Meet our People - Mikael Molander

My name is Mikael Molander, I live in Vaasa, Finland, where I started my career as a trainee at the electrotechnical company Strömberg in 1987. The same year the company was acquired by ASEA which again merged with BBC the year after to form ABB. I started my full-time employment with ABB in 1989 and had thereby the opportunity to follow the journey of the company from the very beginning.

I joined the team working with what we today know as MicroSCADA. The MicroSCADA birth process started right at Strömberg in 1981: the goal was to develop an automation system for remote and local control of substations, disconnector stations, hydroelectric power plants, and remote control of power distribution networks and district heating. This control system was named Strömberg Control System, SCS, later renamed MicroSCADA during the ABB time.

When I joined ABB (now Hitachi Energy) in 1989, the team was small, there were about 8 of us, we were the Research and Development squad for MicroSCADA, the rest of the colleagues was trying to sell it. Yes: trying is the right verb.

Me and the team used to have a joke that MicroSCADA indeed had a mother and a father, where the father was the man with the vision and the mother was the one doing the hard job, the programming. I was one of the many uncles of the newborn system, and along with the “father”, I would travel a lot around the world to promote it within our new multinational company, and we were delighted by the reception we got: people were interested and were buying it! 

So, I kept traveling but with a different scope: to train users and showcase MicroSCADA new features. I was committed to it, like a family member would.

One could really state that my professional journey goes alongside that of MicroSCADA, and it’s something that gives me great pride: I am an engineer for automation technology, and I dedicated most of my professional life to what I believe in.

I am excited about my future at Hitachi Energy: at a time where we need to be more sustainable and fight climate change, I feel that I’m at the right place to contribute.

2023 marks MicroSCADA’s 40th birthday, with over 15,000 systems delivered, the software innovation from Hitachi Energy monitors the electricity supply to more than ten percent of the world’s population.