May 2017 – The ABB remote service center will provide 24x7 access to information and support on drives installed at customer facilities for predictive maintenance and condition monitoring for all industries including power, cement, oil and gas, metals, food and beverage and many other applications. The new center is the third of its kind in the ABB global footprint and is now fully activated in India. It will support customer installations in India and around the world.

In India, 31 per cent of total electrical energy is consumed by industrial motors. Drives control the speed of these motors and hence are a key component of enabling energy efficiency and improving productivity. Benefits of such a remote center include faster identification of potential problems leading to increased uptime of customer assets and ultimately savings in operational costs.

"This is a reinforcement of our commitment to our nation and customers by establishing a world-class center using our expertise in digitally enabled technology," said Sanjeev Sharma, CEO and Managing Director, ABB India. "We are also pleased to offer the benefits of our digital portfolio to our customers in India and partner them in the next level of their journey to develop a range of future services that will allow customer assets to become digital ready." On the new digitally enabled drives, he added, "we are committed to innovating in country for country to make our global technology accessible by developing features that adapt to India's diversity for example in the device interface, this in turn allows us to tap into the geographically dispersed workforce."

The new production line manufactures digitally enabled low voltage drives (ACS560 and ACS580 series). The drive information in the cloud can be accessed securely with daily devices like smartphones. Drives are an environmentally friendly option to use energy efficiently while running motors based on their current load instead of running them on full speed continuously. These drives provide multiple energy optimisation features, are easily commissioned via smartphone, and include features for uninterrupted operations during power fluctuations.

"ACS560 has been developed in India for Indian customers, having user interface in Hindi and energy calculator in Indian Rupees. The new drive has application macros for industries like plastic, textile water and pharma, and unique icon based display for quick commissioning fulfilling the requests of Indian customers," said Morten Wierod, Managing Director of ABB's global drives business unit.

ABB recently launched ABB Ability globally with an industry leading portfolio of 180 digital solutions and services. ABB AbilityTM Condition Monitoring for Drives is one of the solutions. According to various reports, due to various energy efficiency measures, India now has 10 GW less load on the grid during peak hours in the last financial year. The key measures for driving efficiency have been performance, achievement and trade scheme (PAT) to encourage usage of efficiency measures on shop-floors and the now globally acknowledged Ujala scheme of LED lighting.