The Power of Together – why it matters and what it means to me
Throughout this year, ABB Electrification has been championing and showcasing the often-underestimated importance of collaboration, with particular reference to sustainability and working towards a low carbon society.
?The Power of Together highlights collaborative projects between us, customers and partners from around the world, in which future-focused businesses and passionate teams of people have worked together to reduce carbon emissions in our own operations, and support customers with their own sustainability efforts.
?Like most business successes, these Power of Together stories are rooted in monitoring and data, output metrics and the application of state-of-the-art technologies, but for me, they go beyond what is measurable on an analytics dashboard.
?Collaboration, by definition, means to work with someone to produce something – a concept, and a term, that has long been used to describe music artists working on the same track or product designers combining ideas to wow people. More recently, the term has been used in the online community to describe teams working together on collaborative online workflow management platforms.
?For me though, doing something together doesn’t necessarily mean you are collaborating in the most powerful sense of the word. You could be working in parallel to another professional or company, or completing tasks separately in linear, to create one finished result – but is this really true collaboration?
?What defines collaboration in my eyes, is the power of together we are seeing throughout our customer interactions, and jointly coming up with innovative solutions to real world challenges. And this is why it matters. Because with true collaboration, real world challenges can be overcome, benefitting society and the planet. Importantly, this means developing not just the right solution, but understanding the wider context around the challenge to support it with the system knowledge, training and ongoing service that will enable our customers to continually optimize performance in a changing energy landscape. In other words, collaboration shouldn’t start at the point of ordering and stop once new technologies have been installed.
?It’s about suppliers being part of the value chain as trusted partners, energy reduction objectives becoming a conscious shift in mindset and state-of-the-art technologies becoming the tools we use to create a safer, smarter and more sustainable world. To me, this is collaboration.
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?When it comes to electrification and driving energy optimization, from generation through to consumption, working collaboratively means going beyond the data-driven objectives to explore and discuss not just what our customers would like to achieve, but also what people and the planet need, as well as employees, supply chain, and the markets being served. Energy efficiency can be an emotive topic, especially against the current backdrop of global uncertainty and soaring costs, and one that we, our customers, and their customers, feel passionately about. True collaboration taps into that passion, pushes boundaries and creates positive change.
?As a tangible example, together, ABB and GenCell, an Israeli provider of unique fuel cell solutions for off-grid and backup power, created a hydrogen-based uninterrupted power supply (UPS) for Hillel Yaffe Medical Centre – a hospital globally respected for its progressive approach to sustainability.
?During an in-depth energy cost analysis, the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, found it was operating with limited backup capacity, creating the potential for energy reliability and continuity issues. The hospital reached out to GenCell for support upgrading the backup power system to reduce dependence on polluting diesel generators by switching to a more sustainable hydrogen power solution.
?Together, GenCell and ABB developed a bespoke backup power solution for the Centre, which incorporated GenCell fuel cell modules and ABB’s advanced, high-efficiency UPS technology, to form one of the most reliable and efficient hydrogen systems of its kind.
?The ‘always on’ upgrade also minimizes equipment downtime, removes routine generator testing, maintenance, repair work and replacements associated with diesel-based backup options, decarbonises its operation and reduces operating costs.
?Interested to know more? There are more inspiring stories of great collaborations on the Power of Together website. I’m also always interested to hear from colleagues and customers across the industry about real world industrial challenges being faced, and how we might be able to collaborate to find innovation solutions and together, electrify the world in a safe, smart and sustainable way.