COLUMBUS, Ohio — Bethany Schunn, plant manager at the Cardinal Power Plant in Brilliant, Ohio, says the power generation field doesn't shut down.
"The majority of our employees, myself included, we’ve been coming every day, and we need those employees to produce the power," she said. "So, they’ve been doing great."
Cardinal is an 1800 MW power plant, nestled along the Ohio River on the border with West Virginia. But, through Ohio's Electric Cooperatives, it distributes power to roughly one million Ohioans in 77 of the state's 88 counties. Schunn is the woman in charge of it all, a rarity in the industry.
"It’s definitely an honor," she said. "I’ve worked my way up, but I’ve had a lot of people help me along the way, so it’s definitely not a one-man show by any means."
It's certainly not a one-man or one-woman show with roughly 300 employees at the plant, not including vendors and contractors.
John Coup, a performance and industrial hygiene technician, is one of them. He's been working at the plant for five years now.
"I’ve seen on social media, some people I know have expressed concerns, you know, who’s going to keep the lights on, for example, and I kind of read that, and I said, well, I sort of do that, me and a lot of other good people working together, but it was definitely something that gave me a lot of pride in what I do," he said.
In the midst of this pandemic, he's had to train two new workers, fresh out of college, but he says they've adapted well. And nearly everyone at the plant has hade to make adjustments. Temperatures are taken at the gate, many are now on different shifts or in different offices to protect an entire division from having to go out of commission if someone were to contract coronavirus. Social distancing is being practiced, and employees are wearing face coverings.
"We gotta keep being diligent with all these precautions," Schunn said. "We still gotta wear the masks, we still gotta do the sanitizing, we still have to ensure we’re social distancing, so I think as long as we’re being very diligent in that, then we should be okay."
Sticking to all of those measures, they plan to keep the operation going, from the coal to the turbines to the generators to the transmission lines. The plant is actually equipped with $1.5 billion in emissions control systems, according to the OEC, which makes it one of the most environmentally friendly coal-fired power plants in the world.
"It’s definitely something I think myself and my co-workers can hang our hat on that, in a lot of ways, what we do here is, could be the most essential service," Coup said. "And one thing I think we can all take away from this situation is how much we really need each other because, yes, if we can’t make power, maybe I can’t go buy food, but if I’m really hungry, I’m not doing such a great job out here, and I think that sometimes we tend to overlook the contributions that other people make. We really all need each other."