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Beijing, Nov. 23, 2011 – ABB demonstrated its complete and leading smart grid solution at its “ABB Power World” event today, showing its support to future grid in the fields of a flexible power grid, optimized power generation, smart home, intelligent building, and intelligent production.

Under the theme of “Innovation & Collaboration,” the two-day ABB Power World event consists of a large exhibition integrating power and automation technologies, 60 technology seminars and an executive key note forum, covering leading technology developments in power generation, power transmission and distribution, as well as high grow areas of smart grid, new energy, etc.

“Smart grid stands for a big opportunity to create a lower-carbon power supply system” said Claudio Facchin, president of ABB North Asia and China. “The need to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions by reducing our consumption of fossil fuels means there will be more distributed generation, more power generated from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, and a two-way grid that can receive as well as deliver reliable power.”

Facchin said, smart grid is an evolution, although more technologies for the smart grid have to be developed, a lot of them have been the subject of research and development in ABB for many years. ABB has tried-and-tested products and systems already in use.

Power transmission technologies such as HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) invented by ABB in the 1950’s, is on constant development, and is an important technology for smart grid in connecting renewable energies to grid. This is a good case of ABB’s disruptive innovation which has brought ABB the leading market position in the world. ABB also used this technology in many “west to east power transmission” projects in China, including the deployment of 3 major Ultrahigh Voltage DC power line projects: Xiangjiaba-Shanghai, Jinping-Sunan, and Nuozhadu-Guangdong power links. The first line, in operation in July 2010, is the world’s first, the longest (2000 km) and the highest capacity (6400MW) UHV DC (800kV) link. The other two lines are still in construction. When completed, the 3 lines will bring clean energy to 90 million people in China, and the energy saved by reduced power losses using this advanced technology would be enough to meet the energy needs of 3 million people.

ABB has been focusing on energy efficiency, grid reliability and productivity in its R&D for many years, with a steady increase of R&D investment even during the financial crisis time.

“Innovation is the gene of ABB, which is reflected also in its breakthrough technologies FACTs (Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System) and HVDC light, which are all great technologies that have brought tremendous impact to the market, and which still need to play an important role in smart grid” said Facchin.

FACTS, an AC power transmission technology pioneered also by ABB in last century, was ranked recently among the top 11 technologies of the decade along with smart-phones and digital photography by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), one of the world’s largest professional associations for the advancement of technology. FACTs offers tremendous energy savings. It enables utilities to reconfigure power flows in real time, maximize throughput, and minimize losses. It also smoothly integrates wind, solar, and other intermittent sources of renewable energy into the grid. ABB is also here a global leader.

To support the development of e-mobility, ABB has developed recently in China AC charging poles which enjoys a high level of safety, with modular design making it easy for installation and using，which is also an important part of smart home.

ABB is also working with top market players such as State Grid, Sinopec, China Petro on e-mobility infrastructure projects. In Shanghai International EV Demo City in Anting, ABB installed recently 4 DC fast-charging poles, in cooperation with Sinopec, which can accommodate 100 cars per day, with 15 to 25 minutes needed only for each fill (depending on the size of the battery).

ABB also participated in a few national smart grid pilot projects. Early this year, ABB provided its battery energy storage solution to the wind & solar energy storage and transmission pilot project of SGCC in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province. It is the first new energy project integrating wind, photovoltaic power generation, energy storage, and transmission. Upon completion in 2013, the clean power generated will be integrated into the North China Grid. Meanwhile, ABB also participated in the Beijing 110kV Tugou smart substation project as the Main Electrical Vendor, providing project consultation, system design, and quality electric products.

With more than $1 billion R&D investment at group level every year, ABB plans to make its R&D investment growth outpace its revenue growth according to its mid-term (2011 to 2015) strategy announced earlier this month. In China, ABB has currently more than 2000 R&D and design people in China.

“Our R&D in China has experienced three stages from technology transfer to localization, to creation in China now,” said Liu Qianjin, head of China Corporate Research Center. “Many technologies and applications developed in China have been used also in overseas market in the co-operation with EPCs.”

“This is in line with our strategy ‘in China, for China and the world’”, Facchin added.

ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve their performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 130,000 people. ABB has a full range of business activities in China, including R&D, manufacturing, sales and services, with 17,000 employees, 31 local companies, and an extensive sales and service network across 80 cities.