In the morning of September 7, 2011, Mr. Gregoire Poux-Guillaume, President of Alstom Grid Sector and Executive Vice President of Alstom, visited CEPRI headquarters in Beijing with other 10 executive management officers from Alstom Grid. This visit was to exchange views with CEPRI partners for cooperation on the existing HVDC projects and explore possibilities for potential cooperation on the technology of HVDC converter valves. Mr. Guo Jianbo, President of CEPRI, and Mr. Wang Like, Vice President, received the Alstom Grid delegation.

Mr. Guo Jianbo extended a warm welcome to Mr. Guillaume and his colleagues and remarked that, since a technology transfer agreement for HVDC converter valves was signed between Alstom Grid and CEPRI in 2007, four HVDC cooperative projects had been launched and achieved satisfactory results. Mr. Guo said he was very pleased to see that substantial and steady progress had been made in these projects. However, with the rapid growth of China’s electric power industry, suppliers like CEPRI and Alstom Grid, were facing increasing pressure from their customers who had rising expectations for the project progress, technical service response, after-sales services and engineering quality control. Both parties should work harder with joint efforts to live up to the expectations of their common clients so as to gain more from the existing projects. 

Mr. Guillaume expressed the gratitude to Mr. Guo and CEPRI peers for their warm reception. He said Alstom Grid highly appreciated the efforts CEPRI had made in pushing the cooperative projects. He also believed that, through this high-level visit, the long-term and strong strategic cooperation partnership with CEPRI, built up in the previous cooperation projects, would be enhanced. Besides, he extended his hope that the mutual cooperation could be deepened and expanded further on HVDC converter valves technology, and CEPRI and Alstom Grid could work together to win more shares in the domestic market and approach the market outside China. He reiterated his team’s commitment to working with CEPRI and ensuring the smooth progress of the existing cooperative projects. 

Finally, Mr. Guillaume also exchanged views with Mr. Guo on a series of topics including the characteristics of Chinese electricity market, the evolution of the future electricity market and the prospects for the application of HVDC and VSC-HVDC technology in China.