Power Profile: Anna Bellavia, LUZCO Technologies
Engineering was not even on Anna Bellavia’s radar growing up. She intended to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a nurse. But that changed in high school. A math teacher was chatting about engineering and it clicked for Bellavia: “I thought, that’s what I want to be when I grow up.”
And that is exactly what Bellavia did. Today, she has nearly a decade of experience in engineering under her belt and oversees transmission projects from new substations to updating transmission lines.
“I didn’t think I would end up in the power industry with a background in environmental engineering, but I don’t regret a day of it. It is a lot of fun,” Bellavia said. She added that the energy industry is shifting toward renewable sources.
As a project manager and project management analyst lead with LUZCO Technologies, she works mostly on projects for Ameren. Bellavia is one of the dozens of employees the electrical engineering consulting firm has hired in recent years. LUZCO, founded in 2017, has grown from two employees to more than 50. Roughly half of the new hires can be attributed to its work with Ameren Missouri through the Smart Energy Plan.
“When I started, we had half of the employees we have today,” Bellavia said. The firm has nearly doubled in size during the ongoing pandemic. “Starting during a pandemic was definitely difficult. But they did a great job of getting people onboarded and integrated and having flexibility for employees.”
The Smart Energy Plan is helping create jobs – for LUZCO and other Missouri companies, not to mention providing a multitude of other benefits for those in trade positions and other jobs. As a Missourian and environmental engineer, Bellavia finds the plan “exciting.” The plan is helping make the grid more sustainable and more reliable with fewer outages and reduced outage times.
One of the Smart Energy Plan projects LUZCO is currently working on is the new substation in Brookfield, which will be in service next year. The $15 million project will increase efficiency and reliability. The substation is being set up in a “ring bus” instead of in sequence so that if one position fails, the others maintain power.
COVID-19 has altered the way she does her job, Bellavia noted. Where they would have hosted in-person meetings, they now discuss virtually. She mentioned that she often doesn’t see the faces of those on her projects until it’s time to meet on-site.
Outside of her job, Bellavia has a passion for nature. She has a certified native garden and enjoys exploring the outdoors with her family.