Built to Adapt

Raised in a small town in France, Anthony Germain didn’t have specific career goals in high school but says, “I just pursued what I was good at – math – and that led me to computers and engineering.” These skills in turn equipped him to play a key role in the creation and growth of EDF power solutions’ Operations Control Center (OCC), which provides 24/7 NERC-compliant remote monitoring, operational control, and maintenance oversight for clean energy assets across North America.

Anthony’s post-secondary education included a capstone internship at a water utility; “That was my first exposure to supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, and it piqued my interest in the interface between computer systems and energy infrastructure,” he remembers. As he began looking for job leads after graduation, he learned of an opportunity with EDF Renouvelables (now EDF power solutions).

Le site Volontariat International en Entreprise (VIE) program was created by the French government to give young people international professional experience while also helping French companies expand in overseas markets. EDF Renouvables was participating in the program for the first time and looking for four paid interns to send to its US subsidiary, enXco.

“I was 23, and my knowledge about America was limited to what I’d seen on TV and in movies. Our plane landed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the airport had a huge banner that said, ‘Welcome Hunters!’ That was the beginning of a lot of culture shock!”

“Three of us were sent to Fenton, Minnesota,” Anthony recalls. “It was very isolated – I used to say Fenton had more wind turbines than people. I was 23, and my knowledge about America was limited to what I’d seen on TV and in movies. Our plane landed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the airport had a huge banner that said, ‘Welcome, Hunters!’ That was the beginning of a lot of culture shock!”

Anthony was assigned the task of supporting the buildout of enXco’s fledgling OCC. “enXco performed operations and maintenance (O&M) for wind farms in the US, but sites were initially monitored locally,” he explains. “The OCC was conceived as a way to improve efficiency by centralizing the monitoring function in a single location. When I arrived, the entire OCC consisted of two computers in a closet.”

He got to work enhancing site reporting and data acquisition, ultimately expanding the OCC to comprise multiple computers and screens in a room staffed by five. When his 18 months in the VIE program concluded, Anthony returned to France where EDF put him to work leading a team supporting the creation of a European OCC in Colombiers. “After establishing the US (now North America) OCC as the pilot, the next step was to create one for EDF Renouvelables’ European assets,” he clarifies.

A few years after the European OCC was up and running, an internal reorganization led to Anthony transferring to Paris for a position that continued to focus on the IT aspect of asset management. During this time, he continued to work closely with colleagues at the North America OCC, which had been relocated to San Diego. “When a position opened, they encouraged me to apply,” he recalls.

Thus, in 2016, Anthony returned to the US to take on the role of SCADA Manager at the OCC. His initial focus was on customizing the system’s software, Monarch SCADA, to EDF’s unique needs. Originally designed to help utilities monitor their transmission systems, EDF Renewables was the first company to adapt Monarch to monitor renewable energy assets, although others have since followed suit.

“The software is very robust, but, particularly in the beginning, it needed a lot of tailoring to deliver what the OCC team was looking for,” Anthony remembers. “Our users didn’t trust the information initially. My job was to tweak it and make adaptations so it would give our team useful, actionable data and earn their confidence.”

2025 has proved to be a particularly eventful year, due in large part to a sudden transfer of responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the battery energy storage systems (BESS) located at five of EDF power solutions’ solar + storage sites. “It was rather intense, but our team stepped up and successfully took over the battery sites on very short notice,” Anthony says.

“The biggest impact was in the number of ‘assets’ the OCC now had to track,” he continues. “For our purposes, an individual wind turbine or solar inverter is an asset. When it comes to batteries, cells are combined to form strings, strings are combined to form arrays, and a single array can hold between 10 to 40 strings. A single BESS can easily contain hundreds of arrays and thousands of strings, and each string is an individual asset for the OCC.”

As a result, the number of assets tracked by the OCC effectively doubled and is now approaching 10,000. “Integrating all these new assets and building data interfaces that enable users to work efficiently across sites has been a major focus of the past several months,” Anthony reflects. “We’ve reached the point where we can pivot from being reactive to being proactive, and we’re ensuring we get actionable information from the batteries that can be used to optimize their performance.”

Today, things have come full circle. In 2024, Anthony was promoted to his current position, and he, his wife, and their small daughter relocated to the Chicago area. In October 2025, the OCC was moved back to Minnesota, this time to Bloomington, where he has been busy hiring and training new team members. “I ask each of them to tell me if they think there’s a better way to do things,” he emphasizes. “I’m very aware that after doing monitoring for 10-plus years, experienced operators may be relying on workarounds when using existing tools. I want to hear from people with fresh eyes and fresh ideas!”

Looking ahead, Anthony sees many opportunities for his team to contribute to EDF power solutions’ growth. “One thing that flies under the radar is the work we’re doing to improve organizational processes outside the OCC,” he notes. “For example, we’ve transformed the Risk Oversight Committee tracker from an Excel-based tool to a fully automated dashboard. And we want to make it effortless for any employee to see the real-time status of projects via our web application.”

“Another avenue we’re pursuing is developing new value-added services for our third-party O&M customers. We offer an à la carte panel of services, and regardless of a project’s size, EDF power solutions’ OCC can help maximize the performance, availability, and profitability of the asset.”