Irish energy business leader to establish UK office in northwest

FMC-Tech is working closely with the Energy Innovation Centre to develop its network monitoring system for wide-scale use across the UK’s utility network. The company will open an office near Chester, towards the end of the year, creating up to 10 new marketing, sales and engineering positions to service the UK energy market.

The FMC-Tech telemetry system has two applications – to rapidly locate faults and increase circuit capacity through the monitoring of conductor temperature, therefore utilising more wind generation, improving efficiency and reducing carbon levels.

With the support of the Energy Innovation Centre’s team and its partner organisations, FMC-Tech is currently working on reducing the cost and size of the system in order to commercialise the product across the UK and global energy market. The Energy Innovation Centre was instrumental in securing a recent £300,000 industry grant to assist FMC-Tech in this process.

FMC-Tech’s system has already been piloted by a number of leading businesses in the UK and overseas, including ESB Ireland, Scottish Power, Northern Ireland Electricity, Polish energy firm RZE and Asian firm TNB. The features of the system make it a fundamental component of the smart grid due to be implemented throughout Europe and the USA. It provides both real-time information and historic network data.

Mike McCormack, managing director of FMC-Tech and creator of the system, said: “We are making networks more intelligent and under this project with the Energy Innovation Centre we are dramatically reducing the cost of doing that, which is great. Investing in technology is vital for improving network efficiency and customer supply reliability and it is good to see distribution network operators not only recognising this, but playing an active role in the next generation of technologies emerging via the Energy Innovation Centre.

“Our initial target markets are Ireland, the UK, Scandinavia, Poland and South East Asia, where we already have a presence. As one of our key markets is the UK we are going to put in marketing, sales and engineering support to service that market,” explained Mr McCormack.

The Energy Innovation Centre is working to connect individual inventors and small businesses with the large UK energy companies and funding initiatives. Denise Massey, director of the centre, praised the strong performance of FMC-Tech, and said, “We look forward to welcoming their new UK team [...] This is a fantastic example of the advancements that can be achieved in a relatively short period of time by pooling expertise from all corners of the energy industry."

The Energy Innovation Centre aims to create 30 new companies and 100 new jobs by 2013. “As a relatively new organisation we want more inventors and companies with cutting-edge ideas and products to know that the Energy Innovation Centre is here, and in conjunction with our dedicated partner network, we are here to help them take their ideas and products to the next level,” was the upbeat message delivered by Ms Massey to the UK business community.