Energy Efficiency

A cup of coffee with Schneider Electric SVP of North American power products Antonio Di Vaira

A cup of coffee with Schneider Electric SVP of North American power products Antonio Di Vaira
Antonio Di Vaira, senior vice president of North American power products at Schneider Electric (courtesy: Schneider Electric)

The Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit visited my backyard this week. Hosted at the ritzy Intercontinental New York Barclay on the East side of Manhattan, this event is an intersection of energy and finance with a side of fancy hors d’oeuvres. It attracts an impressive roster of professionals from around the world, including some names you, my astute renewable energy reader, have likely heard of.

Among them- Antonio Di Vaira, the senior vice president of North American power products at Schneider Electric. Antonio and I met for a cup of coffee to discuss energy management, resilience, and efficiency- you know, like regular people do. The following is a collection of notable exchanges from our chat, edited for clarity and space.

Paul: Tell me a little bit about what you’re doing at BNEF.

Antonio: These (conferences) are an opportunity for us mainly to network with customers, but also with the investor community. Schneider Electric wants to play a big role in sustainability work. We are a company that is into the digital transformation of energy management and automation.

We are very big, for instance, in data center infrastructure. We collaborate with companies that are making data centers and we help them make a more energy-efficient data center. We are very active in the creation of microgrids. And the second part is all the industrial automation. We are helping industries electrify their processes… We’ve started making software for managing the process of electrification and helping, for instance, analyze their consumption and productivity and efficiency data and helping them be more efficient in using resources, machining, capital assets, etc.

I really focus on the North American market, providing research and development and new product creation. We analyze the market, we partner with the community or the customer, and we put new products, new solutions, and new offerings on the market.

Paul: How frustrating is it for you personally to work for a global company and watch Americans make some of the same mistakes as our European brethren made ten years ago? The United States is having to find its own way on this renewable path. What is your sentiment like watching the United States amidst its renewable transition from the Schneider perspective?

Antonio: I think this is really the value of having a global company operating locally in North America. We really leverage a lot of expertise that we have in Europe and in Asia, and different regions have different challenges.

A group sits next to us and starts a loud conversation. We relocate our chat to the other side of the room, where a television screen is loudly broadcasting a speech from the event. Unable to get the remote to work, Antonio nonchalantly reaches down and unplugs the TV from the wall. In an era of smart solutions, sometimes the simplest ones work best. He picks up right where he left off.

Antonio: I was recently in China, and I was very surprised at how fast they’ve adopted EVs and battery storage and the implementation of solar inside buildings. It’s there. I think the United States will be there soon. But on the other end, I mean, I’ve never seen this big momentum and this big wave of investment that you have in the United States. This is unique. You still don’t have these in Europe, and you don’t have these in Asia.

I think we are, let’s say privileged, because we can see what our colleagues from Europe and Asia are doing. But on the other hand, I think that North America- and this is really the reason why I personally decided to stay here longer- I’ve never seen something like this in the past few years. I think the wave is now in North America.

Microgrids are a prominent topic at GridTECH Connect California, taking place June 24-26, 2024, in Newport Beach, CA! With some of the most ambitious sustainability and clean energy goals in the country, California is at the cutting edge of the energy transition while confronting its most cumbersome roadblocks. From electric vehicles to battery storage, microgrids, community solar, and everything in between, attendees will collaborate to advance interconnection procedures and policies in California.

Paul: What makes the market in the U.S. worth staying for? You talked about incentives and its uniqueness- but especially here at a finance summit, what makes America such an interesting place for Schneider to invest its resources?

Antonio: I think it’s really the economy of scale. Things may happen a little bit slower, but when they happen, they are really at a large scale and you can really leverage them. And also, it may be surprising, but I feel that the United States is still a place where it’s easy to do business… Europe, for instance, is still very much more bureaucratic, where things may be slower than what can happen in the United States.

Paul: It sounds like you’re describing some old U.S. axioms, like “everything is bigger here” or it’s the “wild, wild West.” Does it feel like some of those things are true about the North American market?

Antonio: I think yes! The metaphor with the Wild West is very pertinent.

Antonio is from Italy. He has worked in Europe and Asia, but is recently really starting to enjoy the United States. He shares his experiences living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Atlanta, Georgia, and then gets into what life is like for him now in Nashville, Tennessee.

Paul: Any recommendations for all your fellow Europeans in Nashville?

Antonio: So… I’m not a big country fan (laughs). I’m still learning! I’m very fascinated by the big “country culture” there. I’m fascinated by Atlanta and Nashville. They are both from the South but they are very much different in terms of population and in terms of culture.

And yeah, there are a lot of activities on the business side that are happening. In Tennessee, Schneider just made a $140 million investment in a new factory because there is a lot of capacity and demand in the market. We are making sure we are able to deliver for our data center customers, our utility customers, and our electricians. This is one of the things that I feel is interesting because of the level of investment. This is what I meant when I said “the economy of scale,” to leverage a $140 million investment. I think it’s a bigger opportunity professionally and personally.

Paul: Is there a particular product or offering you’re particularly excited about right now that will have a big impact on the American market once it reaches scale?

Antonio: We are very active in the microgrids sector… The distribution grid is very old and is at capacity, so the United States has decided to invest a huge amount of money- we’re talking about trillions of dollars in the next 20 years- for renewing the grid.

But we need energy now, so one of the things we’re trying to do is make the existing grid more efficient and satisfy the demand for electricity with the resources we have now. Microgrids can be an answer.

This needs a lot of handshaking and a lot of cooperation. When everything goes well, you will probably use energy from both the utility and your microgrid and you are able to do things like moving energy from solar down to the grid. This means that the energy is not all mono-directional, but it’s bidirectional. This is a change, so you need the equipment, hardware, and software to do this. When things go wrong- when there is weather or an emergency- then you need to have equipment to switch from the utility to the renewable. We develop such equipment.

Schneider Electric’s Energy Control Center (courtesy: Schneider Electric)

One of them is called the Energy Control Center, and it’s basically one box that you put in your basement and you will be able to connect everything- the utility and the microgrid- and you have hardware and software that are able to automatically switch. They can sense the weather, the power, and the voltage level and can be predictive to understand the quality of the power that is flowing down, and basically make it very easy for different types of customers. It could be a data center, but it could be a Walmart that needs to create a bunch of EV charging and they’re not able to do it without a microgrid.

Paul: When we talk about microgrids we hear a lot about resiliency solutions- hospitals, college campuses, things like that. Do you see microgrids having a larger use case in the U.S. to meet electrification needs?

Antonio: It is resiliency for sure, but it is also an answer to the increased demand for energy. We need to also [implement microgrids] while we are waiting for all the grid innovations.

So it’s really a capacity issue, besides the resiliency topic. It’s also an efficiency topic- if you add all this intelligence and if you are able to monitor the power, then you are able to optimize the use of power. So you’re consuming less power than you would do if you had a normal, very dumb, and mono-directional system that doesn’t know anything about the environment.

Paul: Any other thoughts you’d like to share about Schneider and this visit to BNEF?

Antonio: We are looking for partnerships and people to whom we can promote the idea of Schneider as a sustainability partner. There will be a lot of discussion in the summit on how we can leverage all the federal regulations, tax credits, Inflation Reduction Act, Chips and Science Act- what do they mean concretely?

I feel that- on these topics- to be fast is something that is very important right now. Regulation takes time. To be put on the system, but also to be understood, to be digested, to be experimented, and then applied to really take the benefit out of it.

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