The People Who Make Power Generation Look Easy

By Jen McGivney | illumination Contributor

When someone flips a light switch, chances are that they don’t consider the thousands of people who work around the clock to connect them with the power for that light. They just know that once the switch flips, the light goes on.

To Emily Jones, one of the engineers whose work is responsible for that illumination, that’s just the way it should be. The work may be challenging, but the customer experience should be easy.

“Most people don’t understand how truly complex the process is to have a light bulb or oven turn on in their house when needed,” Jones said. “It’s very rewarding to learn about all of the people who are involved in making this happen.”

Jones is an electrical engineer at Duke Energy’s Gibson Steam Station. Nestled in the southwest corner of Indiana, Gibson is the company’s largest power plant. By performing regular preventative maintenance, Jones helps ensure the plant’s equipment runs reliably.

“We want our motors, and all of the station’s equipment, to run efficiently,” she said.

Striving for operational excellence

Plant workers like Jones are the behind-the-scenes heroes of daily life. By generating the electricity that Duke Energy-served communities count on, approximately 8.4 million customers across six states can keep their homes and businesses running.

“It’s very exciting to have a diverse and engaged team, engineers like Emily, who are enthusiastic about what we do here at Duke Energy – all of which is underscored by safety and operational excellence,” said Bill Luke, vice president of Midwest Generation. “It's not just about what we're doing today leveraging and maximizing our existing generation, but the opportunities we are going to have in the future as we continue our energy transition.”

More than 7,500 power plant workers across six states maintain and operate more than 115 Duke Energy power plants, stations, and facilities, including coal, solar, natural gas, hydro and nuclear. They account for about a quarter of all Duke Energy employees, and their work is the heart of reliable generation of more than 54,000 megawatts of energy.

We celebrate their hard work on Nov. 1, which the company recognizes as Power Plant Worker Appreciation Day.

“I'm very proud to work here, because I feel like it really makes a difference to all of the customers that we're able to provide efficient energy for,” Jones said. “Our main concerns are safely serving our customers and making sure that everybody has reliable energy at their disposal.”

All the world’s a stage

Jones always envisioned she’d have a career in lights. As a teenager, however, those lights were stage lights: She wanted to be an actor. As she spent more time on the stage, however, she began looking up more often, growing curious about the lights above her and how they operated.

Eventually, she chose to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps, becoming an engineer. Today, instead of standing in the spotlight full-time, she shares that light with people across the region.

“As an engineer who works at this power plant, I get to benefit hundreds of thousands of people every single day,” Jones said.

Just as a play relies on a tight cast of actors, a power plant relies on a close team of energy professionals. At the power plant, Jones has joined a collaborative team that takes great pride in their work.

They provide the essential ingredient that powers big and small moments within their communities: of friends gathering around a TV to watch a movie, of lighting a field for a football game, of powering equipment that runs hospitals and saves lives.

When storms threaten power, these are the workers who leave their homes to keep power running for their neighbors.

Jones and her colleagues recognize the importance of their work and take it seriously. Her team recently celebrated 1,000 days of accident-free operations.

“I was just so proud,” she said. “The best part about the people here is that they don’t work just for the label, they don’t work simply to see that number go up. They work safely because they want to provide energy for their family, as well as all the other families they make an impact on.”

A career advancing with the speed of energy

At 24 years old, Jones is just beginning her career in power generation. It’s a field that is rapidly expanding and innovating. As the technology behind new forms of energy advances, her career will advance with them.

“As far as the future, I'm just excited to learn new skills and use more advanced technologies to my advantage to further my career as an engineer,” she said. “I could absolutely see myself retiring here. We’re always going to need energy. We’re always going to need power.”

When Jones interviewed for her current role, she told her future boss that she wanted to grow into his role one day. As a former actor, she’s got her eye on directing. Jones wants to be the one who manages engineers, to understand how everyone’s roles fit together to serve a single mission. She knows that even as energy will segue from coal to renewable forms, the need for problem-solving engineers will persist.

“I'm optimistic for the future,” she said, “because we will get to see all different types of new and emerging technologies and new ways to solve these problems.”

Duke Energy continues to explore new technologies that provide reliable and increasingly clean energy sources such as advanced nuclear, carbon capture and sequestration, long duration energy storage and hydrogen.

“As we look to the future and our energy transition, it is very important to have a team, with people like Emily, who are enthusiastic about what’s to come; engaged, ready to be challenged, with sort of a “bring it on” mindset,” said Chris Roeder, general manager of Gibson Station. “It’s exciting to be part of this team.”

Making hard work seem simple

There’s nothing simple about the work that goes into reliable energy. Day after day, people and machines and nature face innumerable challenges and variables that have the potential to disrupt power.

To power plant employees like Jones, however, their goal is to do the hard work so well that energy seems as easy as flipping a switch.

“You see all the streetlights that are on at night so people can see where they're going. You see all types of people with lights on in their homes. They're watching television, they're snuggling on the couch with their families,” Jones said. “None of that would be possible if there weren't people at this power plant working day and night.”

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