Richmond Matters Podcast copertina

Richmond Matters Podcast

Richmond Matters Podcast

Di: Chris Hardie
Ascolta gratuitamente

Offerte di stagione | 0,99 €/mese per i primi 3 mesi

A seguire 9,99 €/mese – si applicano condizioni. Puoi disdire mensilmente.
Richmond Indiana news, interviews and commentary from Chris Hardie.Chris Hardie Politica e governo Scienze sociali Scrittura e commenti di viaggio
Episodi
  • “I can do something to make it better.” Acacia St. John and Alex Painter on community needs and strategies

    “I can do something to make it better.” Acacia St. John and Alex Painter on community needs and strategies
    May 9 2021
    Chris Hardie talks with Acacia St. John of Forward Wayne County and Alex Painter of the Wayne County Foundation about the recently released "County Indicators" report, and what it means for the health and future of our community.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    1 ora e 6 min
  • Mary Walker and Ashley Sieb on the power of story-telling to help us navigate COVID-19 together

    Mary Walker and Ashley Sieb on the power of story-telling to help us navigate COVID-19 together
    Jan 28 2021
    Chris Hardie talks with Mary Walker and Ashley Sieb about the Share Your Story COVID-19 Wayne County campaign to help us understand the impact of the virus on our neighbors.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    51 min
  • Randy Baker of RP&L on the past, present and future of local electricity

    Randy Baker of RP&L on the past, present and future of local electricity
    Jan 22 2021
    Randy Baker is retiring soon as the General Manager of Richmond Power & Light. In this podcast episode, he reflects on his time there as we speak about how power generation and distribution has happened in our community over the years, the politics of electricity rate changes, and what might be ahead for our municipal utility that was built in 1954 and meant to last fifty years. As he’s also an accomplished musician the music at the beginning and end of this episode is played by Randy, a rendition of Doyle Dykes` Jazz in the Box. I hope you enjoy the conversation. If you find it interesting or useful, please share! Transcript The below transcript was generated with the use of automation and may contain errors or omissions. Chris Hardie: The word is you’re going to be retiring soon. How long have you been at Richmond Power and Light in your time there? Randy Baker: I actually started in 1999 as a consultant, as an IT consultant during a time when the state, as well as other states were thinking about going to deregulation in the electric business. Then I came onboard as an employee in 2000. Chris: Wow. You’ve been there through a lot of change. You grew up in Richmond originally, is that right? Randy: Yes. I grew up partly in Cincinnati, Ohio, but I was born here in Richmond. I did graduate from high school here. Then, pretty much except for sometimes I was on the road, pretty much lived here the rest of my life. Chris: You mentioned starting out in kind of a technical role. I think I first encountered you as someone who was working more on the technical and operations side of things. I know our paths had crossed in various local tech and software circles. You’ve done a lot since then. How did you end up starting in that role and then working your way through the role of general manager? What did that path look like? Randy: The joke is that I tell people that I just hung around here long enough till they finally gave me the keys. I did start in that technical role as a consultant and then took over the IT department. I’d been doing consulting for quite a while, did a lot for the government, but some private companies too, like Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble and things like that. It’s funny now. My goal in the beginning was, “Hey, this could be another great vertical for me to consult in. I’ll stick around here and learn the business really well.” Something happened along the way. [laughter] Chris: You learned it really well. Randy: Yes. My original contract was for one year. It’s probably been the longest year in my life. Chris: Wow. How did you know that it was time to retire? Randy: I’d been thinking about it. I never dreamed I’d be here this long to begin with because I would just get– One of the reasons I was a consultant is because you could do something and then before it got dull, you could move to something else. Things like that. In terms of time itself, I’m just to a point where I think it’s time to pass it along and get some younger folks in there probably, and honestly, do some other things in my life. Chris: We can talk a bit more about your future plans and all of your different interests, but I want to just orient ourselves to what Richmond Power and Light has been and is now in the community. I should probably apologize because I want to ask you a bunch of really basic questions about electricity and how RP&L works. My understanding of how the power plant works before and just the science of it, we had coal coming in by truck or maybe rail. We burned it to make steam. The steam rotated the turbine. The turbine created AC current and that got sent out to our homes via wire to provide what we know as electricity. Is that a fair description of what RP&L was doing for a long time? Randy: That’s a pretty complicated process you put in a very short time frame. Yes. The steam, you generate the steam, whether it’s by coal or it’s by natural gas or whatever it is. Yes, that turns the turbines. Chris: For listeners outside Richmond, obviously, that’s power in town. How far outside of Richmond did that transmission go and where did it start to be taken over by other agencies? Randy: It was always kind of a local thing here. Now, since the grid came about all those decades ago, because there was a time when Richmond just kind of sat out here on its own, and all the towns did, so if your power plant went down, your town went down. Even when we were generating, we sold that on the grid. We’ve been in a contract with the Indiana Municipal Power Agency, IMPA, since 1982. We buy 100% of our power. There’s some advantages to doing that. Any of these questions you ask, you are going to have to keep me on track because it is its own conversation within itself almost. Chris: Right, right. Yes. We’ll come back around to IMPA. The version of electricity generation that you mentioned where we were kind of on our own before maybe the grid was ...
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    46 min
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Ancora nessuna recensione