TOP ESTONIAN ENTERPRISES

Photo: Toomas Tuul
BO HENRIKSSON
Do you believe that Estonia is
continuously an attractive economic
environment in the future?
Surely at least as attractive as up to now and
this thanks to the flexible economic policy and
open business climate. The government sector
has not hindered the development of economy,
the indicators of freedom of economy stay
high. The favourable economic geographical
location and closeness with the key markets is
also important for us. The Estonian labour
market offers many choices today, by enabling
to respond operatively to the changes. The Estonian
employees have a good qualification and
knowhow, also the specific cost advantage in
the region of the Baltic Sea. The high taxation
of labour – one of the highest in Europe – is a
serious risk. The government should deal with
the latter, otherwise Estonia soon becomes the
country with high price level which is not able
to compete.
ABB is a mammoth group.
What is the role and importance
of the Estonian unit in its hierarchy?
ABB operates in approximately hundred countries,
i.e. practically in half of the world’s countries.
120 000 people have been employed in the
group. Estonia makes a small part of it. But we
have fulfilled the objective of ABB, according to
which it is essential to achieve the strong position
at all markets where we operate. Thanks to
our high percentage of export we are in the
stronger position in the group. I would bring the
plant of electrical machinery and industrial
electronics to the fore where the considerable
part of the wind generators and frequency
transformers for the world’s leading windmill
producers and developers of windparks is produced.
What is the starting point of
ABB’s more forceful direction
towards the renewable energy?
Our vision is to be the world’s leading energy
companies and help the clients to use the electricity
in a more efficient and sustainable way.
According to the estimates the electricity consumption
increases by 2030 from the current
level by about 100 percent. At the same time the
potential of energy saving is enormous. The
losses could reach up to 80 percent. ABB’s
technologies decrease the losses up to 30 percent.
The greenest energy is the saved energy.
As to renewable energy ABB is represented both
in hydro, wind, sun and wave energy. For example
in China, in the project of the Three Gorges
Dam, ABB built the network connection, supplied
transformers to the US wind energy company,
provided the launch-ready solutions for
the sun energy station in Spain and the specially
adjusted generators for the Portuguese wave
energy company. The potential of renewable energy
is immense and there could be no losers
wide-scale in the process of increasing its percentage.
What else is important for ABB?
Our main competitive advantage is innovativeness.
ABB group has in the recent years invested
to the research and development activities more
than a billion dollars a year. Approximately 6000
researchers and engineers work with the new
products and solutions in cooperation with 70
universities. For example, ABB invented in China
how to transmit the hydro energy to the distance
of 2000 kilometres. In India, where the reliability
of electricity network with 53 million consumers
was to be improved, ABB built so-called smart
network which regulates the load in real time.
ABB has created several revolutionary technologies
which shift the current understandings beyond
the limits of technologies. Lately the
switchgear which allows more than million volt
electricity was completed. This is the new record
of voltage level. The importance of our products
is hard to be explained to the regular consumer.
The definition frequency transformer says obviously
a little. But if we compare the car’s gear
shift system - if the gears cannot be changed
and the driver would push the gas constantly to
the full, it would end bad. The same applies to
the electric engines. The regular engines without
additional equipment work always on full capacity,
but up to 70 percent of the energy of the
engines can be saved by varying the speed of the
engine proceeding from the actual need of energy.
Today only 5 percent of the engines have
been equipped with the energy-saving frequency
transformers. •
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