The poor reliability of public chargers is an industry-wide scandal. Better access to real-time diagnostic data surely wouldn’t hurt, so we’re happy to hear about a new cloud-based digital monitoring platform called CogniEN, from ABB Electrification.

CogniEN isn’t specifically designed for the charging industry—it’s also aimed at the utility, data center and renewable energy sectors. The system, which is currently being piloted in Europe and the US, is designed to enable operators to better understand how their electrical installations are performing, at all times, from anywhere in the world, in order to pinpoint problems and quickly deploy maintenance teams.

CogniEN is a vendor-agnostic cloud solution for cognitive electrical networks. The system, which is hosted by Amazon Web Services, can remotely monitor the health of ABB electrical devices powering infrastructure such as EV chargers and switchgear, and can also retrieve data from any third-party electrical device and upload it to the cloud in real time.

The system can be customized depending on how much data the operator requires. The most basic subscription offers only access to the raw data. A more advanced setup can send an alarm if an asset is about to fail. The most comprehensive subscriptions use machine learning to help customers make informed decisions about how to optimize their assets across multiple sites through predictive and prescriptive analytics. For example, an infrastructure owner might be able to make a deal with the local utility company to supply more energy based on time-of-use pricing models. Similarly, they could use the system to make informed decisions on when to store and release energy to and from the grid.

“A primary benefit of this cloud solution is that is infinitely scalable,” says Luigi Traino, Global Product Line Leader, Digital Systems with ABB Electrification. “An EV or renewable energy infrastructure provider, for example, can start with one power station and, even if they add 1,000 or 10,000 more, the cloud environment will continue to support them.”

Source: ABB