Irish connector maker TE Connectivity and Scottish IoT firm CNIguard are integrating their smart technology for monitoring overhead and underground grid infrastructure.

Together, the companies’ sensing and data visualisation technologies offer end-to-end grid monitoring to enhance grid reliability by providing real-time situational awareness, enabling predictive maintenance and rapid response when faults or other events occur.

Utilities are investing to keep pace with expanding consumer and commercial demand, while integrating renewable and distributed energy sources. The US grid spans 8.9 million kilometres of distribution lines. Aging grid infrastructure, extreme weather events and underground monitoring are among the main challenges they face.

TE’s smart grid technology (www.te.com/en/industries/energy-solutions/applications/smart-grid-monitoring-solutions.html) can retrofit onto existing equipment, leveraging CNIguard’s platform to offer added transparency and intelligence on real-time network conditions. This helps utilities identify safety and reliability concerns above or below ground, enabling them to pinpoint and repair faults, identify critical levels of gases and find cable hot spots.

Since its 2023 acquisition of Kries, a producer of smart grid technologies, TE has expanded its product lines and doubled production capacity, innovating in-step with customer needs. With this new partnership combining TE’s smart connectivity with CNIguard’s IoT platform, utility customers are now able to access an end-to-end digital smart grid offering that can help transform their legacy power infrastructure into a future-ready network.

Both TE Connectivity and CNIguard offer ruggedised, IP68 rated hardware to withstand harsh environmental conditions, and CNIguard’s digital architecture is secure by design and ISO 27001 certified for data security and integrity.

“We see strong global momentum in the smart grid sector with demand growing rapidly in the Americas, especially as more distribution infrastructure is added underground,” said Christian Pellon, chief technical officer of TE’s energy business unit. “Our utilities and industrial customers are looking for real-time data connectivity to enhance grid reliability, optimise power distribution and minimise downtime. With this partnership, we are adding a crucial piece to our offering – a powerful platform that simplifies grid management.”

Chris Quire, chief executive officer of CNIguard, added: “CNIguard’s platform provides advanced detection and analytics of hazards in utility underground confined spaces, one of the toughest domains in the electric grid, that affect safety and reliability, shifting our customers’ risk posture while maximising value. Partnering with TE enables us to offer an advance for electric power system monitoring and analytics.”

Utilities need smart technology to move from reactive to predictive maintenance, improving reliability, reducing unplanned events and lowering costs. The TE and CNIguard end-to-end offering should enable advanced monitoring and analytics for overhead distribution lines and underground assets in dense urban environments, all within a single, secure platform that can integrate with existing utility operations systems.

TE Connectivity (www.te.com) has more than 85,000 employees, including 9000 engineers, working alongside customers in approximately 130 countries,

CNIguard (www.cniguard.com) develops hardware and SaaS (software-as-a-service) that monitor critical underground infrastructure for combustible gases, and provide real-time infra-red and visual imaging to identify proactively thermal anomalies that contribute to reliability and safety issues, as well as overall environmental monitoring for flood conditions and other parameters.