On the Hill: Testifying on Emerging Energy Technologies for the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee

(First seen on Siemens Executive Pulse Blog)

Today, I testified in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on how emerging technologies are changing today’s energy landscape. I was honored to be a part of this important discussion on the future of our power grid, the need for infrastructure modernization, and the role that companies like Siemens can play. Here are my remarks from the hearing.  

Thank you, Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member Cantwell, and Members of the Committee. I’m Kevin Yates, President of Siemens Energy Management. And it is a privilege to testify on behalf of Siemens’ 50,000 U.S. employees represented in all 50 states.

In the past 15 years, Siemens has invested over $40 billion in the US, and we invest more than one billion dollars annually in U.S.-based R&D. So, while we are a global company, we are also proud to say that we’re U.S. local: setting a high expectation for advancing critical technology in the fields of energy, healthcare, mobility and manufacturing efficiency.

Specific to the energy space, since our first day in the U.S. more than 160 years ago, Siemens has been inventing, optimizing and re-engineering machines capable of generating electrical energy at all levels. One might conclude that our DNA has a foundation of electrifying the world. It’s because of this deep-rooted foundation in electrification that we continue to invest in innovation around power generation, transmission and distribution. 

I’d like to spend my opening remarks this morning to share a few examples of technology that enable the development of not only a reliable and affordable electrical infrastructure, but also a sustainable future.

Siemens offers wind and solar solutions for various operating environments. In fact, in Alaska, we were proud to provide technology that enabled the Cold Climate Research Center to be fueled almost exclusively by solar energy. In Iowa and Kansas, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy designs and manufactures equipment that makes wind energy production more efficient – innovation that has had U.S. influence and contribution, which has enabled wind production to be very competitive.

Now, while wind and solar generation offer advantages in terms sustainability, they do present new challenges – two in particular. How do we efficiently transmit renewable generation to consumers? And how do we manage the intermittency of renewable generation?

But Siemens is responding to this challenge by advancing transmission technology to move electrical energy across vast distances while using software to effectively plan assets and help manage intermittency.

In fact, next year we expect to start work on a new transmission line that will carry wind energy from Texas into the Southeast. And this project will not only provide sustainable generation to reach consumers, but it will inject about $4 billion into the economies of two states it crosses: Louisiana and Mississippi.

Siemens is also involved in another key trend in the electrification landscape: distributed energy resources. You might think about this as the other end of the spectrum. This is where energy is being generated on a much smaller scale and in close proximity to the consumer. In these cases, Siemens is working with cities, manufacturers, hospitals, and universities alike to help them build more reliable and efficient electrical infrastructure.

Lastly, Siemens is focused on modernizing the grid. Our nation’s power grid is one of the most complex, massive machines the world has ever seen. In fact, someone once said that our utility grid is the great enabler. I happen to agree with that perspective.

But, the grid, this great enabler, is aged, and needs to be renewed: rebuilt and rewired, but also made more intelligent. Whether we are talking about large-scale renewable generation or localized distributed small power, Siemens is focused on helping our customers manage their assets in the most reliable and efficient manner through automation and software, commonly referred to as a microgrid.

As an example, we recently celebrated the successful installation of a low-carbon community microgrid at a Native American reservation in California.

This project not only solved an issue of regular brownouts, but our software has enabled the connection of four electricity generation assets, including solar and storage technology, with a result of saving  the community $200,000 annually in energy costs; reducing CO2 emissions by 150 tons per year; and increasing  Tribal clean energy jobs by 10 percent.

So I’ll just close with this final point. At Siemens, we work closely with our customers in a wide variety of industries to develop new technologies that help move the industry forward, without losing focus on the next big advancement. A critical component of what enables us to do this is the broad culture of innovation at work in the United States.

We think of it as an energy ecosystem. And we do believe in an energy future that is affordable, reliable and sustainable. But the ecosystem transcends any one entity. We look forward to helping foster a more collaborative energy ecosystem of the future.

Thank you again for the invitation to testify and I look forward to your questions.