Oct. 9--Siemens Energy broke ground Thursday on a $50 million expansion next to its Charlotte manufacturing plant that will house a previously announced addition of 200-plus jobs.

The new, 60,000-square-foot building will be designed to achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold certification for its energy-efficient design.

Economic development officials say Siemens' expansion will bolster Charlotte's bid to develop an "energy hub" of companies. They say the power industry, anchored by Duke Energy, could diversify the city's economy as banking slips.

"We think the best way to get us out of this recession is the energy business," Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory said at the groundbreaking ceremony.

Siemens announced its 226 new engineering and manufacturing jobs, to be created over five years, in May. A nuclear energy division of Toshiba said in April it will add nearly 200 jobs. Last month, clean-coal technology company CoaLogix Inc. announced an expansion in Charlotte that will create 61 jobs.

Siemens' turbines, generators and other power plant components generate one-third of U.S. electricity, including Duke Energy's plants. Sixty percent of the products made in Charlotte are exported.

Worldwide demand for electricity is expected to double in the next 20 years, company officials say. And while Siemens is expanding into energy fueled by the sun and wind, company officials say nuclear power, gas and coal -- its core businesses -- will continue to supply 90 percent of that demand.

Despite the recession, noted Siemens Energy CEO Randy Zwirn, U.S. utilities will still have to build new power plants and maintain existing ones. Siemens does both.

"It's a natural place to expand in," Zwirn said, because of Charlotte's proximity to customers in the energy-intensive Northeast and the growth of new plants in the Southeast.

Siemens' Charlotte site is the company's largest U.S. manufacturing plant. It employs 780 workers who fabricate new generators and refurbish old parts for nuclear, coal- and gas-fired power plants. Westinghouse Electric, acquired by Siemens in 1998, opened the 550,000-square-foot plant in 1969.

The Charlotte plant on Westinghouse Boulevard hasn't experienced layoffs in six years, said plant manager Mark Pringle.

Three-fourths of its business is in servicing power plant components, he said, such as rewinding generators and installing new turbine blades.

"It won't be the last time we have a grand opening in Charlotte in the next couple of years," said Michael Suess, CEO of Siemens Energy's fossil power division. Company officials would not elaborate.

Headquartered in Erlangen, Germany, Siemens Energy employs 83,500 people worldwide. It reported fiscal 2008 profit of 1.4 billion euros, or about $2 billion.

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