ABOUT US
The history of EnergTrade is deeply intertwined with the history of the Ghiggia family, since the past four generations have dealt with various aspects of electrical energy.
The first written document that makes reference to the company is an article that appeared in the local weekly newspaper, the Sentinella del Canavese. The article records the October 1921 and mentions the installation of the first electrical system at the parish church by Giuseppe Ghiggia and his son Luigi.
December 6, 1962, was certainly not a great day for Grandpa Luigi. The introduction of Law No. 1643 – on the nationalisation of the electrical energy sector and the establishment of ENEL, Italy’s National Electricity Board – put him in a very precarious position. He was an employee of the Cotonificio Vallesusa, a cotton mill located in the same municipality where Ghiggia is still based, and his job was to supply electrical energy to the local area via a 1080kW system.
From the end of the Second World War to the early 1980s, the Ghiggia brothers expanded their business, eventually employing a workforce of 60 to work on the installation of civil and industrial electrical systems and electrical lines on behalf of ENEL.
In France, in the early 1980s, the price of energy started to rise, and the premonition that similar increases lay ahead in Italy convinced Giancarlo Ghiggia to purchase three plants from ENEL that had been out of commission since the era of nationalisation. In 1982, the former Bongianino hydroelectric plant came onstream with an output of 257 kW and an annual generating capacity of around 2 million kW/h. The former Bongianino plant is still owned by the Ghiggia family and, over the years, has generated around 40 million kW/h.
During the same period, Sipea S.p.A. was set up as a Ghiggia subsidiary, initially specialising in the manufacture of small hydraulic turbines for rural electrification. Sipea then shifted its focus to become a design specialist and started to renovate dozens of hydroelectric plants on behalf of third parties in the Nord of the Italy.
Additionally, Sipea drafted the new retractable-energy plan for the Autonomous Region of Valle d’Aosta: a two-year project that, thanks in part to an in-depth study of the territory, resulted in the identification of around 103 potential sites for hydroelectric plants.
For four years, starting in 1989, Giancarlo Ghiggia was a member of the Interministerial Committee on Energy Prices (C.I.P.E), a body set up to implement Law 15/89, which contained the funding plan for renewable energy sources.
In the early 1990s, Ghiggia S.r.l. – with help from me, Giovanni Ghiggia – decided to stop installing electrical plants and to concentrate instead on the design and implementation of IT and electronic systems for the monitoring of the energy consumption of industrial sites and on the provision of consultancy services geared towards the optimisation of electrical energy
supply contracts.
In June 2003, this part of the business was sold to a new company, set up by Ghiggia employees to continue the business.
Today, Ghiggia S.r.l. focuses on the production of energy from renewable sources and offers consultancy services to the energy industry.
Since 2003 our company boasts top-level collaborations with the leading manufacturers of East Asia in the production of turbines for hydroelectric plants. In order to take advantage of continuous and meticulous assistance, we have decided to make use of expert technical-commercial staff present directly on the foreign market. We still confirm today that it was the appropriate corporate strategy, as it allowed us to concretize and strengthen our international presence in the energy sector, making us among the leading experts in the hydroelectric sector.
We have finally reached our days: it’s true, we have probably gone a little too far, but telling our origins always makes us proud and allows you to learn the value of our company, so that you can recognize and trust completely to expertsi in the field of electricity production, with decades of experience behind the international trade.
These years have allowed us to concretize our contacts, to establish human relationship and to able to reach world markets with the right credentials to give answer to the initiatives that we choose to carry out. We direct our customers towards the best solutions for their needs, being verticalized to trade in products for the production of electricity.
