Meet Nate Edwards

Position: Lead Generation & Metering Technician
Years of service: 25
Personal statement: “In the electric department, we all strive to keep the lights on and when outages occur, try to get them back on as soon and safely as possible.”

For IMU’s Nate Edwards, the call of his Indianola hometown has always been strong.

“Growing up, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” shares Nate. He had enrolled in college for fall but started working part-time for IMU the summer after high school graduation in 1994.

“I went to three years of schooling (for something else) before realizing it was not the path I needed to be on” Nate says. He had always enjoyed working at IMU, and when a full-time position became available, Nate applied and was accepted as an apprentice lineman. That was in March of 1998, and he has never looked back.

At IMU, Nate found his professional home with a strong team of committed co-workers. “IMU is made up of a lot of great people who enjoy their work and community they live in.” Nate has been a journeyman lineman for over 20 years with IMU. In his current role, Nate and his team are responsible for a long list of critical tasks that include ensuring that standby power generation is available in case of an outage, maintenance, coordinating the smooth transmission of power with surrounding local utilities, maintaining and monitoring the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) software that monitors IMU’s entire electric system. He also oversees the meter department and its inventory.

When he’s not working to keep the lights on for every resident of Indianola, Nate and his wife prioritize family. His daughter and son-in-law have made them grandparents for the first time in the past year. Their 13-year-old son attends Indianola Community Schools, where he plays in band/orchestra and is a member of the Indianola Trap Team. The family has recently started to ride e-bikes together, enjoying the local bike trails with the hope to check out more trails around Iowa this year.

Right now, Nate’s team is working on replacing the controls in a power generation unit that was originally installed in the early 2000s, just as his career with IMU was starting. “It’s hard to believe that the control computer in it is an antique now,” laughs Nate. “I’m not sure what that says about me!”