Managing Board of VERBUND Austrian Power Grid AG reappointed
Dr. Heinz Kaupa and Mag. Thomas Karall are to continue as the management of VERBUND Austrian Power Grid AG (APG), Austria’s largest transporter of electricity, for another five years. The members of the Managing Board of the Grid subsidiary of VERBUND, Austria’s largest electricity company, were reappointed until 2011 on Friday, 17 February 2006, within the setting of the APG Supervisory Board meeting.
The APG, in European comparison, ranks in the top quarter of best transmission grid operators. Kaupa and Karall perceive of the expansion and further modernisation of the Austrian power grid as essential goals in order to be able to maintain the accustomed high quality of the domestic electricity supply and to meet the demands of a European electricity market on its way to complete deregulation. This will require investments totalling approximately 800 million Euro over the next few years.
Heinz Kaupa (58), actively involved with the VERBUND group since 1993, was appointed to the APG Managing Board in 2002, where he has been tending to the technological agendas ever since. Thomas Karall (45), a member of the VERBUND group since 1989, has been with the Managing Board and, as such, responsible for commercial issues, since 2001.
APG is Austria’s largest power grid operator and control-area manager. 250 employees are responsible for the regular guarantee of supply of electricity in Austria. 50 % of the Austrian electricity consumption are transported annually across the 3,400 kilometre VERBUND APG grid. Additional main tasks of APG involve the support of the provincial energy suppliers as well as the secure connection to the neighbouring countries.
Kaupa and Karall both hold leading positions in many national and international boards of the E-economy, among others the VEÖ (association of Austrian electricity companies), as well as, at European level, the Union for the Coordination of the Transmission of Electricity (UCTE), the Union of the European Transmission System Operators (ETSO) and the Union of the Electricity Industry EURELECTRIC.