Globalization's great infrastructural buildout: China's grid
Friday, June 4, 2010 at 12:03AM 
WSJ story by Shai Oster. Pic is of smart-grid demo center in Yangzhou.
GE, Siemens and others all competing fiercely to gain footholds in "one of the world's biggest markets for advanced power transmission and distribution systems."
I remember talking to a GE exec in 2005 in Williamsburg: he said GE would make the bulk of their future profits on electricity and water alone--in Asia.
At least $100B spent over next decade, comparable to what we're spending for upgrades to our currently, far too dumb grid. China likewise expected to spend $60-80B per year on gear, but Chinese companies will dominate there, so the smart-grid operation niche is where it's at for the West.
The BOP (bottom of the pyramid) logic is clear:
GE says the size of China's expected demand also offers opportunities for economies of scale in smart-grid products. Long term, that could make products exported to other countries cheaper to produce. GE said it would expand research facilities it already has in Shanghai.
Right now, China's losses due to bad transmission are roughly tripled that in the West (8% compared to OECD average of 2.5%).
Reader Comments (1)
As I've said so many times. The new energy technologies were developed and standards internationalized over last few decades under NIST and DARPA initiatives. The civil energy transformation was much slower in US than Asia, and somewhat slower than Europe. Our labor and investment communities in the established energy systems saw more threat than opportunity from transformation. Presidents and politicians from both parties kept a low profile.
The public knows China holds are debt. It does not know that the US modern energy equipment companies are getting more income from China and Asia than our energy networks at home. It is not really covered on TV, even by the investor news networks.