Financing/Energy as a Service

Schneider Electric Aced 2023 with $4.3B Profit, Record Backlog

Feb. 21, 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.

Rod Walton, Managing Editor

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.”

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.

Perspective: Only with Standardization can Microgrids Accelerate Energy Transition

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.

Learn more about Microgrid Knowledge Conference 2024 and Early Bird Registration right here.

About the Author

Rod Walton, Managing Editor | Managing Editor

For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023.

I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future.

Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.