Gary Miller has served as Bryan Texas Utilities’ general manager since 2012. Miller came to BTU in 2005 as division manager. During his tenure, he has overseen far-reaching campaigns to advance the utility’s safety culture and customer service. Before joining BTU, he was a manager on the trade floor at TXU in Dallas from 2000 through 2005. He is a 2025 recipient of the James D. Donovan Individual Achievement Award from the American Public Power Association.
What brought you to your career in public power?
I grew up in southeast Texas, in Bridge City, and went to school at Lamar University in Beaumont. I wanted to be an electrical engineer, and Gulf State Utilities had a program that allowed you to switch back and forth between school and working there every other semester. I was accepted into that program and really liked working at the company.
At the time, you had two options for concentration in electrical engineering: power or electronics. My experience at Gulf State Utilities pushed me toward the power side. I was lucky to be hired after graduation by Lower Colorado River Authority, a public power entity here in Texas. I worked there for about five years and then worked for [the Electric Reliability Council of Texas]. I subsequently worked for a pair of electric co-ops and then moved on to a couple of investor-owned utilities.
After that, I landed at BTU and found my home. This is my 20-year anniversary, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.
When I was at those prior entities, I was involved with industry committees, operating committees, and engineering committees. At BTU, I meet customers and businesspeople I didn’t have the chance to previously. I’ve had the opportunity here to create lasting relationships in the community. That’s probably the biggest thing, developing those close local relationships.
Since you joined, how has BTU built relationships with customers and expanded its services?
We’re lucky to have had a robust economy here for 20-plus years. We have housing subdivisions, commercial, and industrial facilities going up consistently, and BTU has focused on our relationship with those developers. We have built a reputation for being customer friendly and responsive to those working in the area. What might take our brethren at investor-owned utilities months to complete we can accomplish in days and weeks at BTU, because responsiveness has been our priority. One of our main benefits is drawing businesses to Bryan because of that caliber of service.
From the retail perspective, we have put a lot of programs in place over the last several years. We have a program where customers can sign up for 100% renewable energy, as well as smart home and business programs that give rebates for energy efficiency improvements. Both have been very popular. We’ve established a new customer portal as well where you can see all information about your account, including daily usage. We’ve been 100% [advanced metering infrastructure] for almost 15 years now, so that has been a significant advantage to our customers because we know when they’re out immediately. We can also text our entire customer base when there’s an outage. We’ve implemented a program called PowerShare where our customers can choose to donate to help families pay their utility bills.
What are you proudest of having achieved at BTU, and what are your goals for BTU going forward?
One of the big decisions we’re working toward is the next phase of generation. We already have a variety of generation facilities, including solar, wind, and natural gas. We are also the host utility for the Texas A&M University System’s small modular reactor research. We’re trying to make the best decisions we can from both an economic perspective and for our customers. It’s challenging in large part because of everything you need to take into account, such as data centers consuming supply. We’re also investing in infrastructure on both the transmission and distribution sides and ensuring these investments align with the needs of the local community.
One of the things we’re most proud of is that we were awarded our first [Reliable Public Power Provider] Diamond designation from APPA in 2014, and we have been RP3 Diamond each cycle since. Another is that we are very reasonable from a rate perspective compared to our peers, being in the lower tier across both the state and the country. I feel like we have excellent customer service from a retail customer perspective and in our interactions with the local community.
I’m also proud of the work we’ve done building a culture of safety at BTU. About 10 years ago, we started down the path of implementing a new safety program. It has really improved our safety indicators to the point we’re ranked among the leading utilities by APPA. It’s involved a lot of coordination with our employees, where they tell management what they are seeing and what they would like to see. And we give them the tools and information to implement those things, because they’re experts and they know what’s going on in the field and the office. We’ve really worked to empower our employees to drive the change they need to work in as safe an environment as possible.
