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NRG energy powers Louisiana
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Published with the October 1, 2013 Baton Rouge Business Report. Copyright © 2013 Louisiana Business Inc. Special Advertising Section.
Understanding the importance of electrical power generation plants such as Big Cajun I and II in New Roads is easy for most people. Every time someone in an area home or office flips a switch and a room lights up, it is clear that those generators are doing their jobs.
What people are less likely to realize is how much power lies behind those generators, in the form of NRG Energy Inc., the largest independent electricity producer in the country.
NRG is a Fortune 500 company known as an innovator in the field of electric power. Its diverse generating facilities use natural gas, coal, nuclear, solar and wind resources to produce more than 46,000 megawatts of capacity supporting almost 40 million homes.
The company’s retail providers and thermal energy division serve more than two million residential, business, commercial and industrial customers in 16 states. In Louisiana alone, the company supports 10 electric cooperatives that serve more than a million customers.
Jennifer Vosburg, president of NRG’s Louisiana Generating and a senior executive of NRG Energy, says that while many Louisiana residents are familiar with the Big Cajun plants, the company’s Bayou Cove generator in Jennings and its Sterlington plant in north Louisiana, the full scope of NRG’s impact is not well-known. “We’re about more than just producing electricity,” she says.
NRG, for instance, is a pioneer in new sources of generating electricity. The company is the largest solar power developer in the United States.
With some 350 employees in Louisiana, NRG works closely with local customers to help them meet their own energy goals. If a business aims to increase the portion of its total energy that comes from renewable power sources or ensure that it maintains a minimum level of back-up generation, “we can help them with that,” Vosburg says.
“Instead of just making sure a customer has electrons flowing through the wires into a building, we think about how we can tailor our services to meet a customer’s total energy needs,” she says.
NRG has partnered on such goals with customers around the country, ranging from large corporations, a state university and several National Football League stadiums to a solar power demonstration project for a charter school in New Orleans.
Equally important is NRG’s work to attract new business to the areas it serves. “We work with our cooperative partners to provide some of the most reliable and lowest-cost power in the Southeast,” Vosburg says. “That is an asset that becomes a vital tool for economic development teams in recruiting new business and growing jobs.”
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