The commercial and industrial energy transition was very good to Schneider Electric last year and appears headed for equally positive results in 2024.
The 2023 earnings for the global energy management, automation and microgrid developer jumped nearly 13% organically as the French-based company touted major demand success from data center and infrastructure projects.
Schneider Electric’s overall revenues for 2023 totaled about 35.9 billion Euros ($38.8B U.S.) and net income rose 15% to 4 billion Euros ($4.32B U.S.). The biggest drivers of the growth included a 17% uptick in the systems segment, led by energy management work within the data center and infrastructure sectors, as noted.
Industrial automation delivered big for the French company, and customers in the Middle East and Africa provided a double-digit percent expansion in business for those markets, according to the earnings report. Schneider Electric also reported that it entered 2024 with a record project backlog of almost $3 billion.“We enter 2024 with a record level of backlog, particularly in relation to our systems business, giving us enhanced visibility for the coming quarters,” CEO Peter Herweck said in a statement. “Backlog and continuing strong demand dynamics across most of our portfolio solidifies strong financial targets for 2024.”
Last year, Schneider Electric detailed a new movement into standardized and streamlined microgrid offerings through its EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex product and also expanded its work in virtual power plant and grid services technologies through its investments in Uplight and AutoGrid.
On Wednesday, Itron and Schneider Electric announced they would integrate their intelligent grid and distributed energy resource management solutions to enhance digitalization of electricity supply and demand markets. The two partners already are working on dozens of integrated use cases around DER, asset management and grid services.
So far, Schneider Electric has completed more than 400 microgrid projects worldwide and plans to accelerate those deployments in the future. The EcoStruxure Flex line will include Schneider working with numerous partners.
“I think the train has left the station when it comes to decentralization and distributed energy resources,” Bala Vinayagam, Schneider Electric’s senior vice president for its microgrid segment, said in a Quickchat interview with Microgrid Knowledge in the fall of 2023.
“I am bullish about it,” Vinayagam added. “I see microgrids as a Swiss army knife for solving the problem of the future of the grid.”
Bloomberg’s New Energy Finance (BNEF) last year predicted it would cost close to $21 trillion in global grid upgrades and expansion to help reach net zero emissions goals by 2050. Microgrids and aggregated DER technologies such as VPP are envisioned as cost-effective antidotes to those enormous decarbonization investment challenges.
Schneider Electric is a gold sponsor for the upcoming Microgrid Knowledge 2024 Conference happening April 22-24 in Baltimore at the Marriott Waterfront. The firm’s experts, including from AutoGrid, will be participating in numerous sessions at the event, with focus on topics such as “Generation Prosumer” and “The Dynamic Path to Reliable Energy: A Living Roadmap.”
Early bird registration is still available for Microgrid 2024. Other presenters and sponsors include the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, Spirae, PowerSecure, Power Engineers, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Ameresco, Honeywell, Concord Engineering, UL Solutions, PXiSE Energy Solutions, Xendee, Maryland Energy Administration, Exelon, Pacific Gas & Electric, University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Center for Microgrid Research, Georgia Power, Together Louisiana, Compass Energy Platform, Smart Electric Power Alliance, and many others.
