Recording Secretary Notes: SWRA Meeting - Tuesday January 10,2012
Submitted by: Jim Polacheck

The January 10, 2012 Siemens Westinghouse Retirees Association general membership meeting began with Pete DeRosa introducing our guest speaker, Randy Zwirn, CEO Siemens Energy. He stated that Siemens Energy had a pretty good 2011 with good profit, good sales, and a good backlog benefiting customers, employees, and share holders. There are about 80,000 employees in energy. Charlotte recently held a celebration for shipping the first GT assembled at that site. The governor of North Carolina participated. The factory expansion was started in October, 2010 and finished near the end of 2011. This added about 450,000 sq ft. This required a significant number of new employees including engineers and hourly. Consideration for a blades and vanes facility at Charlotte is still being discussed.
Duke Power’s solar energy project, Siemens obtaining majority ownership of the Russian “Power Machines” manufacturing operation, 50 GT’s on order with the Saudi’s, which is a major coup since they were traditionally a GE customer, are some of the business activities he mentioned. He felt Siemens had good federal (USA), state (NC), and local (Charlotte) support in their business operations.
There are no new coal plants on the horizon and about 60 GW’s of coal generation in the next 8 years will be replaced almost entirely with GT’s. 40% of coal plants will be 50 years or older by 2020. They have been surprised a little that steam turbine service has continued to grow for the past few years in spite of 7 years of predicted decline. This is a result of more investment in those plants that are expected to survive. He felt regulations were getting clearer.
Renewables have a limited future. Tax credits are expiring and there is little interest in Washington. No one is against but no one is strongly supporting them. There is a large backlog and the wind turbine plants are full. The units must be synchronized to the grid before 2013 in order to get federal credit. This business will decline significantly after that. Most of this lower interest is related to low gas prices. Siemens is still involved with hydro and sea related power through tides and waves research and ventures. There currently are about 2000 employees in renewables.
Siemens is recognized as the leader in GT’s. They are one of 4 major vendors and they have about 45% of the business. Service is still huge for profits. The next ten years are predicted to be strong for Siemens GT business. GE used to have many of the regulated customers with Siemens dealing with independent power producers but Siemens has made significant progress with the regulated utilities, including Duke Power, Southern Company, and FP&L. He stated that about 2/3 of the GT business was with combined cycle plants with almost all in the USA being combined cycles. Low gas prices have hurt LNG type facilities.
Siemens is no longer involved in reactors but is still involved in balance of plant. China has 30 nuclear plants planned and Russia has even more. Only very large utilities can consider nuclear. EON is 3 times larger than the largest US utility.
GE has had GT compressor problems and they have not been very accommodating with customers. This has helped Siemens make some inroads.
Siemens management has changed some of their management practices by no longer requiring frequent movement, allowing some managers, who are performing well, to maintain their existing positions on a mutually agreed basis.
Compliance guidelines and other business practices have reduced the lavish entertainment events that used to be held.
Siemens other business are also doing well including involvement with the Chunnel train, England – France, Diagnostics, Medical Diagnostics, and city industrial monitoring and diagnostics.
Non OEM business is getting tougher. Turbo Care is mostly working on older Westinghouse units.
Siemens is in talks with Florida government agencies for a possible additional building at the QUAD to support consolidation of some of the related business units.
We appreciated that Randy Zwirn gave a very interesting talk and engaged in a question and answer period.
Joe Pankowiecki presented his treasurer’s report and sought and obtained volunteers for the required annual audit committee who will meet before the April general meeting.
April 14 was identified as the date for the annual Picnic which again will be at Red Bug Lake Park.
We are scheduled to have an optometrist speak at our April general meeting which will be held on April 10 at QUAD II.
George Baker has scheduled his financial discussion meeting for Monday, January 30 at 10:00 AM at St. Stevens Church’s conference center. The topic this month is to discuss what worked and what did not for each of us during 2011.
George Baker also mentioned that the Siemens mentoring group for future retirees is probably going to be held in mid February ( now early March ).
Rick Antos gave a brief mention of a charity event that he is involved with which is helping organize a fund raising golf tournament to help the Challenger Division of the Oviedo Little League. The Challenger program is for children with special needs, both physical and mental. There was a motion to donate $100.00 from SWRA and it was approved.
A request for someone to volunteer to coordinate Habitat for Humanity and SWRA was made. Tom Finnimore is looking for someone to replace him in this worthy adventure. We are still looking for someone.
Dues of $10.00 are now due and can be sent to Joe Pankowiecki. See the treasurer’s report.
There was a discussion of what can our “Helping Hands” effort do for the members and their families. Almost any issue where one of our members needs help, they should contact Dave Berrong. This included medical, insurance issue, needs related to home or driving. etc.
Pete DeRosa gave an update on Dr Eubanks and activities going on with Florida Hospital robotics. The work with Dr Eubanks is on hold but a tour of their new neurosurgery robotics center may be possible.