Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

In the past 10 years, the data center industry transformed itself.  We’ve gone from first hearing the term cloud computing to talking about edge computing and driverless cars in a little more than a decade. The progress and performance made have been tremendous. And it really got us thinking. What if we compared the performance of the data centers back then with today’s data centers to see how they’re performing and to determine what progress we’ve made as an industry? So, we modeled three step function examples that have made a significant impact — UPS improvements, containment, and economization — and our model showed about an 80 percent reduction in losses just using those three technologies. We have increased physical infrastructure efficiency by about 80 percent by providing more efficient architectures and more efficient products. And this finding prompted this question: What will drive the next 80 percent of data center improvements in the next 10 years? We know that if...

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 calls for universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services by the year 2030. 1.1 billion people worldwide still have no access to electricity. That’s nearly equivalent to the U.S and European population combined. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that, unless electrification efforts are further accelerated, by 2030 a total of 674 million people will still be without access to electricity. Though these numbers seem daunting, bold ideas are rapidly driving successes across the globe that show the SDG 7 goal is attainable. New initiatives including government programs, innovative business and financing models, new technologies that enable digital tracking and monitoring of energy assets, and locally-based training programs–are ushering in a new era of access to energy . For example, in Bisanti, Nigeria, Green Village Electricity (GVE) Projects Limited , a local partner of Schneider Electric, succe...

Industrial Control System (ICS) operators recognize the need to improve cybersecurity , but many lack the understanding on how to start the process.  End users attend cybersecurity conferences, webinars, or read articles in the trade press and learn about specific cybersecurity topics – like threat detection or defense in depth architectures.  Many are tempted to start to take steps to improve security – but it is critical to first create a plan prior to taking action.  Schneider Electric has issued a white paper designed to provide guidance to operators who are initiating projects to secure industrial control systems. The whitepaper introduces the cybersecurity lifecycle which consists of four phases; Assessment, Implementation, Maintenance, and Auditing.  The white paper focuses on the Assessment Phase, and provides a detailed overview of the steps required to create a security plan.  The Assessment Phase is divided into 4 major steps: Documenting the Syst...

In previous articles, I’ve talk about the importance of aesthetics for the control interfaces of machines, how a pleasant to see control interface could ease your sales talk by providing more attractiveness and well-designed components and control panels could ease the operators’ life by providing more ergonomics. In term of fashion for pushbuttons , the latest trend is the introduction of flush mounting products. It means that you usually have to choose among 3 criteria: the color (matt black or shiny grey) The aesthetics choice is usually based on taste, contrast with the panels. In cases were the environment is very bright, the light can be reflected on shiny metal pushbuttons, thus bothering the operators… so that black colored pushbuttons are preferred in that last case. the external height depending on the mounting solution (standard or flush) Flush pushbuttons are sometimes considered a more modern look & feel because this aesthetics trend is quite recent. In addi...

Spending time with customers at this month’s Schneider Electric Innovation Summit in Paris made three things clear: Edge data centers are a big priority for enterprise and colocation providers, the colocation market is still experiencing healthy growth, and the digital transformation we’re now experiencing presents significant opportunities to operate data centers more efficiently and effectively. I love these events because they give me the opportunity to meet with a wide variety of customers and get a reality check on the issues they’re facing day to day. With more than 5,400 visitors on hand from around the globe, there was no shortage of people to talk to. It was great to confirm that the trends we’ve been seeing – and trying to address – are in sync with what customers are dealing with. Dave Johnson speaking at Schneider Electric’s Innovation Summit in Paris Strong demand for edge data centers Let’s start with the edge. It’s clear that Internet of Things (IoT) is driving dem...

With more than 5,000 customers, partners, colleagues and countless others in attendance, there’s a solid chance I did! But for those of you who didn’t join us at this year’s event, there are more opportunities in the future. But first… What is Innovation Summit? Innovation Summit is Schneider Electric’s event series which brings together experts, thought-leaders and executives to discuss the future of powering and digitizing the economy through the convergence of automation and energy technology. Events are global, throughout the year with several  Global Innovation Summits  already on the calendar. Global Innovation Summit in Paris kicked off with a keynote delivered by our CEO, Jean-Pascal Tricoire. We in the data center biz know that data centers are critical to building the digital economy and that sentiment came through loud and clear in Jean-Pascal’s keynote highlighting two of our colocation customers:  Interxion  and Pulse Data Centre . These two compa...

Score your goal in soccer and you may have won the game, even the championship. Hit your goal for your company and you can avert catastrophe, save thousands of dollars, and secure reliability for your company’s systems. Consider the following: How well does your company meet its energy, efficiency and financial goals? Do you have a workable plan in place guaranteed to meet high-performance, high-quality energy goals? Are you able to quickly identify the sources of potentially damaging disturbances as well as corrective action for those disturbances? Managers at Oracle Corporation, the software giant based in Redwood Shores, CA,  asked these same questions regarding their own company. They were searching for a high-performance, high-quality electrical distribution system.  Oracle wanted reliability, efficiency, safety, and support for their customers. They were able to find a solution with Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure TM , an open, interoperable, IoT-enabled system...