Alan W. Holmes Senior Staff Business Development Specialist alan.holmes@siemens.com

Several of the Siemens Business Development team were fortunate to attend a round table discussion with FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller in Atlanta, GA , as organized by Douglas Todd, Siemens Director of Industry and Energy in Washington, DC. Commissioner Moeller is one of five appointed commissioners, serving until June 2010. He agreed to the Siemens round table recently, prior to addressing a much larger group of energy industry professionals at the CNN OMNI Hotel the following day.

Commissioner Moeller began by providing a brief overview of FERC's directive to oversee the energy industries in the economic, environmental and safety interests of the American public. FERC's assignment is to independently regulate the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. The round table group maintained an excellent exchange with the Commissioner regarding all the "hot buttons" of the day, including carbon foot-print legislation, wind energy initiatives, aging infrastructures, and smart grid progress. The discussion also dealt with the role being fulfilled by the ISO communities and their ability to act within the tariffs and maintain relationships with their Market Participants. We reviewed administrative and legislative actions that attempt to deal with some of these pressing issues. The group agreed that a great number of tough decisions will need to be made in the near future in order to sustain the required energy growth while addressing environmental and cost issues. FERC fulfills a critical role and serves as a balancing element to the molding of energy policy and reliability.

Tom Garrity, Siemens VP of Sales and Business Development, led a presentation of the numerous diverse products/services offered by Siemens, covering the various company structure divisions. This provided an opportune opening to directly educate the Commissioner in regards to the services provided by Siemens in the energy sector. We reviewed the significant services, products, and Siemens technology that have fueled the growth of Siemens in the US marketplace. In particular, Siemens PTI stressed consulting engineering services and software tools that have been applied to the numerous wind interconnection opportunities, knowledge and tools in the power marketing segment, and continuously updated reliable software tools to advance the industry. Siemens PTI's involvement with the ISOs, Regional Transmission Operators, and regulatory authorities has earned us a reputation as a knowledgeable and objective resource. Siemens PTI also continues to build its suite of educational courses within Power Academy, to educate engineering and technical personnel in a time of industry resource shortages and a retiring knowledge base, and this was discussed as well.

We were extremely pleased to have this meeting time with the Commissioner, and look forward to working with multiple technical personnel in the FERC office.

Download document as .pdf