Catching up with Daniel Tegtmeier, EthosEnergy’s Performance Center Director

Daniel graduated from the Lamar Institute of Technology in 2004. Straight away, he got a job as a service technician and shop engineer, designing and manufacturing packaging machinery:  

“I was right out of tech school, I didn’t really know how to apply what I’d learned. That’s always the challenge, right? To take all this knowledge you have in your brain and go apply it.” 

Daniel describes himself as a power plant geek, but how did he get into technology? Did it fascinate him from an early age?  

He starts by explaining how he is a product of poverty, growing up in Section 8 housing projects. How he’s had his fair share of hardship. And how helping his father – a car buff and mechanic through and through – planted the seed for his love of machinery:  

“My dad was physically disabled, but before that he was very capable with his hands. He could build stuff. So the reason why I rebuilt a lawn mower at 6 years old was because my dad couldn’t. He had me do it.” 

That sparked Daniel’s curiosity in how technology works:  

“I like to build stuff, to take it apart and put it back together. I like to know how things tick.” 

Moving into a technical career was a natural progression. But ultimately, Daniel saw it as a way to pull himself out of a poverty loop. 

He was also heavily influenced by his mother’s work ethic as a wallpaper hanger:  

“She taught me to be meticulous. I used to watch her work 20 hours a day to get the job done, to try to put food on the table for her kids. So I had my dad teaching me mechanics and my mom teaching me to pay attention to details.” 

What Daniel learned from his parents helps explain why his career trajectory has been so impressive. But they weren’t the only people who influenced him. 

Over the years, senior coworkers would take Daniel under their wing and help him develop. That’s all because they saw his work ethic and desire to learn: 

“As soon as people saw that I was willing to work, they were willing to teach and train me.” 

Daniel says he was like a sponge – thirsty to learn as much as he could about the power industry. That inherent curiosity made him ideally suited to roles in supervision and, later, operations and maintenance management.  

He recalls, in particular, the advice of one of his mentors to make sure he never isolated himself to one particular craft:  

“He said, ‘Don’t just be an operator, don’t just be an instrument guy, don’t just be a mechanic.’ He said, ‘Get experience in all of those and you’ll make yourself a more viable employee forever.’ And so I did.” 

Diversifying his skill set so he knew the way the machines ticked and the way the business ran was some of the best advice Daniel ever received. It set him on a path to lead. 

Daniel is grateful that throughout his career people have taken chances on him. They’ve put him in positions where he’s had to either sink or swim. One of those was becoming a supervisor at just 27 years of age:  

“When I became a supervisor, there wasn’t a person in my team who wasn’t twice my age or more.” 

At first, that was difficult. People thought he was too young to be a supervisor. One even went so far as to tell him that they had articles of clothing older than him. But by focusing on building relationships on a personal level, Daniel saw that he could build a cohesive team. And it worked: 

“It worked well. Those people were gold, and – 12 years since I was a maintenance supervisor – I still consider them my friends for life.” 

From 2006, Daniel spent nearly 17 years with a large utility on the Gulf Coast, working his way up from Technician to Maintenance Supervisor, and from Operations and Maintenance Manager to Manager – and then Senior Manager – of a new group called Operational Excellence. Also during his tenure, he obtained his bachelor's degree in industrial engineering technology from Lamar University to help improve his business intellect. 

But while those later positions gave the entrepreneur in Daniel an opportunity to work on several start-ups and lead important ventures, he felt he was drifting from what he loves most – power plants: 

“I’m a power plant geek in my heart. I love what they do, how they do it, the history of power and how it’s come to be. What I was looking for in my next career step was an opportunity to get closer to plants again.” 

Joining EthosEnergy in April 2023, Daniel had the chance to get back to what makes him tick. Nine months in, he’s found his new role to be the culmination of everything he likes to do:  

“I like the agility that EthosEnergy has demonstrated since I’ve showed up. If it’s a great idea, you’re able to run with it. You don’t have to go through 10 levels of approval to get it moving. And I like the entrepreneurship side. I feed off the pressure of start-ups. Where some people fold under pressure, I’m the exact opposite. I thrive in that environment.”  

By the time Daniel joined us, the Performance Center was already a funded concept but it wasn’t yet up and running. Less than three months later, it was: 

“We started with, literally, an empty room. Then we turned it into a fully functioning and secure remote operations and monitoring center.” 

The Center is fully staffed for the year and Daniel says they will be adding more staff next year. Already, though, Daniel’s team of five is heavy on experience: 

“The people we’ve brought in to be part of this Performance Center have accumulated hundreds of years of experience in power plant operations.” 

Experience that is making a difference for our clients – helping them reduce their operating costs and bringing greater efficiency, availability, and reliability to their assets.