ABB's Breakthrough Could Be Critical to Smart-grid

When I was a marketing consultant to the Fortune-sized IT and industrial giants, I was proud to count Switzerland-based ABB on my client list. Having said that, the company was founded in the 19th Century, and had a reputation as a stodgy, old-line manufacturing concern without too much focus on innovation.

Yet according to this article, ABB may have just completed a development of fantastic importance to smart-grid – especially the all important aspect that deals with high voltage DC, so critical for transmitting large amounts of electrical power over long distances.  Of course, this is crucial to the integration of renewables, whose solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass resources tend to be localized in certain geographical areas – mainly those that do not have huge population centers demanding energy.

The breakthrough happens to be a circuit-breaker that can shut off the power generated by a full power plant in 5 milliseconds, 30 times faster than the blink of an eye.  Congratulations, guys.