Siemens and ABB lead push to rebuild system
By Thomas Clark in New York and Alexandra Borchardt in Munich
Financial Times; Aug 19, 2003
<<Elmat writes one day and two days later the proof comes :-) >>
Europe's big power generation companies are gearing up to bid for contracts to update the US power grid after last week's blackouts.
Siemens, the German technology group with a strong presence in the US, and ABB, the Swiss-Swedish engineering group, hope to profit from the power cuts.
"We expect this week to put together a package we can offer the utility companies to repair and upgrade their transmission systems," said Tom Garrity of Siemens' Power Transmission and Distribution Group.
ABB, the market leader in the US in energy technology, said: "We can provide the technology that is needed to improve the capacity of the power grid."
The cost of updating the grid in the next 10 years has been estimated at up to $56bn (£33bn, €50bn), according to the Edison Electric Institute which represents US electricity producers.
As calls grow for the US to increase investment in the system, Siemens estimates it could supply about half of the volume required to renew the grid.
Siemens has been pushing its way into the US market in the past few years. That push has been helped by three big acquisitions in the past five years: Westinghouse's fossil fuel power plant operations, Efficient Networks, the telecoms equipment maker, and Shared Medical Systems, a medical technology company.
Under-investment in the capacity of the US transmission grid has been blamed for the blackout, which came as little surprise to energy industry experts. Since the end of the last decade, there have been repeated warnings that investment in transmission lines has not been keeping pace with the growth in demand.
The North American Electric Reliability Council, which monitors the transmission grid, warned two years ago that the system required billions of dollars of investment to be brought up to scratch. |
