Schneider Electric's Innovation Summit Explores the Ever-Greener Electrical Market

In the opening keynote at Schneider Electric’s 2022 Innovation Summit in Las Vegas this week that attracted more than 1,500 electrical professionals, Jean-Pascal Tricoire the company’s chairman and CEO, said digitization, sustainability and the increasing demand for electricity will present huge revenue opportunities for the electrical market.

He said his job as CEO is to put Schneider Electric in the places with the strongest tailwinds and to eliminate financial risk. In the 20 years that he has worked in sustainability, a confluence of factors are creating an unparalleled opportunity for market growth. “We need to make the grid smart,” he said. “We can connect everything from the plant to the plug.”

Many speakers talked about the rise of the “prosumer,” the customer who is now both consuming electricity and producing it at their home or business, and the need for electrical professionals to market their companies to these emerging players in the green market. These prosumers are producing power with local photovoltaic installations or wind farms and storing it in batteries, which represents both revenue opportunities and technical challenges because of the need for a utility infrastructure that integrate bi-directional power systems.

While Schneider Electric has for decades offered a broad range of electrical products and software solutions to help customers save energy, presentations by the company’s executives at the Innovation Summit reflected a renewed sense of passion and urgency about the green market’s future because of some key drivers:

• Climate change’s geopolitical and local impact and the move toward decarbonization
• Digital control of virtually all electrical devices
• Geopolitical concerns about supply chains and America’s move toward onshoring of industrial production
• Challenges for the U.S. electrical grid in blending in the huge increase of electrical power produced by renewable power sources owned and operated by utilities, businesses and homeowner
• The billions of dollars that will be available over the next few years through the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act and other federally based economic stimulus funds for the installation of energy-efficient electrical products, digital electrical controls and refurbishing and expansion of the electrical grid
• Increasing demand for the installation of electric-vehicle charging stations at homes, businesses, local, state and federal government facilities, and on interstate highways
• Microgrids’ potential for truly massive production and storage of electricity