The following is a transcript of the Nov. 24, 2025, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now.
I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA's news director.
Our guest on this episode is Carrie Meek Gallagher, who this past summer was appointed by the Long Island Power Authority Board of Trustees as CEO of the public power utility.
She brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in public service, energy regulation, and environmental policy, with a deep focus on Long Island and New York State.
She has over a decade of direct management and leadership experience in the utility sector.
Joining us on this episode is Scott Corwin, President and CEO of APPA, who will lead the conversation with Carrie.
With that, I'll hand things off to Scott and Carrie.
Scott Corwin
Well, thanks, Paul, and welcome, Carrie. Thanks for being with us today.
I would just say right off the bat, I just saw a couple days ago an announcement you were named CEO of the Year by one of the Long Island Chambers, so congratulations.
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Thank you, Scott, and thank you so much for having me on today.
It's always a great opportunity to chat with other folks in the public power sphere.
Scott Corwin
Yeah, no, it's great to have a little bit of time to talk.
Just to kick off the conversation, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your professional journey, how you came to take on this role as CEO at LIPA.
Carrie Meek Gallagher
First, I do just want to say it really is an honor to be able to lead LIPA at such an important moment for both Long Island and the Rockaways and kind of what's happening in our energy space right now.
Every day, I do have the privilege of working with my really dedicated staff, a dedicated board, our labor partners, and all of our community stakeholders to strengthen our electric system and deliver reliable, affordable, and clean energy to the people we serve.
And I would say that just directly before I started here at LIPA, I was serving as the director of the Long Island Office for the New York State Department of Public Service, which is the staff arm of the Public Service Commission.
So literally day-to-day, I managed the regulatory oversight of LIPA and its service provider, PSEG Long Island.
And there my work focused on ensuring affordable rates, maintaining system reliability, and aligning operations with the state's Climate Act.
Before joining DPS, I had served as Acting Deputy Secretary for Energy and Environment in the Executive Chamber. That's inside the New York State Governor's Office.
And there I managed operations and policy across 12 different agencies spanning energy and environment portfolios.
There are more than 5,000 employees and a $2 billion budget, including oversight of LIPA and the other state energy agencies.
So between those two roles over the course of the last five years, that really gave me a lot of valuable insight into LIPA, New York State energy regulation, federal regulation, and everything that's been happening in our world.
Leading up to that, my career has really kept me very deeply rooted on Long Island, serving in roles such as the regional director for the Department of Environmental Conservation -- that's the state agency that regulates the environment -- Chief Sustainability Officer of the Suffolk County Water Authority, so that's a public water utility.
So I broke in my chops there for a public utility.
Commissioner of Environment and Energy for Suffolk County, which is our easternmost county here in New York State.
I was also deputy director of planning for Suffolk County and director of a project at the Rauch Foundation called the Long Island Index, which measured how Long Island was faring in terms of a lot of different metrics.
So I have literally spent my entire career working to strengthen Long Island's communities and leading LIPA is the culmination of that commitment.
Scott Corwin
That's quite a combination of depth in Long Island in various ways and in the Power Authority itself, so that's great.
Now that you're there, can you talk a little bit about some of the priorities that you've set since just being named CEO?
Carrie Meek Gallagher
I really am proud to be leading LIPA during this period of historic transformation in the energy sector.
And since stepping into the role, my priorities have really been centered on stability here at LIPA and in, as much as we can control anything here on the island, affordability and long-term planning.
Some key priorities, and what I'd say are the near term, it's really building a strong, transparent, and accountable partnership with PSEG Long Island. That's our service provider -- the contract was just extended with them.
Building upon the strong relationship that currently exists with our local labor, including IBEW 1049.
We are holding the line on spending with our proposed 2026 budget. We're going to have really no impact on customer bills. So that took some doing, but given the affordability crisis many are facing, we felt that was important.
We are going to be launching in the near term a robust strategic planning process to help guide our decision making over the next five years.
Of course, it's fraught with a lot of uncertainty as most, not just in public power, but all across the energy sector, people are facing uncertainty as to what's happening, but we're going to do our best to plan, even with all those known unknowns.
Continuing our record investments in system reliability, continuing to advance progress towards New York's clean energy goals.
There have been some setbacks with changes at the federal level and inflationary pressures and supply chain pressures, but we are still marching forward in that vein.
And ensuring every initiative is really grounded in affordability, in equity, and customer value.
And I'd say that at the core, our focus is simple -- It's reliability, it's affordability, and it's a smart transition to clean energy.
Scott Corwin
You mentioned trying to pin down some of that uncertainty and getting your pieces in place. And one, you mentioned on the operation side with PSEG.
I was wondering, because this isn't something that we see with every public power entity, of course, where you have the different agreements in place.
Can you talk a little bit more about the details of what that agreement entails and how that developed?
Carrie Meek Gallagher
As you mentioned, Scott, LIPA, we have a very unique model here.
So LIPA owns the transmission and distribution system on Long Island and the Rockaways, but we have alwaysoutsourced our day-to-day management of the electric grid, at least since LIPA came into existence in 1998.
Since 2014, we've partnered with PSEG Long Island, which is a subsidiary of the Public Service Enterprise Group, for management services, meaning that they do the day-to-day operations and maintenance of the grid and they are public facing with the customers, so the bill comes from PSEG Long Island and not LIPA.
LIPA has the responsibility to ensure that we adequately finance those operations.
We're governed by the board of trustees, so we're making all the big picture decisions, long-term strategic policy direction, setting electric rates, ensuring reliability, affordability, aligning with all of New York State's energy goals.
So just recently…the board approved a five-year extension with PSEG Long Island.
So we have certainty through 2030 with who our service provider is -- that gets to the stability and at least now we know where we stand for the next five years. This particular contract at this point in time really was a big win for customers.
It reduces cost to customers for savings about $17 million over the five-year period as compared to the current contract. It tightens up our budget controls. It increases PSEG Long Island's liability cap. It enhances LIPA's oversight of storm preparedness, and in particular, some technical standards.
And that was important to us as the asset owner to have more control over technical standards, in particular when it came to asset management decisions.
And it maintains the rigorous performance metrics that have always been part of this operations service agreement model that we've had.
So as I said, the contract is extended for five years. It expires in 2030. There is no possibility or no option for an extension at that point. It means that we will be issuing a competitive procurement in early 2028 for a new service provider.
We have three years, but we'll have to be planning for that over the course of the next three years.
Scott Corwin
Start to get ahead of time and then it gets bid out broadly at that point.
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Yes, and so part of what we'll be figuring out is how do we -- given a lot of the instability and things that have happened over the last year and a half, actually, and even since Tropical Storm Isaias here -- how do we ensure that there are interested parties willing to come here and bid into the Long Island system and to think that we could be an attractive option for them to maybe expand their territory or their operating universe.
Scott Corwin
And is that likely to be a five-year term as well, or is that to be determined?
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Typically, what we've done in the past is a 10-year term so that there's more certainty.
And of course, as you know, Scott, you can usually get better rates for your customers if you can do longer-term deals.
So I would anticipate it would be something more similar where it would be like a 10-year contract with an option for a five-year extension. That's more typical of what the model has been in the past.
Scott Corwin
Well, that makes sense.
That's the operations side and then on the power supply side, I know you've got a mix of resources up there, but it looked like you also had an agreement recently to bring TEA in -- the Energy Authority, who a lot of folks around public power know, provide some power supply and management services.
But could you talk a little bit about your power supply dynamic there and then what services TEA will be providing under that partnership?
Carrie Meek Gallagher
We are very excited about our new partnership with the Energy Authority.
We know that, as you alluded to, they bring deep market expertise. Folks in public power are very familiar with them and we believe it'll enhance our ability to manage LIPA's power supply reliably and cost effectively while reinforcing our commitment to customer value.
We've always had a strong hedging program and that has helped with some of those affordability concerns and also [the] ability to budget better.
So starting January 1st, the Energy Authority will serve both as our power supply manager and fuel management services provider.
So in particular, their responsibilities will include power trading across the NYISO, PJM, and the ISO New England markets. Those are all the markets that we currently operate in.
RTO bidding and scheduling, strategic market optimization to reduce costs and enhance system value, and then management of fuel supply for LIPA's generating assets to ensure that cost controls and reliability targets are met.
So we really think that this partnership aligns with our long-term strategy and goals of strengthening our grid operations, enhancing our market performance, and supporting the region's clean energy transition.
Scott Corwin
Okay, great. Well, thanks.
It's a complex world these days, and especially in the markets that you're in there -- it's great to bring on some expertise.
You mentioned fuel supply for generation assets. Can you talk a little bit more about what are some of the assets LIPA has had historically and then maybe segue into some of the projects that you've got coming up you'd like to highlight?
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Yeah, and to clarify, the generating assets on the island -- we contract out as well.
We had these long-term power purchase agreements with National Grid Ventures, but we pay for the fuel. We ensure that there's adequate fuel source for those assets.
So there's in particular the big three, I'll call them. It's the Northport Power Plant, E. F. Barrett Power down in Island Park and then we have Port Jefferson in Port Jefferson, New York.
And those are the big fossil fuel-based generators and there are other small plants as well, but those are the big three.
One of the things that we're in the midst of right now, which is what I'm talking about, some of those known unknowns, is literally every single power purchase agreement, capacity purchase agreement, and power supply agreement that we have, we are beginning to and will be renegotiating over the course of the next three years.
So it's a pretty intense time for us, given as you're well aware, what's been happening, you know, if you follow it all, I'm sure you've been following like what's been happening in PJM, even in ISO New England, so it's quite interesting times for us and will require us to be fairly creative in moving forward.
And part of that, Scott, is here in New York, we thought we would have a lot more renewables online by now than we do.
As I said, there were some setbacks between supply chain issues, inflationary pressures, and then changes from the federal government that have delayed the onboarding of some of those large-scale renewable projects that had been anticipated.
So we have to make that up with more traditional sources of power while we wait for more movement on the large-scale renewables.
And in the meantime, we're doubling down on some projects.
So we do have, so I'll talk about some of those projects that are all in that clean, helping us transition to a clean energy future here on the island.
The first is that South Fork Wind is now completed and fully operational. It is America's first commercial scale offshore wind farm. It includes 12 turbines with a capacity of 132 megawatts. That's enough clean power for approximately 70,000 Long Island homes.
This is something where LIPA on its own went out to bid in 2017. And so this was completely on its own. This was not a state-driven initiative. This was LIPA taking the lead.
Construction began in 2022. The first power was delivered late in 2023, and all turbines were energized in early 2024.
So it's a powerful example of how offshore wind can strengthen our reliability, cut emissions, and very important to our base here was to create union jobs in New York State.
And I would say it's actually been performing very well in its first year.
Overall, and sometimes I mess up these numbers, but I did double check them right before getting on, the net capacity factor, annual net capacity factor was 46% for its first year of operation. In the first half of 2025, that jumped to 53%.
And as you know, even the most efficient natural gas fired plants are usually typically operating around a 53% capacity factor, at least here in New York State.
So we were very pleased with those results and we're continuing to learn from that.
So that's one that's offshore wind working for us here on Long Island.
The second is that Long Island is approaching its 100,000th residential solar installation.
This is a result of more than a decade of work supporting rooftop solar in the region, and it reflects one of the most successful distributed solar markets in the country.
So we're leading New York State, certainly in this area, and because of the tax credits that are expiring at the end of this year, we're a little concerned about drop-offs, so we're going to be working with our partners, partners in the state, partners in labor, partners with the developers and with the industry associations to see if we can't help bridge the gap a bit on what those tax credits allowed and what we could do to still make solar affordable here on Long Island, because it is a clean energy technology that is widely supported.
People love it and it's working for us, so we want to keep that momentum going.
And I'd say the third thing in the area…is we've been migrating all of our residential customers to time of day rates. So that's like just under a million customers.
So we have 1.2 million customers -- total about 3.3 million people across Long Island and Rockaway. So it's a huge chunk.
And we are the first utility in New York State to move its full residential customer base to this modern rate structure.
Time of day rates give customers a real choice. If you can shift your usage to lower cost periods, you can reduce your bills. And when customers do so together, it helps lower the system's peak load.
So the idea is really from 3 to 7 p.m., that peak load period, it costs us the most to supply that energy and electricity. If they can reduce it, we can save money. We can pass those savings right on to our customers. And so literally everyone will be migrated by the end of this year.
Everyone's already on AMI data or AMI infrastructure for their meter reading, and we'll have time of day data.
So we're thinking that this will help us also get a little bit more creative in our rate design and rate setting to incentivize continued behaviors we'd like to see that will help us shift that load or shave that peak a bit moving forward. We don't have to build the transmission or generation just for those peak periods.
Scott Corwin
Are there already enough customers that have shifted that you're seeing some of those impacts already?
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Yes, we've seen about a 2% shift.
We'll obviously, by the time we have everyone at the end of this year, maybe by second quarter next year, we'll have a better sense.
But really, honestly, by the end of next year, when we'll have seen all customers go through every seasonal billing cycle, will really give us a sense of it's working as designed or if we need to make any tweaks. And that will also help inform where we need to go with additional creative rate design.
Scott Corwin
Yeah, that'll be really interesting to watch and closely watch because there’s a lot of folks in public power who are going that direction or looking at it, but not many with that size and scale that you're taking on there. So that's really impressive.
Carrie Meek Gallagher
I think those three things combined, right, Scott, if we have South Fork Wind, we have the solar, residential solar rooftops, and time of day rates, it's really helping show not just New York State, but the country, what a real clean energy transition can look like.
It can be reliable, it can be affordable, and can deliver results and that's what we're going for.
Scott Corwin
I remember seeing the announcements on the offshore wind when it first went operational, but that's a good update and interesting to hear -- that's quite a high capacity value you've gotten out of that so far and expect it to go higher, it sounds like.
Carrie Meek Gallagher
It's going to be interesting. One of the things, as we more fully electrify, we anticipate larger loads in the winter than we currently have -- right now we are very much a summer peaking utility.
I don't anticipate that on Long Island, we will ever transition to a winter peaking. Some places upstate in New York are anticipating that. I do think we'll level out more, but having wind, offshore wind, especially, there's more wind in the winter.
So we'll have that as a wintertime resource. So it will allow spreading of…energy sources across in the winter. So it's just nice to know that we have that as a reserve for the wintertime coming up.
Scott Corwin
That's a lot of already you've got underway and looking a little bit more into the future, are there some longer term goals?
I know you're just heading into a strategic planning process that might help refine those, but are there some already on the board that you have in mind that you could talk about on the longer term scene for LIPA?
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Yeah, and I'd say that number one is really just to continue to build on reliability.
Everywhere across the country, but especially here, we have an aging infrastructure. There hasn't been tons of investments. For a long period of time, there weren't a lot of investments. We've been investing over the past 10 years.
But one of the things that we're looking at, we're doing a whole assessment of our assets and in particular our substations. So we know that we're going to be needing to modernize our substations, so we need to plan out for that.
We know that there's more storm hardening we have to do of our critical transmission and distribution corridors because of the extreme weather events that we're experiencing.
Things like the typical vegetation management -- how can you improve upon that? Because that is the number one cause of the system disruptions, right? Spanning strategic undergrounding where it makes sense and makes improvise the most benefit for us. Storms are just becoming more frequent and more severe. So overall working on strengthening the grid's resilience will remain a top priority.
Affordability is something -- and I just got off of actually a CEO call about affordability. It was top of mind for everyone. How do you maintain affordability given all of these rising costs that we see coming at us, both in public power and of course in the investor owned utility world?
So using some of those tools we talked about before, like time of day rates that'll help customers manage their bills, and looking at can we get more creative in our rate design, what kind of data can we mine from everyone beyond on automated meter infrastructure to help us with that, just ensuring that we can use all those tools now to maintain affordability moving forward.
And a little bit that we touched on before too, like resource adequacy, I mentioned that we have to renegotiate all of our agreements.
So really ensuring that we have a reliable and balanced power supply in every season as electrification accelerates. So, hopefully integrating more offshore wind in the not too far distant future, continuing the momentum on solar.
One thing we've been struggling with a little bit here because of moratoriums is energy storage, but we know that will be a key as well, especially you could in theory replace peakers with storage – especially if we can get longer duration storage in place.
We'll also be looking at new creative lower cost capacity solutions, new technologies. Something that was a big topic in the New York State Climate Act was this notion of DEFRs, distributed emission free resources.
So we're kind of chasing that magic unicorn, right? I think everyone across the country might be to a certain extent.
What can we do differently with distributed resources, with demand flexibility? Any market-based approaches that help meet our reliability needs without overbuilding our infrastructure…ensuring we're developing a supply portfolio that meets the state climate goals while keeping customer costs low to the greatest extent possible.
And through all of that, we have to ensure that we're continuing to set high performance standards and hold our service provider, in this case, PSEG Long Island, accountable for delivering excellent operations.
So I think again, it's really just how do we make sure that we have a grid that is reliable, affordable, and built for the future. And more to come as we really dive into that long-term strategic planning.
And then hopefully I'll get to hear about what some of the other public power entities have been doing in that vein as I have a chance to get out there more and interact with folks.
Scott Corwin
Yeah, for sure.
That reliability, affordability, and especially in the resource adequacy world and then also just performance excellence is top of mind for a lot of our members. So there's a lot of folks you can share with on that and a lot of resources on our website as well for staff to pull from.
And APPA is obviously committed to those same themes and helping to support you and LIPA in those goals, so appreciate it.
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Scott, one other thing I just wanted to highlight because it is new -- it was just announced last week -- is that JD Power in their 2025 electric utility business customer satisfaction study named PSEG Long Island number one in business customers in the East large segment.
So we were very excited about this news because it shows that -- and that was like an 11 point increase -- I mean, they went up 11 ranking.
So that was a huge leap and it shows just how much outreach there has been and work there's been done to really connect with our business community, especially at a time when we have a lot of small businesses and small businesses are struggling.
So the fact that we've been doubling down with PSEG Long Island on ensuring that our business customers are having all of their needs met was just really, really great news in a sea of not always great news for us in public power.
Scott Corwin
Yeah, that's good.
I know that's a critical partnership for you. So that's great to hear.
I was going to say that's a lot of accomplishments already and exciting times ahead and you're just getting started in this role. So I really appreciate you coming in with us today.
Anything else you wanted to add before we close, before I hand it back to Paul here?
Carrie Meek Gallagher
No, let me just thank you guys again for having me on and I look forward to continuing the conversation.
Scott Corwin
I know that we all at APPA and I personally really look forward to working with you.
And it's great to hear and hear all you've got going on and really appreciate you coming by and speaking with us today for a little bit.
So thank you very much, Carrie.
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Thank you.
Scott Corwin
Yeah, and we'll hand it back to Paul.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks, Scott.
So Scott and Carrie, thanks so much for participating in the podcast today.
It's been a really informative conversation.
And Carrie, I just wanted to let you know you have an open invitation to return as a guest at some point in the future with either myself in conversation or Scott doing it again.
So I just wanted to extend that invitation to you.
Carrie Meek Gallagher
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I'm sure I'll take you up on that as we have more exciting accomplishments and questions to muddle through as a public power entity.
Paul Ciampoli
And thanks to our audience for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, graphic and digital designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli, and we'll be back next week with more from the world of Public Power Now.
