ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Duke Energy is celebrating Engineers Week, recognizing the important work their staff carries out on a daily basis.

At Duke’s Distribution Control Center, becoming a power grid dispatcher requires extensive training. The work they’re learning is critical for bringing power to so many.

“We bring them up to speed on dispatching and operations of the distribution system,” said senior technical trainer Mike Lindstrom. “We’re kind of, more or less, the eyes in the sky.”

These dispatchers help respond to faults, outages and even storm response during hurricanes.

“It’s exciting work," says Scott Demetree, a dispatcher with Duke Energy. "It’s not for everybody.”

Along with being a dispatcher, Demetree is a trainer with Duke. He oversees the development of new recruits before they take the reins, an important role that requires plenty of training.

In fact, new recruits go through two years worth before being placed on the job.

“Rich (a trainee) is watching everything he does to make sure that he’s complying with all of the rules and all of the safety regulations we have to abide by to deliver power to our customers safely and efficiently,” says Demetree, while observing a fellow trainer help out a trainee.

During hurricanes Helene and Milton, Duke Energy says their technology helped avoid more than 130,000 customer outages in Pinellas County.

The tech they use can also help find the cause of an outage and reduce the number of customers affected, restoring power in less than a minute.

“It makes me feel good to be able to help people and knowing that I’m restoring power, or assisting in the restoration of power, that could affect anywhere from one to thousands of people at one time or any given time," said Demetree. "It makes me feel like I’m a mission fulfilled person.”  

If you or someone you know is interested in working for Duke Energy, you can learn more about opportunities online right here.