On September 26, 2017 Siemens and Alstom have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to combine Siemens' mobility business, including its rail traction drives business, with Alstom. The transaction brings together two innovative players of the railway market with unique customer value and operational potential. The two businesses are largely complementary in terms of activities and geographies. Siemens will receive newly issued shares in the combined company representing 50 percent of Alstom's share capital on a fully diluted basis.On February 6, 2019 the European Commission has announced its decision to prohibit the proposed combination of the Siemens and Alstom mobility businesses. As a result of this prohibition, the merger will not proceed. Siemens and Alstom regret that the remedies they offered, including recent improvements, have been considered insufficient by the EU Commission.
The Siemens Zug campus features a new office building with 1,000 work spaces and a newly constructed production building. The Siemens Zug campus is one of the first new projects to use Building Information Modeling (BIM) for design and construction. The campus complex is equipped with building automation, security and fire safety technology from Siemens BT and particular emphasis was placed on sustainability and energy efficiency of the buildings.
The Fund for the Future that Siemens and the company’s Central Works Council agreed to establish in May 2018 is now available to finance qualification projects in Germany. Until the end of fiscal 2022, Siemens will provide up to €100 million for such projects, in addition to the company’s regular annual budget of around €500 million for training and continuing education, thereof €290 million in Germany. The Fund for the Future is a key element with which Siemens and the Central Works Council are shaping the structural transformation of today’s economy – a transformation that is changing the working world to an unimaginable degree. Siemens, the company's Central Works Council and the IG Metall labor union agreed on a Future Pact in May 2018. This pact, which includes the Fund for the Future, established the main framework for addressing the structural transformation now taking place in Germany.
Additive manufacturing has the potential to become a new key technology. For example it opens up new attractive prospects in the manufacture of gas turbines. This is why Siemens has been investing in this innovative technology right from its inception, and is now driving the industrialization and commercialization of these processes. Additive Manufacturing is a process that builds parts layer-by-layer from sliced CAD models to form solid objects. This enables highly precise solutions to be formed from powdered high-performance materials. Siemens is a pioneer in Additive Manufacturing and already uses the technology for rapid prototyping. Furthermore the company is now developing solutions ready for series-production for manufacturing gas turbine burner nozzles and repairing burner heads. Just recently Siemens achieved yet another breakthrough: the first gas turbine blades ever to be produced using Additive Manufacturing have successfully finished performance testing under full-load conditions.
The need for electromobility is growing, as is the need for an efficient charging infrastructure. As a pioneer in electromobility, Siemens has global experience, maintains a strong portfolio along the entire value chain, and plays an active role in advancing the development and standardization of charging solutions worldwide.Siemens is part of the "FastCharge" research project together with BMW Group as consortium leader, Allego GmbH, Phoenix Contact E-Mobility GmbH as well as Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG. This project is investigating the technological requirements that vehicles and infrastructure must meet in order to be able to use extremely high charging capacities. The industrial companies involved in the research project presented the latest advancements in the field of fast and convenient energy supply for electrically powered vehicles on December 12, 2018. The prototype of a charging station with a capacity of up to 450 kW was inaugurated in Jettingen-Scheppach, Bavaria. At this ultra-fast charging station, electrically powered research vehicles created as part of the project are able to demonstrate charging times of less than three minutes for the first 100 kilometres of range or 15 minutes for a full charge (10-80 % State of Charge (SOC)).The energy supply system of Siemens used in the project contains both high-power electronics for the charging connections as well as the communication interface to the electric vehicles. For the connection to the public power grid, a charging container was implemented with two charging connections for CCS-compatible vehicles. One connection has an unprecedented charging capacity of max. 450 kW while the second can deliver up to 175 kW.
- Siemens successfully completed the first phase of its shallow water test of the Subsea Power Grid.
- The development program was conducted in collaboration with industry partners Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, and Eni Norge.
- This will be the world's first Subsea Power Grid for medium voltage power distribution using pressure compensated technology.
Siemens has successfully concluded the first phase of its Subsea Power Grid shallow water test in Trondheim, Norway. Siemens, in collaboration with industry partners Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, and Eni Norge, is in the final stages of a program to develop a barrier-breaking system that will become the world’s first Subsea Power Grid designed for distribution of medium voltage power using pressure compensated technology.
With the DynaGridCenter project, Siemens worked alongside partners in science and research to develop the next generation of grid control centers. For the first time, assistant systems visualize dynamic processes that bring the energy transition to the power grid and provide targeted recommendations for actions to optimize the grids and prevent blackouts.
On March 2nd, 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser and further high-ranking representatives witnessed the symbolic inauguration of the first phase of Siemens' megaproject in Egypt. The event marked an important milestone towards the completion of the project.
In collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy, Siemens and its consortium partners, Orascom Construction and Elsewedy Electric, announced on July 24, 2018 the completion of the Egypt Megaproject in record time. The parties celebrated the combined cycle commissioning and the start of operations at the Beni Suef, Burullus and New Capital power plants. The stations will add a total of 14.4 gigawatts (GW) of power generation capacity to Egypt's national grid, enough power to supply up to 40 million people with reliable electricity. With this milestone, Egypt and Siemens have set a new world record for execution of modern, fast-track power projects, delivering 14.4 GW of power in only 27.5 months. A single combined cycle power plant block with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts typically takes approximately 30 months for construction. For the Egypt Megaproject Siemens in parallel built twelve of these blocks in record time and connected them to the grid.
Following the delivery of several Siemens SGT5-8000H gas turbines, the first steam turbine for the Egypt Megaproject began its journey in December 2016 from the Siemens factory in Muelheim to the power plant Beni Suef in Egypt. The main components of the 670-ton cargo were lifted with a heavy-duty crane from the production hall onto a transport vessel standing by at the plant's inland harbor facilities. The vessel transported the SST-5000 steam turbine from Muelheim to the deep-water port of Antwerp where it was loaded onto a heavy cargo ship and transported to Egypt.
After the steam turbines installation, the waste heat from the gas turbines will be used to produce steam that will then drive the steam turbine, thus increasing the overall power output and efficiency of the power plant. In total, Siemens will deliver twelve SST-5000 steam turbines for the Egyptian power plants Beni Suef, Burullus and New Capital. All of these steam turbines will be manufactured at the Siemens factory in Muelheim.
Siemens Building Technologies Division is acquiring Building Robotics Inc., a market leader in the fast growing digital workplace experience app domain. The simple-to-use app Comfy enables people to take control of their environment and provides feedback on their space. With this acquisition, Siemens is setting a further milestone in smart building solutions.
At Siemens, Inclusion is a holistic mindset. Not only do we want to set an example of accessibility, we want to pave the way for inclusion in other companies. We have learned – you cannot prescribe inclusion in the interplay between man, environment and activity. You need to live accessibility and inclusion in the day to day. Our employees demonstrate how to overcome the “hurdles in the head” every single day – and we support them.