Total Energies has selected Siemens’ MindSphere for IoT monitoring of its natural gas for vehicles (NGV) stations.

MindSphere is being used by the French firm to link more than 50 NGV stations across the Netherlands, Belgium and France as part of a complete IoT rollout.

Siemens is supporting Total Energies’ global digitalisation strategy with cloud technology to monitor stations, connect maintenance teams and leverage data to increase transparency, efficiency and reliability.

MindSphere will collect, monitor and analyse data across its network of NGV refuelling stations. Total Energies Gas Mobility is a competence centre for natural, renewable, and hydrogen gas for mobility and small-scale LNG for industry use.

As part of a global digitalisation strategy, Total Energies Gas Mobility has already connected more than 50 stations across the Netherlands, Belgium and France in the first year, where the company is planning to reduce maintenance costs through remote monitoring and service scheduling.

It selected MindSphere due to the wide variety of IoT capabilities available to orchestrate, collaborate and deliver digital services, its security and governance options, and its scalability. MindSphere is part of Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio of software and services.

“In line with Total Energies’ climate ambition to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 together with society, Total Energies Gas Mobility’s aim is to expand our broad energy company’s European network for natural and renewable gas for vehicles to 450 stations by 2025 and so retain its NGV market leadership position in the region,” said John Wilson, vice president of Total Energies Gas Mobility. “Siemens IoT monitoring will enable us to better serve our internal customers and station owners, the local affiliated offices of Total Energies in the different countries around the world, through enhanced station supervision, maintenance cost and TCO reduction.”

Baldewijn Westerbeek, digital and IT manager at Total Energies Gas Mobility, added: “Siemens is a key strategic partner for executing our digitalisation strategy. Our purpose is to help other Total Energies’ subsidiaries globally to expand their CNG, LNG and hydrogen offerings. These alternative fuel products require more complex refuelling installations, which we operate and monitor closely using Siemens’ MindSphere. Combined, the connected stations report billions of datapoint readings per year to a cloud database in a fully secured environment. With these data, we can discover valuable usage patterns and resolve issues before anyone on the ground even notices.”

Last year’s disruptions as a result of the pandemic have only accelerated the need for digitalisation. Total Energies has been able to leverage the open, out-of-the-box capabilities of MindSphere to scale the project and achieve positive results in the first year. MindSphere is versatile for companies to connect their data, turn these data into information and leverage this information to improve customer experience and the ability to develop new business models.

“Siemens is helping Total Energies Gas Mobility make tomorrow’s goals a reality today through our versatile, secure and scalable MindSphere,” said Raymond Kok, senior vice president at Siemens. “It is rewarding to see how quickly Total Energies Gas Mobility has been able to implement our IoT to unlock the potential to realise savings and generate return on their IoT investment, and we look forward to further collaboration as they expand their use of our Xcelerator portfolio.”