32 GENSETS


Power for a new generation


“The Middle East, and especially the Gulf region, is like home to us,” says Ann Brown, Managing Director of FG Wilson. How that came about is a 50-year story. Founded in 1966 in Northern Ireland by Fred Wilson, FG Wilson started as one of many small family- owned engineering companies, repairing and servicing products, including generators and making products designed by Fred himself, reports the company.


T


he big change came for Fg Wilson in the early 1970s when much of the world


was gripped by an energy crisis. With electricity rationed, Fred Wilson saw an opportunity. He began to charter planes


and flew generator sets into the UK from the US, renting a warehouse near London’s Heathrow airport and auctioning them to businesses. It wasn’t long before Fred


figured out that he could assemble generator sets himself and he set his sights on big things. Demand for electric power in the Middle East was booming and through contacts there, Fred began marketing mini power stations. FG Wilson’s first small power station (six 2,000 kVA units) was


“The design,


installation and in some cases, the operation of these small power


stations allowed us to develop a very experienced design and engineering team.”


commissioned in 1974 in Abu Dhabi followed by many others across the region, particularly in Saudi Arabia, providing prime power for remote settlements which were then rapidly developing at the edge of the desert. For FG Wilson, that was a


defining time: “The design, installation and in some cases, the operation of these small power stations allowed us to develop a very experienced design and engineering team,


Worldwide Independent Power January - February 2018 www.gmp.uk.com


and that knowledge and hard- won experience were absorbed into the team we have today.” FG Wilson has been around long enough to see a transformation in how customers use power today. “There’s always been a need for reliable power for critical applications,” says Ann, “but now there’s a greater edge to it and much of this is driven by increasing reliance on digital


technology. “Fifteen or twenty years ago, businesses which lost electric power probably had a back-up plan to work with pen and paper. But today, when power is lost, everything else stops with it. Particularly for businesses which operate data centres either for themselves or for others, the costs of going offline due to power outages are colossal.”


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