As some of you know, I started out my career in the Power Generation Industry at a coal burning electric plant here in Colorado and while many an average Joe or Josephine will immediately transform into some poo-slinging-chimpanzee at the mere mention of "those fossil fuel plants", meeting everyone’s needs for a 24 / 7 electricity demand that’s up more than 53% in the last 20 years is no easy task. To say that it has been "an education" getting an insider’s perspective to this industry and learning how we meet our nation’s grid demand with the current infrastructure (pun intened) would be an understatement to the nth degree.
Having recently transferred to Remote Energy Plants, I’m now part of a team that is responsible for taking care of hydro-electric generators amongst other varied responsibilities. Although hydros are more politically acceptable, the odd thing about these units (at least in our application) is that the load generated is based off the citizens’ water usage – more water needed means we open-’er-up so people get more water, the electricity being a by-product of that flow increase (or decrease, depending on the need). So if we as a people want to have electricity but we’re not using as much water and it’s calm & nighttime or cloudy, we will burn fossil fuels or run nukes to meet the base-load demand.
We have a few hydros at strategic locations and I wrote a little about Manitou Hydro earlier. The image in this post is of another hydro we’re responsible for in the mountains. (You can see why the department I’m in now is referred to as "Remotes" 
)
The water runs from the upper reservoir and the flow is throttled through the use of the hydro plant. It then gets treated for consumption as it leaves the lower reservoir. It’s absolutely beautiful up here and if you had asked me 8 years ago if I thought I’d be enjoying working at places like these in Colorado and having a better quality of life than I could’ve had I stayed in NJ; I don’t know that I would have believed it possible – especially since I’ve been blessed with such a wonderful family on top of it all.
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
- Michelangelo
