July 2, 2020 – Hitachi ABB Power Grids Ltd. commenced operations yesterday, July 1—the culmination of an agreement signed in December 2018 between Hitachi Ltd. and ABB Ltd.

Hitachi has an 80.1% stake in this roughly 10 billion US joint venture entity, with ABB holding the balance.

Toshikazu Nishino, executive vice-president of Hitachi, is the chair of this new entity, and ABB’s Claudio Facchin the CEO. It is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland.

“Hitachi’s leading digital technologies merged with world-class power grid solutions will help us to play an active role in the global transformation and decarbonization of energy systems for a sustainable energy future,” said Nishino.

ABB says this venture will “facilitate expansion […] in areas such as mobility, smart cities, industry, energy storage and data centres”, provide financing to support “ambitious projects”, and provide access to the Japanese market.

Hitachi ABB Power Grids employs roughly 36,000 people in 90 countries.