In 2014, the Departments of Transportation of California, Illinois and Maryland ordered an initial lot of 34 Charger locomotives from Siemens, with an option for a total of 222 locomotives. The contract back then was valued at approximately €165 million ($225 million). Due to orders from other states as well as by the private rail operator All Aboard Florida, the total number of Chargers ordered amounts to 81 in 2017. The locomotives are deployed in corridors of the US states for regional and mainline trains travelling for Caltrains (California) as Amtrak Pacific Surfliner, in Washington as Amtrak Cascades and in Maryland with the regional network MARC. Under the "Brightline" brand, ten Chargers are being deployed in high-speed rail services between Miami and West Palm Beach; Orlando is due to follow at a later date.
Siemens has won a significant order from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) in India to overhaul 18 units of RT48S & RT56 power turbines of Siemens fleet of aeroderivative gas turbines driven by Industrial AVON & Industrial RB211 gas generators along with installation and commissioning services. The turbines are operating at Mumbai High Asset and Neelam & Heera Asset of ONGC in Mumbai.
The foundation stone of the future converter station was laid on the morning of February 23rd in Folkestone by Jesse Norman, Minister for Industry and Energy signalling the start of the construction work for high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) project ElecLink. Siemens has been awarded an order to supply a link between the French and British power grids by customer ElecLink Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Groupe Eurotunnel SE. The ElecLink high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) link will enhance power supply reliability in both countries and promote the integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid. ElecLink, when complete, will supply enough electricity to power more than 1.65 million typical households per year. The HVDC link between France and Great Britain has been designated as one of the European Commission's projects of common interest to help create an integrated European Union energy market.
The wind service operation vessel (SOV) for the Dutch Gemini project has been christened "Windea la cour" today in Hamburg. The vessel is to set sail to start operations at the Gemini offshore wind power plant this summer. This is the third Siemens-chartered SOV which is supporting Siemens and its offshore service operations. Since June 2015, 'Esvagt Faraday' is supporting service operations at the Butendiek offshore wind power plant in North Sea and 'Esvagt Froude' is utilized for service at the EnBW Baltic II wind farm in the Baltic Sea. A fourth SOV will be utilized for service operations by Siemens at the Sandbank and Dan Tysk wind projects. SOVs are part of innovative approaches in the sector of service for offshore wind power of Siemens anc can make a vital contribution in the future to further reducing the costs for electricity generated by offshore wind farms.
The "Fortuna" combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant at the Lausward location in the port of Düsseldorf was successfully handed over to the customer and operator, the Stadtwerke Düsseldorf public utility company, on January 22, 2016. The power plant has broken three world records: in the acceptance test a maximum electrical net output of 603.8 megawatts (MW) was achieved and the net energy conversion efficiency was around 61.5 percent. In addition, "Fortuna" can also deliver up to around 300 MW for the district heating system of the city of Düsseldorf – a further international peak value for a power plant equipped with only one gas and steam turbine. This increases the overall efficiency of natural gas as a fuel to 85 percent. The heart of the "Fortuna" CCGT power plant is the extremely powerful SGT5-8000H gas turbine from Siemens. Highly efficient and flexible CCGT power plants ideally complement renewable energy sources such as the wind and the sun, which are subject to fluctuations in their power outputs.
China's megacities alone are home to more than 260 million people. These gigantic conurbations have recently undergone rapid growth of almost two percent per year, and are suffering increasing traffic problems caused by the soaring rate of car use. Hence the correspondingly strong demand for solutions for the further development of urban rail transport. The Nanjing customer has now commissioned Siemens to equip metro Ninghe Line with the CBTC automatic train protection system Trainguard MT. The contract includes the CBTC trackside equipment for the 36 kilometer line as well as the ATC equipment of the 24 trains. In the long term more than ten metro lines will be built in Nanjing – of which five alone will or already been feature Siemens signaling technology.Siemens can look back on a long partnership in China with the Nanjing Metro Corporation. Siemens equipped metro line 1, which started running in 2005 and is now 47 kilometers long, as well as metro line 2 in 2010. Line 2 serves 26 stations and forms the east-west tangent of the city of Nanjing in eastern China. Following the extension of the city's metro with line 2, the rail network now covers 85 kilometers. Line 10, Nangjing's first cross-Yangtze river metro line was put into operation on July 1, 2014. Its first phase runs 23.6 kilometers with 14 stations. The latest Nanjing metro line fitted with signaling technology from Siemens is Nanjing Metro Line 3, which went on public operation on April 1, 2015.
The Dresser-Rand business, part of Siemens Power and Gas, has commissioned its first micro-scale natural gas liquefaction system at the Ten Man liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Pennsylvania, U.S. The modular, portable LNGo technology enables distributed production of LNG and can be installed in a short period of time to meet local demand for LNG. This cost-effective solution, developed by the Dresser-Rand business, allows the operator, Frontier Natural Resources, to monetize stranded gas assets at Tenaska Resources LLC's Mainesburg field, located in the Marcellus shale play. Frontier Natural Resources is an independent natural gas producer focused on developing conventional and unconventional resources.
The scope of supply included a standardized LNGo solution consisting of four different modules, each handling one step of the liquefaction process. The whole LNGo system can be transported on eight trucks. It is deployed directly at the gas field and has a footprint of approximately 508 square meters, roughly the size of a basketball court. The Ten Man facility commenced production just four months from contract signing, and has produced approximately half a million liters of LNG in the first 20 days.
"This project demonstrates our unique capabilities to deliver innovative solutions for oil and gas applications that help our clients maximize the value of their assets," said Michael Walhof, sales director Distributed LNG Solutions for the Dresser-Rand business. "We are proud to provide Frontier Natural Resources with a reliable, robust solution to liquefy natural gas and cost-effectively move it to market."
The LNGo technology makes it possible to monetize stranded gas deposits due to its relatively low capital and operating costs. The micro-scale LNGo solution can be deployed in rough terrain or remote regions, eliminating the need to establish an expensive gas pipeline infrastructure or arrange for long-distance trucking of LNG from centralized plants to point of use. It can function as a decentralized solution where the requisite pipeline infrastructure is lacking, or as an onsite transformation solution to reduce or eliminate flaring of petroleum gas at, for example, oil rigs or producing gas fields.
The discovery of the dynamo-electric principle has brought about greater changes to the way our society lives than practically any other scientific breakthrough. By inventing the dynamo machine, not only did Werner von Siemens help bring about the advent of electrical machinery, he was also instrumental in accelerating and facilitating industrial processes. Seen from the perspective of society, this completely changed accepted concepts of time and mobility.
The Velaro D is the fourth generation of high-speed trains that Siemens has developed on the basis of the Velaro platform. Deutsche Bahn AG (DB) classifies the train as the new Series 407 ICE 3 (predecessors: Series 403 and Series 406 ICE 3). In December 2013, Germany's Federal Railway Authority (EBA) approved the trains' operation – also in multiple-unit or so-called double-traction mode – on the Deutsche Bahn rail network. Passenger operation started on December 21, 2013.
Authorization for operation in single-traction mode in France was granted in April 2015. Since June 2015 the trains have been travelling to Paris in regular passenger operation. In addition to Germany and France, the Velaro D is also intended for cross-border operation in Belgium.
Since 2007, trains based on the Velaro platform have operated with high reliability for more than one billion kilometers in China, Russia, Spain and Turkey – equal to roughly 25,000 times around the globe.
In May 2014 Siemens, together with the public utilities of Mainz, Linde and the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, has laid the foundation stone for a new type of energy storage system. Now, time has come: By pressing a symbolic button, the Chairman of the Board of Linde Group, Dr. Wolfgang Büchele, Siemens board member Professor Siegfried Russwurm, two board members of Stadtwerke Mainz AG, Detlev Höhne and Dr. Tobias Brosze, and Professor Dr. Detlev Reymann, President of RheinMain University, officially launched a hydrogen production plant at the Energiepark Mainz on July 2, 2015. With the support of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology as part of the Energy Storage Funding Initiative the 17-million-project could be realized. The system, equipped with an electrolyzer from Siemens, will convert surplus electricity from wind farms to hydrogen from now on. In this way, it will be possible to store electricity from renewable sources over longer periods of time. With a peak rating of up to 6 megawatts the plant is the largest of its kind in the world.
The principle of electrolysis has been tried and tested for decades. What is special about the Mainz system is that it involves highly dynamic PEM high-pressure electrolysis which is particularly suitable for high current density and can react within milliseconds to sharp increases in power generation from wind and solar sources. In this electrolyzer a proton exchange membrane (PEM) separates the two electrodes at which oxygen and hydrogen are formed. On the front and back of the membrane are precious-metal electrodes that are connected to the positive and negative poles of the voltage source. This is where the water is split. The system in Mainz will thus have a capacity relevant for bottlenecks in the grid and small wind farms.