Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management, launched the 'Smart Panel' concept in Pune to ensure sustainable energy savings in buildings, such as public and commercial offices, modern retail premises, hospitals and hotels apart from industrial set-ups. Based upon Schneider Electric's energy management principle of 'measure, connect, and save', Smart Panel is a simple-to-deploy plug and play solution contributing towards addressing the urgent need to curb energy costs and meet norms for green buildings.

Elaborating on Smart Panels, Shrinivas Chebbi, Vice President - India and SAARC, EcoBuildings and Partner Projects, Schneider Electric, said: "In recent months, power blackouts have occurred frequently in many parts of India. While the government devises long-term measures to address the situation, we believe all stakeholders should consider it their individual responsibility to address the situation at the ground level. With buildings accounting for almost 40 per cent of energy use in most countries, there is immense potential for improvement in their energy efficiency. Apart from assisting to meet regulatory compliances, the owners and occupants of buildings will benefit from long-term energy and financial savings through Smart Panels."

"With the government's focus on smart cities, products like Smart Panels, which ensure energy management in a simple way, become extremely important since energy efficiency and improving quality of life while maintaining an ecological balance is the basis for all smart cities," he added. In the 'measure' stage, the Smart Panel system ensures energy consumption metering at source is automated. This simplifies daily operations and eliminates the traditional error-prone manual data gathering. In the second 'connect' stage, Smart Panels use reliable, simple to install and use displays, and Ethernet and Modbus interfaces on the communication system enabling data access locally as well as remotely over cloud.

The third stage, 'save', assists building owners, facility managers or residents to undertake energy analyses. This is achieved through onsite real-time monitoring and control (on touch-screen displays connected to the Ethernet or on a computer display with IE browser), which gives a clear understanding of the building's energy consumption by zone and usage types. Building owners and facility managers can then undertake appropriate measures for best use of energy resources without affecting the comfort and productivity of occupants. The Smart Panels will be launched in 10 cities across India.