Schneider Electric-backed Aplines, a French software company, has launched a digital asset management system for electricity utilities.

Called Aptimize, it helps utilities better manage aging assets, environmental risks, costs and performance for critical infrastructure.

Aplines is funded by SE Ventures, Schneider Electric’s corporate venture arm, and was founded in January 2020 through an incubation project following discussions with utility operators regarding modern infrastructure needs. It helps utilities transition from time-based to risk-based asset management by evaluating the health and criticality of grid assets.

Aptimize is customisable software integrating physical and environmental risks that provides decision-making analytics for utilities managing critical infrastructure. It lets utilities proactively and effectively manage assets, calculate the asset health and criticality, quantify associated risks, and determine asset management strategies to provide the best balance of risk, cost and performance.

“Aplines was created to fill a crucial gap between operational and strategic asset management needed in the electric utilities market,” said Alexander Krivobokov, co-founder and CMO of Aplines. “Our intuitive solution helps utilities by providing a holistic view of their asset fleet along with environmental risks to help streamline decision-making with regards to their grid maintenance and reliability.”

Aptimize helps utilities adopt risk-based asset management with little efforts or data requirements thanks to the flexible, customisable models that can be deployed in a few months. Users immediately benefit from access to all available, up-to-date asset data from a single, ergonomic environment, as well as from means of analysing current or projected asset risks and scenario simulations for optimising their maintenance programmes.

Integration of environmental risks such as vegetation into the overall picture allows greater control over unplanned outages and further optimisation of maintenance spend. Consistently quantified asset risks and estimates of their reduction helps bring objectivity to the planning process and better meet evolving regulatory requirements.

Aplines was founded in 2020 through an incubator project by Schneider Electric in response to growing demands from system operators for innovative asset management. After listening to and discussing needs of modern infrastructure with numerous utilities worldwide, Aplines has created standards in delivering customisable asset management across the world. As a venture of Schneider Electric, Aplines says it benefits from the depth of technical expertise in electrical networks of its parent company and leverages its global footprint for reach to customers while maintaining agility of a lean start-up for quickly adapting to customer needs.