Bourree Lam: What do you do for work, and how did you get into it?

George Myers: I'm a level-two technician for Vestas, a wind-turbine manufacturer with 16,000 turbines in North America. I work in a wind park in Colorado. We've got 139 turbines. Basically, my job is to maintain them, keep them running, and fix them when they break.

I've been doing this for almost four years now. I got into it because Vestas turbines are about a hundred miles from my house. I was more or less a stay-at-home dad and worked part-time for a large-animal vet in town and did some work on farms and ranches around the area. My youngest daughter graduated high school and went off to college, so it was time to find another job or career, which are limited in a small town. I asked around, and it seemed that most of the jobs that I could do involved state road maintenance.

I was talking to someone I knew in town, and he said, "Why don't you come apply at Vestas?" I said, "Oh God, have mercy. I don't know anything about those turbines." As far as I knew, wind makes them go around and that makes electricity. He said that my background working with hydraulics, farm equipment, and household electrical stuff was really all I needed. I applied online, went through the processes, and couple months later I was working at the wind park.

Lam: What’s a regular day of work like?

Myers: We come in 6 a.m. and have a morning assignment meeting, go over any safety alerts that come up and any issues. Then we break into our teams, you're assigned a truck where there’s a truck lead and the one to three technicians. You're assigned a tower, or a series of towers, to perform tasks, and you come back when you're done. It's definitely a team environment; you have to know and trust your team. That's a big part of it.

Twice a year, every tower has to be visited and we do standard checks, like changing filters, greasing things, checking electronic equipment with the controller, and making sure that all the systems are getting accurate readings. When the turbines are broken, a crew of technicians goes out and the problem could be as simple a temperature sensor that's bad, or more complex if a motor went out. Once we can get them running, then we can return to routine maintenance.

Lam: It's safe to say that you didn't see yourself doing this for work?

Myers: Working here was a chance thing. The park happened to be in driving distance, and I really wanted to stay in a small town. We've been here for 20 years. I didn't want to leave it, but I did need to work.

I was possibly the oldest guy on the site, managers included, which is good and bad, I guess. There’s that old adage that says, “it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks,” and it has taken me a little longer to figure out some of this technical stuff. But once I got into it and realized how much technology are in these towers, it was amazing. It just overwhelmed me at first. I thought, "Oh my God, there was no way I could figure all this stuff out!” But over time, little bits and pieces at a time, you get it. Now I'm a truck lead and when they get new guys coming on, they put them on my crew to start getting them trained.