ABB has opened a new high-voltage (HV) gas insulated switchgear (GIS) facility in Jakarta, Indonesia to manufacture 170kV GIS units.
Image: Inside ABB's new HV gas insulated switchgear manufacturing facility in Indonesia. Photo: courtesy of ABB.
The new Indonesian gas insulated switchgear facility is expected to address growing demand for reliable power supply, said the Swiss company.
It is the fourth manufacturing facility established by ABB in the Southeast Asian country over the last three years under a $30m investment program.
The other units set up by ABB are into manufacturing of high-voltage air insulated switchgear, low-voltage, and medium-voltage switchgears.
The new 1,000m2 HV gas insulated switchgear facility has been built in an existing campus that houses a medium-voltage manufacturing unit, and a production facility for high-voltage air-insulated switchgear and equipment that include live tank circuit breakers and disconnectors.
ABB power grids division president Claudio Facchin said: “This latest expansion underlines ABB’s ongoing commitment to Indonesia. The facility will support the country’s efforts to strengthen its power transmission infrastructure, enhance grid reliability and help meet the growing demand for electricity.
“The move is in line with our global footprint approach and our philosophy of locating production units close to our customers.”
According to ABB, a gas insulated switchgear is a compact metal encapsulated switchgear, that utilizes pressurized insulating gas and allows safe operations in confined spaces while reducing equipment footprint to a great extent.
A gas insulated switchgear also controls and shields the network from power outages and enables reliable electricity supply.
ABB says that a gas insulated switchgear can occupy as little as 10% of the space occupied by an air-insulated switchgear (AIS), thereby making it a crucial enabler for urbanization where land is not easily available and expensive.
Last month, the Swiss company installed a HVDC gas insulated switchgear in a European Union (EU) test project, which has been set up to address the benefits and challenges of developing a large-scale meshed wind-energy transmission grid in the North Sea.
Prior to that, in May 2018, ABB won an order to deliver compact gas insulated switchgear to German utility Stromnetz Berlin for the new Wuhletal substation, to bolster the distribution network and supply reliable power to the Berlin-Kaulsdorf neighborhood.