The following is a transcript of the March 9, 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 Kris Sellstrom, who in January became general manager of the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities, the public power utility that serves Jamestown, New York.
He succeeds David Leathers, who retired as BPU's general manager in January.
Kris, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Kris Sellstrom
Hi, Paul.
Thanks for having me.
Paul Ciampoli
Kris, just to get our conversation started, I want to talk about your career at Jamestown BPU.
As you know, you began your career at the utility in 2011 as a junior engineer, and then subsequently held several other positions at the utility prior to being named general manager.
So against that backdrop, could you detail your career path at the utility?
Kris Sellstrom
I started at the University of Vermont, where I earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. The summer after my senior year, I interned at the Echo Science Center in Burlington, which was pretty interesting because at the time, the utilities across the state of Vermont were rolling out a statewide smart metering program and my role was to educate the community about what smart meters were and why it mattered.
That experience really sparked my interest in the power industry.
That fall, I came back home to my hometown, Jamestown, and joined the BPU as a junior engineer.
Starting off there, I got a lot of hands-on experience with substations, control systems, eventually led to a major rebuild of our SCADA system.
And during that time, I also went back to school and got a master's degree in business from Penn State Behrend, which helped broaden my perspective a bit from the technical side into the business side.
Over the early years, I went from a junior engineer to an engineer and eventually to a senior engineer. After that, I went into the energy and gas resources role to manage the power plant, purchasing, sales, energy transactions, which gave me a much deeper dive into kind of the business side of the electric utility.
And then a few years after that, I transitioned back into the transmission and distribution department.
The distribution manager focused mostly on planning, capital projects, team building, things like that. And then from there, I moved to the deputy general manager role and then ultimately became the general manager. So it's been a really interesting career so far.
It's kind of pulled together the technical, operational, and business experience. It's been really exciting and a lot of fun.
Paul Ciampoli
So what have been your immediate priorities since taking on the role of general manager?
Kris Sellstrom
Safety, stability, and learning, probably my first few goals.
Even though I've been with the utility for 14 years and had quite an experience in the electric division, this role comes with the responsibility for other divisions, including water, wastewater, district heat, and solid waste that we also manage.
So still plenty to learn, which has been a lot of fun and very exciting.
I've also spent a lot of time meeting with our pretty amazing team, just to make sure that I learn who they are and are aware of their needs and challenges, make sure they have the resources they need to keep the momentum going.
I've been trying to do one-on-one meetings with all 140 employees within the first year, so we're making some progress on that, but it's a very time-consuming effort on top of everything else going on.
We're also in the middle of building a new fiber division. So that's been a big, big effort right now as well.
And then I think moving forward over the next couple of years, generation's going to be a big issue.
Our steam turbines are getting up there in age and, you know, in today's economic and political environment, we're trying to figure out what does a replacement power plant look like to replace our steam turbines.
Paul Ciampoli
And do you feel with respect to the last item, any anxiety in terms of the time frame, in terms of having to plan to make sure you can replace those aging steam turbines?
Kris Sellstrom
Absolutely. Not just the timeline, but also trying to understand what technology is even available that meet all the criteria for our system, but also for New York State.
It's not clear what that pathway is going to look like just yet.
Paul Ciampoli
So just switching gears for a little bit, and this is something that we actually reported in our newsletter at APPA.
In early January, the utility announced that it had executed renewed electric flex rate agreements with two regional manufacturers, providing them with slightly lower electric rates in exchange for continued economic development investments and stable workforce numbers.
So could you offer additional details on these specific agreements as well as describe the flex rate program?
Kris Sellstrom
Economic development is core to our mission. We provide pretty highly reliable services and competitive rates for all of our customers, but a handful of these customers have very high load factors. They employ a lot of people.
They run multiple shift operations. They export a lot of their product outside of the county and so those few customers get a discount if they engage in us with a contract through our economic development rate, our SC6 or flex rate agreement.
In order to do that, they have to maintain investment in the facility every year.
We meet with them fairly often. They have to meet a pretty high load factor and headcount requirement.
Their energy consumption has to be pretty high and pretty consistent.
They do have the election to choose 100% renewable power each year, which gives us some insight into the community demand for clean energy.
And while it's not universal, a handful of them have shown some interest in paying a bit more for the clean energy.
We've got 6 contracts that support over 1,000 jobs. If anyone's interested in moving their business to Jamestown, we have very highly reliable power and….vacant spaces and capacity for new business so we're definitely interested in that.
We also have some other components to the agreements, including demand response, lower rates at higher load factors.
They're typically four-year agreements. Sometimes they go into to one or two year agreements, depending on how new the business is and how stable it is in that load factor criteria.
Paul Ciampoli
Now, you mentioned building a new fiber division, so against that background, as you know, BPU in August of 2025 announced the official launch of its community-owned open access fiber network.
Can you offer additional details on this effort, including the timeline for completion?
Kris Sellstrom
Yeah, this one's super exciting. Another division on top of all the other utilities we provide.
Since the late 90s, we've actually had fiber in our system. We mostly used it for communication to our substations and for public entities such as the local schools and the city and the county. And we've also leased some of that dark fiber, that excess fiber strands to businesses over the years through dark fiber leases.
A few years ago, our mayor was concerned about internet affordability and speeds along with the economic potential for remote workers. And then he initiated a project to evaluate if the city should develop its own fiber network.
It didn't progress at the time, but a funding opportunity came out a few years later that was aligned with more of a utility model.
So the BPU applied for and was awarded a $30 million grant to deploy [an] open access fiber network to our entire electric service territory, which is about 25 square miles.
The fiber will be brought to every home that signs up for service before the end of this year at no charge, and it's capable of providing 2 gigabit per second internet.
The cool thing about this network is unlike traditional internet providers who provide the internet and the infrastructure, the BPU is not going to be the internet service provider.
Instead, we're the infrastructure provider, and there will be multiple private businesses competing for the consumer internet service, as well as potentially other digital services that might come to fruition on the network.
We think of it much like a road where the community owns the road and private companies like FedEx or UPS can travel that road and bring the deliveries to the customers.
Our project will pass about 13,000 homes and businesses, pretty aggressive timeline due to the funding limitation.
It actually ends December 31st this year, so the entire project has to be built in just over a year and a half. We're well on our way, but we still have quite a bit to do.
Our construction partners have installed about 70% of close to 1,000,000 feet of fiber that are going up. We've got quite a bit of make-ready work done.
We still have some to do, all the poles, pole replacements, and things we needed to make space for the fiber.
Our remaining work is about 5,000 customer drops, lots of splicing, marketing to our community, and setting up new customers and actually getting them installed.
We have various internet plans available as well. I think we start around $38.25 for a 300 megabit per second plan and up to 2 gigabit per second. The price right now is $53.25.
So very competitive internet service provided by multiple providers. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. If anyone wants to learn more, they can go to JamestownNYBPU.gov/fiber. Lots of cool information up there and happy to talk with anybody who has questions on how this is going. Pretty exciting project.
Paul Ciampoli
Yeah, and just with respect to the marketing element of this project, any elaboration in terms of how you guys are communicating with customers related to this?
Kris Sellstrom
Certainly a challenge. There are incumbent internet providers in the community. We are heavily marketing on billboards, social media. We've sent out direct flyers to consumers, both in our mailings, but also directly to the homes.
We will be putting out door tags as areas are ready for service and yard signs for those that have signed up for service, along with some other various paid advertising platforms.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks again so much for taking time to speak with us.
Would you be open to returning as a guest at some point in the future?
I'd love to perhaps revisit some of the topics and other topics that obviously we could discuss as well.
Kris Sellstrom
Sure, that'd be great. Thanks for having me.
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 more with the world of public power next week.
