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MEETING MINUTES
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.
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