Caterpillar has launched a new Cat® Connect Service offering for Electric Power customers (photo: Caterpillar)

Caterpillar has launched a new Cat® Connect Service offering for Electric Power customers. Cat Connect combines equipment, technology and services to improve productivity, control costs and reduce risk, as well as positively impact safety and sustainability.

This digital service will provide customers and dealers the ability to remotely monitor, locate and manage their generator sets. Combined with the Cat dealers’ service capabilities, Cat Connect services will enable them to deliver unprecedented value to customers by helping them control costs, reduce risk and improve business and system performance.

“Integrating Cat Connect technology and services into Cat generator sets provides a win-win solution for our customers and Cat dealers,” says Dagoberto Goncalves, commercial manager for Cat Electric Power. “Data from technology-equipped units will provide more insight into equipment performance and operations, allowing Cat dealers to customise solutions for optimal efficiency, reducing costs for customers, improving reliability and minimising downtime.”

Cat Connect can monitor location, health and efficiency of the generator sets and send alerts back to the dealer or customer through user interfaces, allowing them to conduct preventative maintenance, performance optimisation and life cycle planning. Alerts can be customised, helping customers proactively manage their generator sets. Plans are in place to expand capabilities, such as providing visualisation of information on non-generator set assets, developing reports, remote start and stop and augmented reality.

With monitoring technology, even the most experienced technicians utilising traditional preventative maintenance practices can benefit from Cat Connect. One customer Caterpillar partnered with was experiencing multiple instances where the generator set was failing to start. The cause of the generator set not starting was a dead battery but the customer didn’t know why the battery was continually draining. With remote monitoring services Caterpillar was able to identify the problem and then recommend corrective action.

By the customer consistently running their standby generator set for only five minutes a day it was not enough time to replace the charge on the battery. The ability to use data collected from the generator set to predict asset behaviour helped the customer avoid unexpected downtime. Downtime can cost Electric Power customers on average USD 100,000 per hour depending on the company’s revenue, industry, duration of the outage, the number of people impacted, the time of day, etc. Cat Connect is the enabler for reducing this risk and building on Caterpillar’s reputation for delivering quality and excellent product support.

Tags: Caterpillar