Dive Brief:

• Schneider Electric is expanding its remote monitoring service plan called EcoCare to include additional support for customers’ power systems in mission-critical facilities, the company said last week.
• The offering can increase uptime at facilities that require an uninterrupted power supply by achieving a 70% reduction in electrical failure risk, up to 50% reduction in on-site interventions and up to 20% operating expense savings, Schneider claims.
• Unplanned downtime is a significant cost sink for mission-critical UPS systems. Facility owners can lose $10,000 to as much as $10 million per hour of downtime, Schneider customers told the company in interviews. Fifty-seven percent of respondents in a survey by the Uptime Institute said that their most recent outage cost more than $100,000.

Dive Insight:

As inflation in energy and equipment markets raise downtime-related costs, a worsening talent deficit is making it more difficult for facility managers to maintain reliable, compliant operations, Schneider says. 

Korn Ferry, a talent management consultancy, estimates the talent deficit will reach 85.2 million workers globally by 2030. 

The talent shortage compounds the challenges facility managers face in equipment maintenance and lifecycle planning, Schneider says. 

Virtually all sites included in an audit report that Schneider conducted in 2025 face electrical safety risks, 71% lack the spare parts needed to ensure business continuity and 89% fail to follow maintenance practices recommended by equipment manufacturers, the company says. 

According to the Uptime Institute, power-related issues are the leading cause of impactful outages in data center environments. Problems with transfer switches and generators, higher-density computing workloads and external grid constraints are among the reasons for downtime, the Uptime Institute says. 

The expanded EcoCare offering aims to “[use] predictive insights to reduce interventions and cost, improve risk management, and ultimately protect uptime in an increasingly complex environment,” Bryan Stevens, Schneider’s senior vice president for U.S. services, said in a statement.

It uses what Schneider calls “AI-powered condition-based maintenance” that monitors UPS systems at the component level and feeds the data into the company’s secure EcoStruxure IT architecture. It then analyzes data points like wear, aging, temperature and maintenance history to optimize equipment maintenance schedules for the “real condition” of the assets rather than preset schedules. This helps avoid unnecessary maintenance while ensuring that critical interventions aren’t missed, Schneider says. 

The offering has a human component as well, with Schneider technicians delivering remote or onsite “break-fix” corrective action. This protection is backed by a service level agreement and technical support — also both remote and onsite — to help facilities teams with troubleshooting.

Schneider says its three-phase UPS remote monitoring capabilities have already benefited customers across industries, resulting in 66% fewer “break-fix” interventions. One customer, Compass Datacenters, saw operating costs fall by 20% over two years after switching its fleet of 78 modular data centers from calendar-based to condition-based maintenance, according to Schneider.