Positive-impact products

Cleaner, more dependable energy

At Eaton, we make products that help increase the amount of green power on the grid and maximize the efficient flow and use of that power. At the same time, our solutions help reduce pollutants in the air we breathe and lessen greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. We manufacture components for utility-scale, renewable power generation, including proportional valves used in hydropower dams, wind turbines and concentrated solar power systems.

Grid of the future

For over 100 years the existing electrical grid has served businesses and consumers well. But as requirements for power evolve, we must respond to a fundamental shift in how consumers use power and how utilities provide it. To address the challenges of aging infrastructure, renewable energy integration and widespread vehicle electrification, our world is in dire need of electric grid modernization.

We help solve tough challenges using data and analytics garnered from intelligent power technologies and connected devices. We are laying the groundwork for the grid of the future. Our solutions are already strengthening the grid. Around the world, wildfires are exacerbated by climate change and growing in intensity and frequency—causing critical power outages. We work with utility companies to fortify the electric grid with smarter and more resilient power distributions. In one example, Eaton is helping utilities reduce risk by replacing traditional fuses that can cause a spark when they interrupt a fault with our industry-exclusive explosion-free fuses. We also provide underground power system solutions to help utilities limit the occurrence of power loss due to wildfires. And our intelligent solutions improve grid automation and control through high-fidelity data, analytics and the ability to remotely isolate areas with high wildfire risk.

Building the future of transportation

Leveraging our electrical expertise, we are helping vehicle and aerospace customers take their businesses to newer, greener horizons. We work with original equipment manufacturers around the globe to accelerate electrification and help build more efficient vehicles that travel faster, farther, higher and safer—all at a lower overall cost to consumers and the environment.

We are improving efficiency across multiple areas in global transportation:

• electric vehicles
• commercial vehicles with combustion engines
• electrical content on aircraft

With changes to the ways we move people and materials, new problems are demanding new solutions. In the electric vehicle market, share continues to grow but adoption challenges remain a concern. EV manufacturers must balance competing needs related to vehicle weight, power requirements, consumer expectations and cost. We are engineering innovative solutions to help drive adoption and evolve EV technology in our sweet spot: the convergence of electrical and mechanical power.

Our goal is to develop new technologies that improve efficiency and safety for electric, hybrid and fuel cell commercial vehicles — whether it’s a long-haul truck headed cross-country, a delivery vehicle making frequent stops or a bus moving commuters across a busy city. To meet the growing demand for longer battery life and range, we are designing components that make electric vehicles more efficient. And as voltage rates increase in EVs, our power protection components address risks and improve safety. We are also boosting intelligence in EVs by connecting systems and providing data that helps original equipment manufacturers improve vehicle power balance and helps drivers better understand the status of their vehicle. 

In the aerospace industry, we are leveraging our electrical know-how to develop more electrified aircraft that are safer, cleaner and more cost-efficient. From airplane motion-control technologies to EV transmissions, we’re developing innovations that meet the needs of vehicle electrification today and tomorrow.

Our handprint tool

Handprinting is a relatively new concept developed to measure the benefits of actions taken in an organization’s indirect control, or completely outside of it. As part of our collaboration with the MIT Sustainability and Health Initiative for Net Positive Enterprise (SHINE), we developed an initial handprint tool to calculate the reduction in carbon emissions from new products that our customers use compared to existing products for the same purpose. 

The most accurate way of quantifying the positive impact of our products on decarbonization is by conducting a comparative life cycle assessment for each of our innovative new products against an alternative, taking into account the specific application and usage scenario for each product sold. The handprint calculator simplifies assumptions and generic data for some life cycle phases, while increasing context-specific data in the use phase, providing an increased fidelity.

The calculator also acts as a first-screening tool for identifying improvement opportunities, discovering areas for deeper investigation where more accurate modeling is needed and helping create awareness around life cycle thinking for our product development engineers. The output from the tool will help us measure and steer our innovation portfolio toward being net positive on carbon. The calculator is currently undergoing detailed piloting on our innovation portfolio before formal integration into our new product introduction process.

While a traditional full life cycle assessment would take several hundreds of hours to complete for one product, our handprint tool provides an assessment in a few hours. This is very important to us as we engage with our customers on the environmental benefits of our products and inform other stakeholders of such benefits.