ABB Breaks Ground on First U.S. High-Voltage Transmission Cable Factory

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--ABB Limited (NYSE:ABB) (Zurich, Switzerland) broke ground on its first high-voltage transmission cable manufacturing facility in the U.S. earlier this month. When the $90 million factory is operating in late 2012, it will be able to produce hundreds of miles of high-voltage and extra-high-voltage electric transmission cable per year. Most of the cable that will be manufactured at the site in Huntersville, North Carolina, will be direct current (DC), but some alternating current (AC) cable will be made as well. The cable, which will be smart-grid compliant, can be used in underground or undersea transmission projects. The factory will employ about 100 people when it is operating.

"There is a dire need to upgrade and expand the U.S. electric transmission system," said Bill Rose, ABB's manager of communications for North America, in an interview with Industrial Info. "Today, there is a lot of equipment that has been in the field for 40 to 45 years that has a 20-year lifespan. We don't have the infrastructure to bring wind power from West Texas to Dallas and Houston."

ABB has been meeting the U.S. demand for high-voltage and extra high-voltage transmission cable by shipping from its factory in Karlskrona, Sweden. The 160,000-square-foot factory in Huntersville, which is said to be one of the largest high-voltage cable manufacturing sites in the world, will serve mainly U.S. and Canadian customers, though some of its product could be shipped to other countries. In the U.S., output from the ABB factory will compete with transmission cable manufactured by General Electric (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut) and Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany).

"Regarding transmission cable, the U.S. is an underserved market," Rose said in the interview. "There is a huge need to build out the transmission system, particularly as more and more renewable generation is sited in remote locations."

Being able to construct transmission projects underground or underwater could make it easier to site transmission projects, Rose said. "Underground or undersea transmission lines should alleviate a lot of the public opposition we see today to overhead transmission lines. Many people find overhead transmission lines unsightly. But our lines will be out of sight. This will be a big advantage for companies that want to build a transmission project."

Rose said the cable made in the North Carolina factory is expected to be slightly more expensive to purchase and install, compared to traditional high-voltage or extra-high-voltage transmission cable. But clients would get more value from the ABB product, because the DC cable it will manufacture will have "much lower line losses" and other efficiency gains compared to conventional overhead high-voltage and extra high-voltage cable, Rose said.

The factory will manufacture a variety of high-voltage and extra-high-voltage cable, including those for 110 kilovolts (kV), 230 kV, 500 kV and 765 kV. ABB would not disclose how much of each type of cable it would produce at the new factory. Rose said that while ABB was in talks with a variety of potential customers, the factory has booked no pre-orders yet.

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