The Wizards of Bagnères-de-Bigorre. The people on these pages are the innovators who bring Auguste, Ergoswitch, and Smartcloser to life. Michel Delmas, Jeremy Cobos, Alexandre Maury, Nicolas Jacomet, Patrice Guiraud, Patrick Gea, Thierry Demange, Jean-Michel Nangniot, Alexandre Fontbonne, Frédérique Sanchez, Margareth Fernandez, Katia Guerin, Olivier Doumenc, Stéphanie Martins, Jérôme Trouiller, Luc Duc, Joelle Martins, Nathalie Peres, Alain Bousquet, Marc Lafaille, Nicolas Dupont, Carole Burnet, Eric Lavigne, Nathalie Dupont, Patrick Mena and Jean-Jacques Vergez. 19 Perhaps it’s something in the water? In 28 B.C. Romans discovered the warm waters coming from Mount Olivet, and quickly a town sprung up. Bagnères-de-Bigorre, now a commune of 8,000 residents, is home to an inordinate amount of inno-vation: products like Auguste, Ergoswitch, and Smartcloser. Whatever the reason, Bagnères-de-Bigorre is without question Ensto’s capital of network automation, a group of people with amazing spirit dedicated to improving the effi-ciency of electricity distribution. Auguste The most famous innovation is likely Auguste, an over-head load-break switch which uses SF6 gas. Auguste is the fail-proof solution to reconfigure a network in the event of a problem, isolating the faulty section and allowing the maximum number of customers to remain with electrical service. “We know SF6,” says Anthony Sberro, R&D Support Engineer for Calculations and Simulations. Sberro is talking about Sulfur hexa-fluoride, an isolated gas used to reduce isolation distance and extinguish an electric arc. And the Auguste that contains the gas will last 30 years in the harshest climates, which is why Comptoir Algérien du Matériel Electrique et Gazier, Algeria’s national electricity provider, ordered almost 3,000 of them produced in four batches to be completed in summer 2015. In addition to quality, flexibility was a factor in win-ning the order. “If you want it in red, no problem,” says Industrial Manager Alexandre Fontbonne. “And although the CAMEG order was huge, we’re willing to sell 10 or 20 units, too. We are not dependent on huge quantities.” Font-bonne notes that Ensto even has made a version of Auguste for Tatarstan. continued
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