Meet Charles
Charles’ career in power began in the summer of 1996 with an Engineering Internship at Byron Nuclear station in the Thermal Systems Group. Since graduating with his Electrical Engineering degree in the year 2000, he began working as a Field Engineer for Siemens-Westinghouse Power Corp. Since then, he has worked for numerous other OEMs including GE, Mitsubishi, legacy Alstom, and even Fuji Electric. His Masters degree in Engineering Management gives him a perfect compromise between an MBA and a pure technical engineering.
The company is young. The expertise behind it is not. Charles has worked on generators and Excitation System Support across 228 territories worldwide. Three hundred verified project assignments. Nine countries with formal letters of appreciation on file from nuclear, coal, and gas power station customers across three continents. The career is documented, the locations are mapped, and the letters are archived.
Generex Consulting exists, in Charles's own words, "to make sure the infrastructure that powers modern life is built, maintained, and kept running to the highest standard the industry can hold itself to." The tagline Keeping Your World Illuminated captures the same idea in fewer words.
One Word. Four Layers
Technical
Historical
Generational
Philosophical
I would hate to have my Jeep dealer try to sell me a transmission or engine overhaul if I didn’t need it. Similarly, I always strive to give my customers factual information to ensure they get exactly the repairs that they need; nothing more, nothing less than I would do if it were my own machine. This aligns with our value of INTEGRITY on the jobsite.
Charles J. Wolfe
Thirty Years. Five Continents.
One Specialty
Regardless of what country or state you’re located, Charles speaks the language of Generators fluently. Mr. Wolfe speaks German, Spanish, Russian, and Swedish languages which is helpful when far from home.
Early Career — Utilities and OEMs
Charles worked for both OEMs and Utilities early in his career, giving him the unique perspective of being both Customer and Service Provider. This unique mix gives him the expertise of an OEM, tempered with the empathy and understanding of an end customer. Whether he’s fixing your generator, or changing the aircraft warning lights on a 450-foot chimney, he understands the power industry.
Field Specialist — Independent Service Providers
The first two thirds of Charles’ career was dedicated to learning the intricacies of working on the global fleet of power generation equipment. His experience spans new unit construction, maintaining existing facilities, as well as active plant boiler operations. The last third of his career has been in the non-OEM independent services niche, where he has enjoyed wider decision-making latitude, faster response cycle times, and a closer relationship with customers.
Principal Consultant — Generex
In 2026, Charles founded Generex Consulting. The company is the natural culmination of everything that came before — an independent firm built around a single specialist who has, across 228 territories and 300 assignments, earned the right to work under his own name. Generex is Charles being accountable to his clients directly, without corporate layers between the engagement and the engineer. One phone call, one person on the turbine deck, one point of accountability from start to finish.
Our Core Beliefs
Four Values. Thirty years of Practice behind them
The Generex values were not written in a conference room. They were written after the career, to describe what had already been true on the turbine deck for three decades.
Safety Comes First. Always
Every decision Charles makes on a job site is measured against one standard — zero injuries to the people on the site, and zero avoidable damage to the equipment. Power generation facilities are inherently dangerous places, and the worst outcomes are not the ones that cost money. They are the ones that cost lives. Charles has seen enough of both to know which matters more.
Integrity, Even when it costs the Sale
Charles has walked into facilities where another provider has quoted work that is not actually needed. He says so. He has also walked into facilities where the proposed scope of work is inadequate, where the OEM has underestimated the problem, or where a repair decision is being made for the wrong reasons. He says so then, too. Providing honest assessments — even when they are difficult to deliver or difficult to hear — is not a marketing position. It is the entire basis on which his clients keep calling him back.
Empathy Under Pressure
When a generator trips offline, the engineers and plant managers on the other end of the phone are not having a good day. Revenue is evaporating. Careers are being scrutinized. Leadership is asking questions that do not have easy answers. Charles job in those moments is not just technical — it is to bring calm, measured judgment into a situation where panic would be the easier option. Three decades of practice have made that kind of presence possible.
Courage to take the Hard Assignments
Basra. Baghdad. Areas that require armed escorts. Heritage machines that every other consultant in the industry has walked away from. Generex's reputation was not built on the easy assignments — it was built on the ones where other specialists hesitated. Charles takes them because the work needs doing and because someone ought to be willing to do it.
Formal Education and Training
When I see a customer’s turbine & generator, I don’t just see a machine—I see the heart and soul of the society I am visiting. I think of all the hospitals, schools, fire departments, offices, and homes that depend on the customer’s equipment to work flawlessly, on demand. This isn’t just a career, it’s a calling!
Education
- Associate in Engineering Science — College of Lake County
- Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, with a minor in Mathematics — University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- Master of Engineering Management — University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Master of Science, Applied Physics — Johns Hopkins University (in progress)
Specialist Training Programs
- Siemens-Westinghouse Field Engineer Program
- Siemens Generator Specialist Program
- Siemens Fiberoptic Vibration Sensor Training
- General Electric Excitation and LCI Program
- General Electric Generator Specialist Program
- AGT Services Advanced Generator Training Program
- Doble Engineering — Partial Discharge and M4100 Tangent Delta Testing