumption is from cooling and if your cooling system is working overtime because of inefficiencies, then at the end of the day, you’re possibly over-spending on 60 percent of your data centre energy consumption.” What may come as even more of a surprise to many businesses is that installing an SE system can potentially save them hundreds of thousands of US dollars in reduced electricity bills.Rodrigues gave the example of a company in The Bahamas which, in February 2017, asked SE to assess its cooling system.

“We were able to save that company US$400,000 a year in operating expenditure aft er we improved the efficiency of their energy consumption related to their cooling system. The company is housed in a two-storey building; seven rooms of critical equipment plus regular office spaces. They asked us to come in because they felt that not only were they not being efficient enough, their system wasn’t providing the right level of cooling to support their infrastructure because they were failing.” Rodrigues also spoke to Business Day about his June 2017 visit to Trinidad, during which he met with existing and potential SE clients at Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain. SE holds regular meetings with clients here and abroad in order to get direct, up-to-date feedback on its systems and any new or emerging energy efficiency needs companies may have developed since their last meeting. “This allows us to better prepare and plan for the future - so we can adjust as we need to, continue to make improvements as we can and make the right investments to be able to support those customer needs long into the future...The great thing about Schneider Electric is that our solution offering is so vast, we can (meet) the majority of the needs that a customer may have by right-sizing the right solution within our product offering.” Speaking specifically about the company’s local presence, Rodrigues praised the contribution of SE’s Enterprise Territory Manager for TT and the Englishspeaking Caribbean, Sharlene Mangalie, who was appointed to the post two years ago.

“Having someone based here has helped enormously (in growing our business). It allows us to maintain that ear to the ground more consistently versus us just flying in once a quarter, which is really all we were able to do in the past. Having someone who was born and raised in TT, (has) allowed us to continue to interact with our customer base while ensuring that their feedback is shared across all zones within the organisation, so that we can (more quickly) respond to the needs of TT.” Asked if a business has to be of a certain size to hire SE, Rodrigues said this is not so at all.

“We work across the board...

Any business that has a server rack can be a client of ours.

We’re interested in supporting (everyone). So, for example, if you own a retail shop selling your own equipment and you have small information technology (IT) devices to support your operations, SE can support you the exact same way we do our Tier 1 customers such as The University of the West Indies.”