Michael Beckham has served as electric utilities director of Lakeland Electric in Florida since 2022, after starting as assistant general manager in 2015. His leadership has contributed to Lakeland Electric earning a Reliable Public Power Provider, or RP3, designation from the American Public Power Association in recognition of the utility’s outstanding reliability, safety, and workforce development. His leadership in the electric sector has spanned both investor-owned utilities and public power, including at Georgia Power and Alabama Power, both Southern Company subsidiaries, FirstEnergy Corporation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Beckham holds a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and a Professional Engineering License.
What brought you to your career in public power?
I’m a Professional Engineer by training, and after graduating in 1981, at that time the power industry was growing rapidly — especially in the development of nuclear power. I had the good fortune to land a job with Georgia Power/Southern Company as they were building Plant Vogtle, their nuclear plant. I was there for four years, and that was a good learning experience. I later went on to work at the coal-fired plant, Plant Hammond, in Rome, Georgia, for eight years before transferring to Georgia Power’s general office as a clean air project coordinator, corporate technical services.
My career with public power began when I started work at TVA as an assistant plant manager at their Kingston plant in Knoxville, Tennessee before moving to First Energy in Ohio, where I served as a director of Ashtabula & Lakeshore Power Plants. After that, I took this opportunity here in Lakeland, which was my first time working for the municipal side of public power. I’ve been here for 10 years, and it’s been quite a different experience from both TVA and the investor-owned utility side.
What has been your leadership philosophy at Lakeland Electric?
I’ve learned to take a different approach than I did in private industry. We ultimately report to the city manager, and that has taught me to align my management with the needs of the city. Investor-owned utilities can acquire outside funding, but ours is drawn entirely from the community. It can make funding a little more challenging, but it also reminds you to be attuned to the needs of the community you’re living in.
While that can make it harder for a city of Lakeland’s size to acquire funding for capital-intensive projects like a large nuclear plant, it has encouraged me to remain attuned to smaller-scale opportunities. Right now, we’re investigating whether to invest in nitrogen generation and are looking to maybe partner with a company that could support the infrastructure side of that. I’ve tried to balance looking for development and innovation opportunities with staying careful about taxpayer money.
What are you proudest of having achieved at Lakeland Electric so far?
We recently replaced our old coal plant that was starting to show wear with a much more reliable 120-megawatt dual peaking plant. We’ve been successful at balancing changes to the generation side of things with ensuring reliability and have also worked out power-purchase agreements with Orlando Utilities Commission and Tampa Electric that have allowed us to continue sourcing affordable power.
I’d say we’re now set going forward to continue either building or sourcing generation that will provide us with consistent power irrespective of changes to policy at either the federal or state level. That puts us in a good position to continue serving our customers no matter what happens in the future. I’m also proud of Lakeland Electric for having maintained strong transmission infrastructure that allows us to act as an intermediary between those larger nearby utilities and other areas.
