Demonstrates how open, software-defined architectures cut energy costs and modernise complex industrial systems without replacing legacy infrastructure.
Schneider Electric has deepened its collaboration with Microsoft to help industrial companies modernise operations and deploy AI-driven control without replacing existing infrastructure.
The two companies have tested this in green hydrogen production with h2e POWER, an India-originated green technology company.
h2e POWER develops solid oxide electrolyzers (SOECs), which offer high efficiency but operate under demanding conditions that historically limit advanced control.
Working with Schneider Electric, the company deploys an AI-driven control system on its 20 kW SOEC platform.
It has since crossed 6,000 hours of autonomous operation.
The system has reduced stack wear, enabled predictive maintenance, and cut the levelised cost of hydrogen by up to 10 percent.
For a typical 10 MW plant, that is roughly €500,000 annually.
It has also demonstrated potential to cut electricity consumption by up to 10 percent. In green hydrogen production, electricity accounts for over 70 percent of total production costs.
Schneider Electric’s executive vice president, Gwenaelle Huet, said, “Every CIO and plant leader asks the same question: can software‑defined automation truly perform under real‑world industrial conditions? At h2e POWER, the answer is clear.”
“Industrial leaders don’t need another vision; they need a migration path. Our collaboration with Microsoft and the Industrial Copilot delivers exactly that, proving even the most complex energy systems can run as intelligent, autonomous assets,” Huet added.
The partnership combines Schneider Electric’s open, software-defined automation stack with Microsoft Azure cloud, AI, and edge capabilities.
The aim is to give industrial companies a migration path that works without disrupting production or scrapping installed assets.
AI-driven engineering and open automation
Industrial automation still runs largely on proprietary, hardware-locked control systems. They are expensive to upgrade, slow to adapt, and difficult to extend with AI.
The deployment runs on EcoStruxure Automation Expert, Schneider Electric’s open platform that separates control software from hardware.
Automation applications can run and be reused across different equipment, vendors, and infrastructure generations.
Microsoft Azure connects plant-level systems with enterprise dashboards and AI services.
On top sits the Industrial Copilot, which automates engineering tasks including writing control logic, configuring systems, and navigating documentation.
Engineering teams report up to 50 percent reduction in time spent on these tasks. Changes that previously took weeks now complete in hours.
What it delivered at h2e POWER
h2e POWER’s solid oxide electrolyzers offer high efficiency but operate under demanding conditions that have historically limited advanced control.
The AI-driven system continuously monitors thermal balance, hydrogen flow, energy inputs, safety parameters, and equipment health in real time.
It has run for over 6,000 hours under part-load and full-load conditions.
Stack wear has reduced through continuous optimisation. The system flags performance deviations before they escalate into faults.
h2e POWER’s founder and managing director, Siddharth Mayur said, SOECs have always offered unmatched efficiency, but true commercial scale depends on sustainable operations, optimised energy consumption, durability, predictive maintenance and remote, autonomous control.
With Schneider Electric’s open, software‑defined automation and Microsoft’s AI capabilities powered by Azure, the company’s systems are becoming smarter, responsive, safer, and dramatically more scalable, Mayur said.
He added that this open architecture also means the company can redeploy intelligence across its entire installed base across multiple locations, without the lock‑in that has constrained industrial innovation for decades.
