ABB sees greening of PHL power grid driving sales of equipment used by utilities

ENGINEERING company ABB Ltd. said Philippine investments in decarbonizing its power grid are driving sales of equipment used by utilities, including battery energy storage systems (BESS) that optimize the operations of some renewable sources of energy.

“Our focus is more on the utilities; we are an active vendor of all those medium-voltage requirements,” Allan B. Bonagua, product marketing director at ABB said at a briefing Friday.

ABB, a Swedish-Swiss conglomerate, specializes in industrial, automation, and electrical equipment in the Philippines

Roman Gvritishvili, product marketing manager for medium-voltage instrument transformers and sensors, said the company hopes to help the Philippines decrease its carbon emissions by introducing solutions for measuring and monitoring current and voltage in medium-voltage power systems.   

Mr. Bonagua said ABB is planning a regional launch of its medium-voltage sensors in the Philippines next year.

“When it comes to power generation, we’ve been working with several companies. We are a big supplier of battery energy storage systems,” Mr. Bonagua said.

In 2021, ABB supplied SMC Global Power Holdings Corp. with an 80-megawatt (MW) energy storage project.

Barbette Atienza-Soliven, communications manager for ABB Philippines, said the company’s goals include helping make electricity distribution more sustainable. — Ashley Erika O. Jose