The following is a transcript of the March 30, 2026, 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 John Tzimorangas, President and CEO of Energy New England.
Along with his role at Energy New England, John also serves as President of the Board of Directors for the Northeast Public Power Association.
John, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
John Tzimorangas
Thank you, Paul. Thank you for having me.
Paul Ciampoli
So John, I'm pretty confident in saying that I'd imagine the majority of our listeners to this episode are aware of Energy New England.
But for that segment of our listeners who may not have familiarity with Energy New England, could you provide an overview of Energy New England?
John Tzimorangas
Energy New England was founded in 1998 as an electric cooperative under a state law in Massachusetts.
We're owned by six municipal light companies, Braintree, Concord, Hingham, Reading, Taunton, and Wellesley. Those are all Massachusetts municipal light plants, public power.
We became an organization as a shared services organization. The state of Massachusetts deregulated the electric industry back in 1998 and the founders were looking for a place to put the shared service experiences really around power supply, power supply services as they were deregulating the market here in Massachusetts.
And no one really knew what the outcome was going to be or how it was going to look and trying to figure out how the municipal light plants would be served when we didn't really know what kind of expertise we needed.
That became the cornerstone of why they started the organization.
Paul Ciampoli
Just switching gears a little bit with more specificity in terms of what you guys do on a daily basis or regular basis.
What are the services that Energy New England provides to its public power utility owners? And can you offer examples of how Energy New England delivers value and benefits to those utilities?
John Tzimorangas
The bulk of the business is power supply portfolio management.
You think of it more as how your financial advisor does your portfolio, retirement portfolio, or investment portfolio.
Each of our customers, and we have 29 municipal systems throughout New England that we do this for, all have a different portfolio.
They might have some of the same projects, some of the same arrangements, and some of the same contractual agreements in their portfolio, but not one of them has exactly the same.
We try to cater to what their goals are, what their boards might want, what their demographics are in each one of the communities and try to build power supply portfolios around that. So we do all the contract negotiation, hedging and strategies. We manage their budgets.
We manage the credit and risk management for them under the power supply. Power supply tends to be somewhere between 75 and 80% of a municipal utility’s budget.
We also have and do market participation in ISO New England. We have a senior vice president of regulatory who sits on a lot of the committees for ISO that makes the decisions on what the rules are going to be, how things are going to play out in the market.
He was also a three-time NEPOOL chair, which is kind of the stakeholder committee, and he's represented the public power sector for the last nine years.
There's a couple of other parts of the organization.
We also have a lobbying organization called ENE Strategies that works with 31 municipal utilities. That's really about making sure that we know what's going on at the state legislatures and making sure that anything that might involve public power or the MLPs, we're on top of.
A lot of times we can't necessarily stop everything, but we can work with our state legislators to make sure that the public power entities are recognized and what we do is recognized as they're going through creating energy law and so on.
We also have two other sides of the business.
We have an energy efficiency electrification and electric vehicle section of the company that does home energy audits, that does rebate processing.
We have an EV group that works anywhere from education for folks in the municipal utility space, customers who may be interested in an electric vehicle.
We do dealer engagements. We go out to the dealers and work with them to do drive and rides in different communities who might want it and try to make sure that anybody within the municipal space has an opportunity to go to a particular dealer or not.
And then the last thing, back in 2020, we purchased a company called Utility Services out of Vermont.
They are one of the top NERC compliance companies, and they have about 120 clients throughout the United States.
I think your question around how does that help -- managing the power supply, managing the portfolios, making sure that the billings are correct, making sure that the utilities are getting what they contracted for, how the budgets are put together, how the portfolios are put together, when it's 70 to 80% of your budget is critical for these guys to be able to provide a high level of service and quality rates to their customers.
The proud thing in Massachusetts is the municipal utilities, on average, are about 40 to 50% cheaper than the investor-owned utilities.
Paul Ciampoli
So just two quick follow-up questions.
One thing that jumped out at me in terms of the great value that you guys provide with respect to power supply portfolio management is you're not taking a cookie cutter approach, right, with respect to the member services.
That seems like that's a key element to what you guys are offering.
John Tzimorangas
I think one of the reasons why the company has grown -- and in 1998 when it started, there was only four systems here. It was really the starting companies and the owners -- we're now up to 29, and I'm proud to say we have at least one customer in every state in New England. So, when we say Energy New England now, that's true.
The approach here has always been to create something that meets the needs and wants, really, of the municipal utility customer -- whatever they're looking for.
And again, we have varying folks that, their demographics say we want to be, 100% green, or we want to be renewable up to this point. They have their own policies internally, so we build portfolios to that.
The other thing is we do a lot of the things I mentioned in that portfolio management and others. We do that based on what customers want and that's how we also go ahead and price the services.
So we'll build you a custom list of what you want us to provide or how you want us to work with your folks inside your utility and do it that way, so there's no cookie cutter approach.
There's probably not, like I said, one system that has something exactly similar to anybody else.
Paul Ciampoli
And now you also mentioned the person who represents the public power sector as it relates to ISO New England.
I would imagine that's a key role, given -- it's fair to say there's a lot of market changes going on nationwide these days.
And also, the rubber can really hit the road financially with respect to possible changes at ISO New England in terms of rules, right?
John Tzimorangas
Absolutely and Dave Cavanaugh, who is my senior VP of regulatory, he spent years at ISO New England when it first started. He spent time at NSTAR, which is the predecessor to Eversource, so Dave's been around.
He has an understanding and grasp of what people are talking about, what changes they want to make. And he's able to dissect it down to most of us that then can understand.
He kind of brings it down to where, how is it going to affect the municipal utility? How is it going to affect my customers? What can we do within these rules to protect ourselves? Or what can we push back on?
He works very closely with John Coyle of Duncan and Allen on some FERC things.
We've taken things to FERC when we've had to, but he is, to your point, invaluable just because of the experience level that he has, where he's come from, and how he fully understands and grasps this.
Because I'll tell you, I think the Market Rules book was a three-ring binder. It's now somewhere like 1,200 or 1,300 pages.
Paul Ciampoli
Yeah, that's a great example of why all not only just New England public power, but just nationwide. I'm sure that that's a similar growth in terms of what's going on in other markets as well. So thanks for those details, John.
So I just want to switch gears here and talk about something we actually covered in APPA's newsletter.
And as you know, in January, FirstLight, a clean power producer, developer, and energy storage company, announced the expansion of the company's landmark municipal utility power purchase agreement with Energy New England.
Can you offer additional details on this expanded PPA?
John Tzimorangas
The original deal was actually struck during COVID in 2020.
It was the first time 21 public power utilities in New England got together to purchase quite a bit of power from two different generating stations, the FirstLight owned hydro stations.
And it was in the neighborhood of 200 million kilowatt hours a year that they purchased.
We did an additional deal with them in 2022 for another 110 million from two other generating stations. So we've done quite a bit of work with FirstLight. They're the largest hydro producer up here.
And looking at the deal from 2020 that was going to expire in ‘29, we went to the customers and said, geez, we get some real good pricing out of this. It's a good, reliable source. It's a renewable energy source. Hydro's considered renewable up here.
So we said, why don't we extend this deal to 2040? And all 21 people put their hand up and said, okay, let's do that. You know, it's a good time to do it.
The one thing we're facing up here, Paul, is there aren't a lot of renewable type resources that are being built.
As you guys put in your information all the time, you look at what's going on, say with the offshore wind. We were supposed to have 3 to 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind up here, say by 2030 or 31.
The only offshore wind we have is about 820 megawatts that went online officially on Friday.
And there isn't anything else in the pipeline and you're talking about 5, 6, 7 years to build something. So we're well beyond that 2030 timeframe.
So doing these kind of arrangements with other folks that have these renewable sources where we can extend it out, you know, we try to.
In 2021, we crafted some legislation -- ENE did -- to mirror the state goals for non-emitting energy and put the municipal light plants in the same guidelines as the state.
And I'm happy to say that every customer that we have in the state of Massachusetts is already at the 50% goal for 2030.
And it's by doing these kinds of deals that you asked about that gets those folks there and then keeps them there beyond that timeframe. We're not just trying to get them to 2030.
We're trying to make sure we have enough of these resources in their portfolios because 2040 goes to 75%, so the guideline changes.
Paul Ciampoli
And as you noted with the new unpredictability as it relates to offshore wind, again, this is where Energy New England plays a key role in terms of helping to provide guidance to utility members.
John Tzimorangas
Absolutely and since 2020, and us taking this approach and the customer base looking for things like this, we've done 643 megawatts of non-emitting arrangements, deals, contractual agreements with hydro, nuclear, onshore wind.
We do have a small piece of that offshore wind I mentioned. It was a solicitation from the state, but we were able to get ourselves in there for any excess that there might be and that's a first in the nation type deal, because I don't know that there are any other public power entities that have gotten into an offshore wind deal.
So now that they're commercial -- actually, they're commercial in another month.
But now that they're online fully as of Friday, we're in there talking to them about what additional megawatts might be available for our customers.
Paul Ciampoli
And as far as FirstLight goes, it sounds like it's fair to say, familiarity breeds confidence in terms of your being able to go back to those guys and cut new deals, right?
John Tzimorangas
They've delivered on their promises. They have a good pool of facilities within New England, especially down by the Connecticut River and so on. So we've been able to sit with them and have a good negotiating strategy.
I mean, they're looking to obviously maximize their assets, which clearly we understand, but we've been able to get them to be a good partner, good pricing. It gives them some stability from a revenue point of view.
And municipal light plants, there is no better credit risk ever, right?
Because here in Massachusetts, especially, we have a law that basically says you have to pay the cost of production, which means you have to pay your bills. There is no option here.
If you have to, God forbid, raise your rate to pay the bills, you have to do that. That's state law, so we become a very good credit risk to the other side.
Paul Ciampoli
My last question for you is I want to talk about Energy New England's wholesale risk management energy trading activities.
Can you offer additional details on Energy New England's wholesale risk management energy trading activities, and how do the services that Energy New England provides to its utility owners help them navigate the region's energy markets?
John Tzimorangas
Well, I think a lot of it is what we started to talk about is building those individual portfolios, making sure that we balance the risk in them -- We don't want people to be too heavy in one resource or the other.
We try to dollar cost average. And the easiest way to tell people is to use that example of your financial planner, when they're kind of building your financial portfolio, is we try to do it the same way because it gives us the best ability.
A lot of times we'll take a certain percentage of people's portfolios and say, you should have, for example, 3% of your portfolio be in this resource.
So nobody's over hedged, particularly in one resource or the other.
They may have the types of resources, but not necessarily one contractual agreement.
That provides them stability. The biggest thing here -- and I was a general manager in Hingham for eight years, so before I came here -- and the two biggest things you needed to do as a municipal utility and as the leader of a municipal utility is keep the lights on and keep your rates stable.
So, using services like we have here and us understanding what each individual customer is looking for.
So we have quarterly updates with every one of our customers. Each one of our customers has kind of a quote, portfolio manager here in the office and a backup. So, they understand what's in your portfolio. They know where you guys are. Has load increased? Has it not? What should we do with this?
And every quarter we sit down with each person -- it could be 5 minutes, it could be an hour and a half. It just depends what's going on within the municipality, because the more we know about what they're doing or what's going on in their service territory, the better we can assist them.
And I think having the energy efficiency side of the house as well helps us because we also know what the municipal utilities are doing on their side to -- either whether it's peak demand reduction or whether it's just pure energy efficiency, are they installing heat pumps at a higher rate than others?
All that plays together. That's why the whole suite of services really goes well together and adding the utility services, the NERC compliance, that also adds on because a lot of our customers, not all, are in that NERC space where they have to file compliance reports quarterly.
They have audits every five to six years on their system, or if they have generation, it might be a little bit more. So we try to provide a whole suite of services that can work with folks that have people in their shops. Or if they don't have anybody, because we do have a lot of smaller utilities up here, we can provide that service for them.
Paul Ciampoli
Yeah, and that's invaluable. So yeah, that makes sense.
So John, I just wanted to thank you again for taking the time to speak with us today.
I try to be diligent in terms of covering everything that you guys do, but I'm sure there are additional topics that we could cover on a future episode, so I'd love to have you back at some point.
John Tzimorangas
Absolutely and listen, I thank you guys for all the work that you do. And it's very interesting to read what's going on around the country at the same time.
I'm lucky enough to sit on the APPA CEO Climate Committee. And I get to hear what is going on in other parts of the country and it's interesting to contrast it to what we're doing up here.
And some of our brethren are happy that they don't have kind of an RTO or a market base, right?Because it's very different and if you look at the cost throughout the country.
So we appreciate everything you do. You've been a terrific advocate for what goes on up here and anytime you'd like to have a conversation about anything going on, please let me know.
Paul Ciampoli
Will do, John. Well, thanks again.
John Tzimorangas
Thank you, Paul.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks 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.
