The following is a transcript of the Oct. 27, 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 Tom Barry, CEO and Secretary of the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company, which is a joint action agency.
In September, MMWEC announced that after nearly 30 years of service to MMWEC, Ronald DeCurzio was retiring as CEO and Secretary for the joint action agency.
At the same time, the MMWEC Board of Directors announced Tom as the successor for DeCurzio. Prior to taking on his new role, Tom served as the Director of Energy Markets for MMWEC. Tom, thanks for joining us.
Tom Barry
Thanks, Paul. I'm really excited to be here.
Paul Ciampoli
To get our conversation started, I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about what your immediate priorities have been since becoming CEO and Secretary of MMWEC.
Tom Barry
Before I jump into that, let me just say this -- that I'm very excited about this new opportunity I have here. I'm excited mainly because I believe in the mission that we're working towards. I believe the model that we have is the right model -- public power is absolutely paramount for our system.
And I believe in the people that I work with. I've inherited the best of the best. And my future success is really directly tied to their success and so I'm fortunate in that regard. But as for what my short term or immediate term plans are, there's a lot to do, but you certainly have to prioritize certain things.
Taking over for Ron, who was the CEO for eighteen some odd years, is a big undertaking and a big change for MMWEC and I'm humbled by the new responsibility, but also excited, as I said. Some of the things that are of great importance to me are that there's a seamless transition for the entities, the municipalities that we serve. We do a lot -- And I'll get into that in just a bit -- for those municipalities, and it's of great importance that we don't miss a beat in that effort.
And so that's something I'm very focused on. On top of that, we just need to continue to build and improve on our value statement along the lines of those different services that we provide. We do great things, and we need to continue to do those great things.
And maybe more important than doing that is we need to do a little better job than we have in the past when it comes to telling our story and communicating with the members that we work with and potential future members that we work with -- what we're all about, what we stand for, how we do things, why we do things, how our business is structured. We haven't done a fantastic job on that front.
One of my short term goals -- and it's been my goal as Director of Energy Markets before I moved into this new role -- was to get out and get face to face with people, to be on the opposite side of the table of the general managers that we work with and the general managers we don't necessarily work with today and share with them our mission, our model, and the people that I alluded to earlier before.
So that's of great importance in the short term. And then the other thing that I've really wanted to focus on is -- this isn’t a major undertaking, but a little bit of a tweaking -- one of my goals is to change the internal culture a little bit. I want to find a way to have people feel more empowered to feel as if they can have an entrepreneurial spirit. And it's kind of funny to think of an entrepreneurial spirit within a municipality.
But I want each and every employee in this company to be thinking about new and exciting ways to do things, and not just it to be rote and how they've always done it, but to take ownership of the business, to look for new and exciting ways to improve. And maybe along those lines, and maybe more important, is I want people to feel comfortable to reach out of their traditional comfort zone. I think we've fallen a little bit over the years into people working within silos.
I want accounting, working closely with legislative and regulatory. I want legislative and regulatory, working closely with our analysts in the power supply group and all of those subsets need to work together. And so one of my goals is -- it's a bit of a culture shift that provides opportunity for the individual to be a bigger part of the whole. So those are some of my priorities.
Paul Ciampoli
So with respect to that last point that you made, I would assume that you've communicated that with your team there at this point, whether formally or informally.
Tom Barry
My first official day was September 24 and on the morning of September 24, I pulled the entire company into my office.
We were like sardines. It was a little snug, but I purposely did it that way as opposed to going into the boardroom. And we had a little town hall, and that was the priority, that town hall -- the priority of that discussion was just what I alluded to a bit here, which was a little shift in culture, a little how do I say it?
Maybe feeling comfortable taking a little more risk. I thought in the past people were a little too worried about if they wanted to do something, how it would be perceived, and I wanted to get away from whether or not it would be perceived negatively or critiqued.
I wanted people to branch out a little bit and so I called the entire company into my office and we talked about that for quite some time. And I’d like to think it was a productive time spent.
Paul Ciampoli
Yeah, makes sense. Just shifting gears a little bit, I wanted to give you the opportunity to offer an overview of the services and resources that MMWEC offers to its member utilities.
Tom Barry
Yeah. Great question, but really, a tough question in that we do so much. I don't know how long we have on this podcast, but we offer so many different services as a joint action agency -- as the joint action agency in Massachusetts, that it may take some time, but there's the obvious ones we need to discuss. And first and foremost is power supply.
You know, the MLPs that we work with and work closely with, eighty percent of their costs are based on energy costs. And so it's of high priority for them, so it has to be of high priority for us. So we do many, many things around power supply and that goes from the day ahead bidding in ISO New England to the longer term hedging. That's the one ball we certainly -- we can't drop any balls -- but that's of great importance and our services as a joint action agency on the power supply front are paramount. And we've made lots of changes on that front. Just within the two years I've been here, we've really restructured how we go about doing that.
I'll get into it in just a minute about how we have resource development. But on the hedging side, we've restructured it and made it more disciplined. And we've incorporated more of a dollar cost averaging approach than we had in the past, in that every single month, the fifteenth of the month -- maybe not always every month, because the fifteenth falls on a Saturday -- but the fifteenth of every month we go out and we take a small bite of the apple for each and every one of our MLPs that we represent.
And what's great about that is that we've got a wide range of municipalities within our system, some really big, some really, really small. And as a joint action agency, we have this ability to go out and do aggregated purchasing for the whole and so those really small municipalities within our group are able to have the buying power of the really larger municipalities in our group. And so it really speaks to what joint action agency is all about, so power supply is one of our biggest services.
We obviously have other areas that are our primary focus as well. Resource development -- we are structured in a way that we're exceptional on that front, but in order to be exceptional on that front, it takes people. And we've got an engineering staff and a resource development staff headed up by Jason Viadero that is just outstanding, so that's one of the services.
We also have based on our charter and the way we're structured, we have unique financing abilities that allow us to go on behalf of our members and potential other participants into new generation opportunities and our ability to raise capital and things around that is unique and of great importance to our members. We can get into this in just a little bit going forward as part of my longer term goals and we can talk about this -- this area -- the New England area -- is in need of new generation or more generation down the road. We're the entity best structured to help people on that front.
So there's power supply, there's resource development, there's financing capabilities. We also have a strong footprint in energy efficiency run by Zoe Eckert within this company and that has been a great part of our business and or an integral part of our business that I'll get to in just a bit.
And then on the regulatory and legislative services, we've got Kate Roy, who is fantastic at what she does. Our members are very dependent on the latest updates of what's going on on many different fronts. And not only do they want updates, they want representation and we do a tremendous job on that front. And then all of that would never be possible if I weren't to briefly speak about all the back office support and that back office, support ranges from communications to accounting services to forecasting, load forecasting.
You couldn't do risk management if you didn't have a strong forecasting group and you couldn't do any of those things if you didn't have the back office support to make them thrive the way they do. That was a bit of a long winded answer to some of the services we have, but quite frankly, I could go on for another fifteen minutes and get deeper into the details, but I don't know if we have the time on that front, but those are the main ones.
Paul Ciampoli
No, Tom, that's great and no time limit, so feel free to continue if you want to further elaborate on what we just discussed or talk about other areas as well.
Tom Barry
Well, I think that's good for now. But I think we had intentions of maybe talking about Connected Homes and energy storage down the road so we can talk about that when we get there.
Paul Ciampoli
One quick follow up question for you, kind of tapping your experience as Director of Energy Markets there. So just out of curiosity with respect to ISO New England, I would expect that -- let me reframe what my thought is with respect to ISO New England -- any challenges in terms of making sure you guys are on top of rule changes, that type of thing and communicating that to your members?
Tom Barry
There's challenges only because it's so complex, and if we didn't have some of the staff that make it their business to understand those complexities, I'd argue better than anyone else, we wouldn't be successful in what we do. The ISO New England system is a fantastic system, but a complex system and it really requires an expertise in that field. And so we have an analyst group -- that analyst group is hourly dealing with ISO New England, but we also have longer term people within the company that are constantly monitoring the changes in how protocol is set up, is put together.
So, yes, there's challenges in that. It's a complex system, but we've got complex people able to tackle that complexity, if that makes any sense.
Paul Ciampoli
You mentioned Connected Homes, which is a residential demand response program launched in 2020, and it's offered through MMWEC’s electrification and decarbonization program called NextZero.
We've actually done a very thorough job in terms of covering news developments as it relates to this program in our newsletter.
Against that backdrop, I wanted to ask you if you could further describe Connected Homes and detail how MMWEC member utilities benefit from participating in the program?
Tom Barry
Yeah. Super question. I didn't mean to downplay any of the other parts of the business when I spend so much time talking about power supply.
But our Connected Homes in the NextZero program are integral parts of our business. We work with two thousand different homes -- within those two thousand homes, we work with three thousand different devices. Those devices range from thermostats to EVs, EV chargers, residential batteries, mini splits, hot water heaters, you name it.
But we've had great early success in that area, partly because we've committed to that area and partly because we've got Zoe Eckert, who is a phenomenal project manager on that front. It's a big part of our business. We now control -- I worry about using that word control -- but manage seven megawatts of peak load through our Connected Homes program. And that's really interesting when you start thinking about -- and we'll get into this in a little bit -- when we potentially talk about energy storage.
But our ability to manage those devices to mitigate load, peak loads, especially when transmission and capacity charges are at the levels they have been of late -- you know, they're substantial. And any chance we can mitigate those costs for our MLPs, we look to do that and we do it in many different ways and Connected Homes is just one of them. I like Connected Homes on many different fronts -- it's a very automated system, but in the same breath, it's a flexible system.
We're able from Ludlow, Massachusetts, to manage how people are managing or utilizing their thermostat. But that's not to say that they don't have optionality that goes along with those efforts.
There's much optionality built into our Connected Homes program that allows the individual to not lose control of what they're wanting within their own home, and I really think that's of great importance, especially if we want this aspect of the business to thrive, we've got to continue to provide users with that optionality. And the other thing that goes unrewarded or unnoticed is Connected Homes is a tremendous brand recognition.
Our abilities to speak with MLPs and we have quite a few MLPs that are not traditional MMWEC members that utilize our Connected Homes program because it is just that good. That ability to have those conversations on the Connected Homes fronts allow us to have other conversations in other aspects of the business, going back to all those different services that we provide. So it's really been a great foot in the door.
But it's certainly been well received with the many different general managers and stakeholders that we talk with, so it's a big part of our business.
Paul Ciampoli
You mentioned earlier energy storage and as you know, MMWEC has announced a number of energy storage agreements involving its member utilities and the company Lightshift Energy. I want to give you the opportunity to tell our listeners about some of these energy storage projects and detail how those MMWEC member utilities will benefit from the use of energy storage.
Tom Barry
I have been completely amazed by the early results that we've had on this front. And large credit goes to Jason Viadero, who I mentioned earlier before.
But these are all shared savings contracts. Some are already in place and some signed but not operating quite yet. But these are all shared saving contracts with a trusted partner in Lightshift. We have a longstanding relationship with Lightshift going back many, many years.
We've found that their reputation and their backing of their reputation makes them one of the leaders in that industry. And that's our hope is to continue to work with people like Lightshift. We've had great success on that front. Just in the past year alone, we've already put seventeen megawatts in place and those seventeen megawatts in just that one year period that I mentioned have amounted to about $1.5 million dollars in avoided cost savings on transmission -- transmission avoided costs and capacity avoided costs.
So we're really excited about what we've done to date, but we're even more excited about the interest that's coming through the door recently. We are right now -- just within the last couple of months -- signed contracts for another thirteen megawatts of energy storage in the area and that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg in my mind. I'm a big proponent of energy storage projects for many different reasons and so we're having a lot of interest.
We're fielding lots of calls and we're very excited about the partnership we have with Lightshift. And we're very excited about this early success and again, back to this whole notion of brand recognition and maybe even going back to something I should have got to before anything else when I talked about immediate priorities -- what we do is all about trust.
And we need to have the trust of the MLPs and their staff going forward, and so trust on power supply, trust on Connected Homes, trust on energy storage projects.
But what's really interesting, and you've got an educated audience on this front, but in New England transmission charges and capacity charges, as I mentioned earlier, are quite expensive. So anytime we can capture the peak to avoid those costs, it's a great, great, great savings.
I'm very pleased to be part of our analyst group, which is a phenomenal group of individuals that has a ninety two percent success rate going back to capturing peaks, going back for quite some time. But just since 2017, that success rate of ninety two percent has amounted to $28 million dollars in avoided costs for the people we're lucky to work with and so it's tangible dollars.
These systems are of great savings to the individual MLPs and it makes sense that there's more and more interest, so the exciting part of our business. That was maybe a long winded answer to your question.
Paul Ciampoli
No, not at all. Just a quick follow up. I guess if you're another JAA in a different part of the country and perhaps your members are starting to express interest in energy storage, but they haven't gone down as far as the road goes in terms of what you guys have been doing, it seems like it goes without saying that there's a host of benefits that would flow from working from a trusted partner like Lightshift Energy.
Tom Barry
Yep. Lightshift -- in unison with your local joint action agency -- I think that's the recipe for success.
Paul Ciampoli
Tom, just to wrap up, I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about your long term goals for MMWEC.
Tom Barry
Thanks for the opportunity to speak to that point. On top of some of those more immediate concerns -- not concerns, but focuses, my focus in the next five to twelve years -- and I hope to be lucky enough to stick around for that long -- is really two-fold. I've already talked about where we want to build on, which is I spoke about seeing the seamless transition and defending our value statement and expanding the footprint within the state we serve. But on the longer term, I'd like to explore expanding our footprint into more non-traditional areas.
And when I say that, there are forty municipalities within the state of Massachusetts. And I'd like to pursue over the course of those years I've already mentioned, looking into other loads within the state that are traditional IOU loads.
I feel very strongly and I mentioned this when I talked about why I'm excited about what I'm doing. I believe that public power is the right model. I believe we have the better of models when it comes to supplying power.
And it ranges from considerably cheaper rates to local control to reliability, all those things. So for me, it's frankly hard to understand why there isn't more expansion of public power in the state of Massachusetts and in other states. The other big goal I have is that -- and I mentioned this briefly -- when we started talking in the beginning, New England is unique. It's kind of its own peninsula.
I spent a lot of time in the Midwest, and you look at areas like ECAR or PJM or, um, or. Well, I shouldn't say ECAR anymore – MISO and PJM, they all have the luxury of better importation abilities. They can look to the North. They can look to the South. They can look to the East. The West.
We in New England don't have as much of that flexibility. There's not a whole heck of a lot that finds its way through New York.
We've been fortunate in the past to have lots and lots of power coming south from Canada. And we'll continue to have that. But that has been less available than it has in the past, so I'm a big advocate or proponent for diversity, energy independence. And so I want to be part of bringing more generation into the region. We've done tremendous work on the intermittent generation in the past couple of years.
And not to take anything away from that, it's of great, great importance -- all the new intermittent generation, the environmentally conscious generation that we've brought on, and I'm excited about that. I'd like to see more natural gas generation in the region.
Then in the really long term, I'd like to be part of exploring nuclear generation in the region. It's one of those things that if we started today down that road, it wouldn't be for a very long time before the first actual megawatt of generation would come online.
But we've got to start today, and I want to be part of that. And so those are some of the things that I'm really excited about.
But I'm really excited more than anything to work with the staff that I work with. We've got amazing people here at MMWEC and we're all doing great things for a great cause. And those are the things that are on my mind.
Paul Ciampoli
A quick follow up question. One thought that cropped up in my mind as you talked about baseload generation is if you have any sense in terms of the interest of potential data center companies coming into that region?
Tom Barry
It's on everyone's mind. You get a wide spectrum of thoughts on that front. Some people will argue that it's not coming quickly because of the alternatives -- easier site availability, potentially cheaper rates, down in the southern economies. There's many, many factors that lead some people to think that may not be the case in New England. I tend to disagree. I think that it's coming.
I think I'd argue that one of the benefits we have going for us in New England is the really tremendously educated workforce.
I don't need to tell anyone that's potentially listening to this podcast that we in Massachusetts have some of the greatest schools in the country.
And so I think that the potential is there. I don't foresee in the near future these massive facilities that people are talking about. But that's not to say that there's not the potential for more smaller ones coming down the pipe and so I'm excited about that.
Paul Ciampoli
In terms of gas pipeline capacity, any concerns about that?
Tom Barry
Well, that's a tremendous question. You know, for us to have success on the natural gas generation, we have to have success on natural gas capacity.
When people talk about natural gas, quite often they're talking about natural gas delivered at the Henry Hub down in Louisiana. We are a very long ways away from Henry Hub, Louisiana. We are the last stop or one of the last stops on the train.
And that was very clear this winter. Gas prices -- the basis differential between Henry Hub and, and the Massachusetts area -- blew out – and not only was it the basis market blowing out, but the deliverability, the volume deliverability went down considerably. I don't know if people recognize this, but it wasn't only cold in New England, it was cold in the Midwest this past winter and it was cold in the Southeast.
So a lot of that gas that traditionally finds its way all the way up to us was diverted this past winter. So you asked the million dollar question -- one hundred percent, we need to have serious conversations about expanding the natural gas pipeline capacity to feed that new baseload generation that I think this region, and I'll go so far as to say is starving for -- we need to make big strides on energy independence.
And not to go too far off topic. I'm pretty excited of late of what I've seen from the legislative group and the executive branch of the state and I see a recognition of that -- that really makes me excited about what's possible in the future.
Paul Ciampoli
Tom, thanks so much again for taking time to talk with us today.
It's been a really illuminating conversation, and we'd love to have you back -- perhaps around this time next year, we could revisit some of these topics and other topics as well.
Tom Barry
I'd love to do that and thank you so much for the opportunity. I've really enjoyed the conversation.
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.
