The following is a transcript of the July 20, 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 in this episode is Chris Fredericksen, the general manager of Idaho Falls Power and Idaho Falls Fiber.
Chris has served as general manager of the Idaho public power utility since early May of this year.
Prior to that, he served as the public works director for Idaho Falls for 13 years.
Chris, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Chris, as I do with a lot of relatively new general managers that are taking on a role at a public power utility, one of the things that I want to give you the opportunity to do is to talk about what your immediate priorities have been since taking the role of general manager.
And also, how have you connected with utility staff to introduce yourself?
Chris Fredericksen
I appreciate that question.
I think it really kind of falls back to maybe some of the background that we have here with Idaho Falls too.
With that, in early January, we've had a new administration that takes over.
Idaho Falls has a strong form of government with the mayor leading that role.
And so as she moved, she was originally on our council that was the council president, and then she was elected as the mayor.
But as she moved in, there was a clear message, I think, across the city -- power is just one of the 11 departments.
But that goal really was customer service, both internal and external.
And on the power side, it comes back to really the focus on reliability and low cost.
And then that continuation of a strong safety culture that we already have here at Idaho Falls Power.
So I think that role was pretty well defined when I moved into this position in May.
However, as part of some of those things, it was really, we're kind of in a key moment in our budget submission timeline in May.
I was just finishing up the public works budget and then diving into the Idaho Falls Power budget.
We have a tremendous CFO here, Josh Roos, who's absolutely fantastic, had a very good start to a budget that was really ready to go, and so I was very lucky with that.
But as I had the opportunity to move to power, one of the things that we prioritized right off the bat was one-on-one meetings with our leadership staff to really discuss those roles and responsibilities and the standard operating practices that we had and how we wanted to move forward in the future.
And the goal of that really was to ensure that our budget would be able to reflect any of their thoughts and processes so we make sure that was included.
And then following that with other staff, we had a number of meetings where I was introduced and really talked about my background that was really echoing what that administration really wanted to focus on.
And really my goal in those meetings was to assure people that, you know, change can sometimes be difficult.
And as you look at changes in leadership, especially, what does that mean to me in the positions that I have?
And so in that, I just wanted to communicate, you know, the mission of Idaho Falls is going to continue to focus on that customer service, reliability and low cost of service, so that's something that was kind of exciting to me to take on.
And I think our industry, at least our power company here, we've been around since 1900.
We're known for innovations of service to really meet our customer needs.
And it's a really, really exciting time in that we have the Idaho National Lab in our backyard.
And that industry is changing at a time when that change is really needed, right?
So we're seeing that unfold here. We just had the secretary that came out and spoke, Secretary of Energy that really talked about the administration's goals of energy dominance and the exciting work that's happening out at the lab here on the desert.
So it really is an exciting time here at Idaho Falls Power.
Paul Ciampoli
Chris, one thing you mentioned early on in your response was the focus on reliability and low costs.
I wanted to run a quick follow-up question by you if I could as it relates to costs.
When I attended the APPA National Conference in Boston in June, one of the things that jumped out at me is there were some public power leaders who were talking about how reliability is still important for customers, but affordability is kind of rising to the top, I guess, not surprisingly for the utility industry in terms of a key concern.
I know you're just in this new role, but any thoughts in terms of where that stacks up in terms of prioritization?
Chris Fredericksen
We're in kind of that societal change where it's a now society, right? Everything is immediate. We don't wait for anything.
And I think when we look at that power supply piece of the puzzle, and then I think even if we look at some of the other offerings that we have in our fiber network, what we're seeing is that reliability for people to be able to work from home and for their businesses to operate, they expect both, right?
And we've created that expectation and want to continue that.
I do say that, as I look kind of across the fence at some of those other utilities and co-ops that stretch over huge service areas, I think we have a tremendous benefit.
We're pretty compact here in Idaho Falls with, somewhere around 70,000 residents, 36,000 meters.
But in that, the amount of distribution line that we have is infinitesimal as opposed to some of those huge co-ops.
And here locally, like Fall River Electric that stretches from, say, Chester to West Yellowstone. I mean, it's a huge area that they deal with.
But here, that reliability piece, luckily decades ago, has been taken very, very seriously.
And so those investments that they've made in ensuring that our infrastructure is up to date and making sure that our elected officials can make those good decisions as far as when we spend that money, because it's not very sexy to do the maintenance.
And yet when we have our windstorms and the winter weather that we roll through, we generally stand pretty tall because we can weather those pretty well.
Paul Ciampoli
In terms of meetings, you talked about connecting with the staff there, but you also held a meet and greet recently with customers.
So I want to give you the opportunity to talk about how events such as this are a great way for you to engage with customers and introduce yourself to them.
Chris Fredericksen
I think it's a tremendous opportunity here.
I feel like most people in the community know we've been in public works, so a lot of project related types of things throughout the community.
But as a different face here at Power, I do have to have a shout out to our external affairs staff led by Sarah Wheeler that's absolutely fantastic. But I think it's just a key emphasis that public power is built on those local relationships.
And when we have that opportunity to get together and talk about what are those things that we have in common and then communicate to people because I think it's still kind of surprising to people -- this is a community owned public power company, right?
And people have never really looked at that, like I own a utility company.
Yeah, you have a number of those and I think that's kind of an outside the box thinking to most people.
It's like it's a power bill and I flip the light switch, they come on.
But these are opportunities to really gather with people outside of maybe a controversy that's brewing with an outage or a billing issue to really know, hey, we're your community, right?
As we come together, they're the people that we're going to see at football games on Friday night, right?
This is your community owned resource and we're happy to hear what your concerns are and see how we can address those and so these types of opportunities are really kind of fun.
And it's hard to really have much controversy when you're handing out ice cream to people and it's 95 degrees out, so it's a good opportunity to go out and hear from people.
But it does give us that opportunity to stress, hey, we're your utility company and we're local and we're investing in the future of Idaho Falls here.
And I'm not to say that those investor-owned utilities are any different, but public power, this is the community that we're trying to build together in a right way.
Paul Ciampoli
And just a quick follow-up, do you anticipate holding additional meet and greets such as the one you held?
Chris Fredericksen
I think as we look to roll out, we want to have a presence in really a lot of our large community events.
I know we have power presence at some of our movies that will be held in our parks that are coming out throughout the summer will be part and parcel with the upcoming War Bonnet Rodeo.
So we have a lot of involvement where we try to get out in front of people and just remind them, look, we're partners moving forward to build Idaho Falls and we're excited about that and being able to serve their needs.
Paul Ciampoli
So now we touched upon reliability and I wanted to dig a little further with you on that topic and as you know, Idaho Falls Power has been recognized by APPA with a 2025 certificate of excellence and reliability.
So I want to give you the chance to talk further about what steps the utility has taken to earn this recognition.
Chris Fredericksen
I do want to reiterate I've been here since May, but as we look into some of these things, it's amazing in that I would say culturally this isn't really something that I've heard said out loud, but it's really what comes to mind to me from what I've seen as far as this group that I now have the opportunity to lead.
And that is good enough is not good enough. And it's kind of a cultural thing that, hey, this may be good enough for some people, but it's not good enough for this group.
And it really comes down to that reliability doesn't really happen by an accident.
It is that, hey, we're going to utilize funds for strategic investment and discipline maintenance on our infrastructure.
And again, at times that doesn't seem very sexy.
But without that preventative maintenance and replacing infrastructure before it becomes a problem, that's when you kind of run into some of those longer duration outages that we just haven't had, haven't experienced here.
So, and I do that and I say, knock on wood, we take the steps to really minimize that where it happens. And we do want to leverage all of the available resources that we have.
For instance, we utilize GIS to assess data through dashboards, help us make better decisions where we can spend our limited infrastructure investment money.
And then we really look towards new investments in that technology and CAI on the future to really be able to help in that moving forward as well.
But I have to say that from my experiences I've got here, we've had some pretty large wind events in eastern Idaho.
It seems like it's either wind or some of our snow events, but our line crews, dispatchers, engineers, operational staff in total, I mean, they're professionals who take great pride in being out in the public trying to restore services as quickly and as safely as possible and from my experience, it's tremendously commendable with that.
There's a great deal of pride in providing that service that our staff has, and it's evident every time we have one of these events.
But we have a diverse resource portfolio with our city-owned hydro. We have 4 dams on the Snake River and with our new peaking plant that reduces our dependence on outside markets.
But our city council has consistently supported investments to try to improve that reliability component and while still keeping rates in the forefront and affordable.
But in my mind that APPA, that certificate of excellence -- that's based on a five-year outage performance.
We happily submit that outage information to APPA every year to just see how we compare and benchmark with other utilities of our size.
And I have to say, if we find out there's other utilities that are performing better than we are, we're not prideful in the fact that we want to go approach them and find out how they do that, because I think that reliability is becoming such a huge issue to all of our customers that are working from home or whatever else that we want to minimize those disruptions to the point that we can.
Paul Ciampoli
One of the things that clearly comes across to me in speaking with public power executives is there is that knowledge sharing. There's no hesitation for doing that.
Chris Fredericksen
And that is kind of the neat thing as you go to some of these larger get-togethers.
I was in Boston, you meet with people -- there's that free sharing, hey, this worked pretty well for us.
And even if these are some of the hiccups that we experienced on some of these major improvement projects, and there's really no reason to hide that information, right?
It's great to see that camaraderie amongst the industry to share that because in the end, it's the customers that benefit from that information.
Paul Ciampoli
And just one other quick follow-up if I could.
So with respect to reliability, you talked about wind events. Does that go hand in hand in terms of wildfire threats in the state at this point?
Chris Fredericksen
I think for us that risk that we have for wildfires, and this year will be a huge example of that.
We've already seen some wildfires that exist in some of our transmission areas.
And so within the corporate limits of Idaho Falls, I don't know that that's necessarily as big a concern as we have.
We do have some of our distribution groups that are in some of our irrigated fields.
And so as some of those barley crops and those kind of things become drier and drier.
That's somewhat of a concern that we would deal with.
But I think that wildfire piece really does hit transmission that could impact us in a great way.
I think in the state of Utah, they had talked about eliminating fireworks over the 4th of July just to mitigate some of that risk with how tremendously dry this last winter was for Idaho Falls.
I've been at the city for 24 years. This is the first time that we did not plow residential streets during the winter for snow removal. So it's compounding on itself with that concern that we have for, especially in the fall as we continue to dry out through a very hot summer.
Paul Ciampoli
So it sounds like you are having to grapple with some fluidity in terms of the weather cycle?
Chris Fredericksen
We have public notices that'll pop up, especially wind events and high temperature events.
And so we're going to keep people well aware of what risks that we have out there so we can respond accordingly.
Paul Ciampoli
And Chris, you mentioned that peaking plant and that was actually a good segue to my next question, which I want to talk to you about that further.
And as you noted it in late 2020, that marked the official launch of the utility's new 17.5 megawatt natural gas peaking plant.
So what were the factors behind the utilities to pursue construction of this plant and how will the utility and its customers benefit from the plant?
Chris Fredericksen
I think in my mind there's several factors that drove that, really beginning with our community's continued growth and our increasing demand that we're seeing for electricity.
I know as people look at growth here in Idaho Falls...I'm going to say, maybe not fully realized.
If you've ever been to Idaho Falls, it's kind of the gateway to a lot of recreational areas that we have. So if you enjoy those types of things, access to Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, Sun Valley, we're kind of equidistant to a lot of those kind of things.
But we are starting to see that growth as people find, especially after COVID, they have the opportunity to maybe work from home.
But to really recognize that and start the process to put in a major infrastructure project like that, I think it speaks to some of the innovative thought process behind Idaho Falls Power and their elected officials.
But historically in Idaho Falls, about 1/3 of our energy is really generated from our hydro projects that we have along the river.
But in the winter months when we see our peaks due to the low temperatures that we've got, it's generally a time when our rivers decrease for winter flows.
And so as that demand continues to grow, we've had to buy more excess energy on the wholesale market that at times can be volatile.
So this was one other tool in the toolbox, if you will, to try to make ourselves less dependent on some of those volatile markets that we have.
And in the end, it gives us really some of those opportunities to take advantage and keep those rates low.
That again, is another one of those initiatives that are very important in Idaho Falls Power's mission.
And I think as you look back on some of these major projects in the $40 million tune, I think people are going to take a look and just say in the long term, that's paid for itself time and time again, just like our hydro projects have on the river.
It's nice to have that forward thinking to be able to execute on those types of projects and then deliver that and keeping rates low for our community.
Paul Ciampoli
Getting back to the public power model, could you talk a little further in terms of the community engagement element of the peaking plant as the project was announced and as it progressed.
Chris Fredericksen
Yeah, having sat through that ribbon cutting that we had, inviting all the people that were involved with that, it was a great deal of excitement, as you drove out...parking lots full from all types of community members, whether it were people that had worked on the project or those that were just interested in seeing what was happening.
In an industry that we pride ourselves in that people just flip the switch and it's always on, it always is kind of fun to be able to pull the curtains back and say, that doesn't just happen by happenstance, right?
There's a great deal of thought and expense and your rates that help stand that up and so to unveil that is pretty amazing.
And we currently have one of our hydro projects that's actually under construction right now.
And it's interesting to have some of those tours to bring people in to just see, wow, that's an amazing piece of machinery that has provided energy to this community for decades and decades, right?
And it's not an opportunity too many people have to walk in and take a look at those power facilities. A lot of them don't even know what they are.
It's surprising in Idaho Falls, with our namesake, the falls that are there were actually built to force the water through our generation in that you can see with the utility that was established in 1900 for these hydro projects really to power streetlights. It's amazing how that's progressed over time.
Paul Ciampoli
Yeah, and I've talked with other public power officials and there seems to be a fair amount of public power utilities that do what are called customer academies where part of that is they actually get to go out into the field and see these various generation projects.
I think that to your point that goes a long way in terms of giving people a visual sense as to what's behind turning on your lights and keeping the power on.
Chris Fredericksen
I think there's a tremendous amount of professionalism that exists in the field when you think about, from the point from the transmission all the way to where we bring it into your home, we have experts at every level of that and their professionalism and their pride in the work that they do is amazing.
And again, that mantra that we kind of would coin, good enough is not good enough in this group.
I think is really cognizant of that key customer service aspect of taking a great deal of pride.
We're going to keep you in power as long as we possibly can and if there's an outage, we're going to try to get that stood up and re-energize as quickly as possible.
Paul Ciampoli
So, Chris, earlier this year, Idaho Falls Fiber announced a new milestone in the growth of the community's high speed broadband network as it welcomed its 10,000th connected customer to the city owned fiber optic system.
So how is Idaho Falls Fiber delivering value to customers?
Chris Fredericksen
Well, I appreciate that question. And again, I do think as we look back some of the decades here at Idaho Falls Power, there's some of that vision that's come about over time.
And I think our first fiber was installed in 1998 to interconnect our county court system with some of the law enforcement facilities and that was followed with interconnectivity that was installed in 2001 to really connect a lot of our city services in the downtown area.
But in 2019, Idaho Falls Power initiated a pilot project that really was put together to determine really is this something that would be viable to roll out on a citywide basis.
And that pilot program proved really successful and indicated we really feel like this is a service that the community could benefit from.
And based on that, expenditures were made and the infrastructure was put in place by 2025.
And if you think back, making some of those decisions with what COVID brought to us and how it kind of changed our community, this notion of working from home, a lot of that legwork was starting at Idaho Falls Power with that fiber interconnectivity.
And so from that early installation in 1998 to full ability to actually serve customers within Idaho Falls to 2025, we've now become the largest open access network in Idaho.
And so I think that's proven to us as we continue to add customers that this philosophy of, hey, we're not just an electric utility, we're also providing other essential infrastructure that benefits the entire community.
And we leveraged a lot of that infrastructure that existed for our power service for fiber. A lot of that is shared conduit and those kind of things.
But of that, I think we've been able to prove that through this public-private partnership, because we own the fiber and have installed that, but we have six independent internet service providers that people can choose from that still utilize our network.
But we really feel like this public-private partnership has brought forward really fast and reliable internet for really low cost.
I think our lowest cost option is about $60 a month for 250 megabytes per second.
So we're about to roll out some other offerings for those people that feel like they need higher internet speeds, so we're really excited about that.
Celebrating our 10,000th customer I think is pretty amazing from here's a thought back in 1998 to full service capability in 2025.
It just kind of points to that forward thinking, innovative thoughts for Idaho Falls Power as they move forward and I think also our elected officials that, hey, this was a huge investment that not probably just anyone would have taken on, but I do believe it's tremendously benefited our customers.
Paul Ciampoli
And just for our last topic, Chris, I want to talk to you about workforce issues.
And this is obviously an ongoing challenge, not just for public power, but for the larger electricity industry.
So in terms of workforce issues and specifically planning for retirements and recruiting the next generation of workers -- those issues remain top of mind for public power utility officials.
So what are the ways in which Idaho Falls Power is proactively working to tackle these challenges?
Chris Fredericksen
Well, first, I think I would just echo that.
I do think that what this is evolving into is probably one of the most important strategic priorities that we have across the utility industry.
And I can say really with our background in public works, it's really across the hiring industry in total.
But for much of the electric utility workforce, they are approaching that retirement age and with them is going to be a tremendous amount of knowledge that walks out the door.
And so I think we're all remiss unless we take advantage of what we would look at as far as that succession planning.
How do we basically fill those roles and ensure that talent that walks out the door, we're still gathering what information that we can and I think we do have the opportunity through some of the databases and retrieving some of that data is one of those ways in which we can hopefully store some of that information that walks out.
But we have recognized that developing talent from within, whether that's through mentoring or cross-training, some of the leadership development, and then really providing employees with opportunities to expand their skills, that's really key to our industry being able to continue to work through this issue that we know is coming.
And even beyond that, I think we actively are out there recruiting students and making sure that they're aware of the power industry and potential careers through internships and scholarships.
Idaho Falls Power participates in programs like the -- I think it's the Idaho Consumer Owned Utilities Association. They do a youth rally.
They have educational outreach efforts that really expose some of those students to key engineering, line work operations and other public service type employment opportunities that are out there.
And so some of that's focusing on internally, how do we build the staff that we have to replace those folks that are walking out the door, but then also making sure that people are aware of what is it that public power would offer as meaningful careers and how could you serve your community in that role.
And so that's something that we want to reiterate as we roll some of these community events out to the public.
And so we look forward to that, but we have tremendous workforce here with years and if not decades, right, that are all looking forward to retirement.
And in the interim, we need to find a way to replace them with talented employees that continue to provide the service that we do on a daily basis.
Paul Ciampoli
And I guess it's fair to say with respect to the kind of the recruiting of perhaps high school students or people who are in college, it's a pretty fluid environment in terms of figuring out ways to get their attention and get them interested.
An example that I had recently was another public power official told me that they found that TikTok was actually kind of a gateway in terms of young people learning more about public power and what it is.
So I guess it's fair to say that this is an ongoing challenge for all public power utilities -- getting the foot in the door and getting those people exposed to what public power is.
Chris Fredericksen
Yeah, and I think that's really meeting the needs where they exist.
And you think about our younger population that we have and that social media aspect, TikTok's a fantastic idea.
I know just since I've been here in May, I've been happy to sign some personnel actions where we've hired people that have went through internships.
So these are people that came in, found out about working for public power, what that would mean is, and they want to make a career in that, so that's a program that's been successful.
We have the opportunity to evaluate them. They evaluate us, right?
So in the end, that's been a pretty successful program, if you will, in that internship.
But I do think that younger community, especially if you think about all the competition that's out there for some of these skills in engineering and whatnot, it may not be first and foremost on their mind, but we are a large employer and we just need to get out in front of people and talk about what benefits that are really from a career that they could have, but then also combine that with the fact that they would be really serving their neighbors, which is a rewarding aspect of public power.
Paul Ciampoli
Chris, thanks again so much for taking time to speak with us today.
It's been a really informative conversation and I really appreciate you taking the time again and would love to have you back perhaps around this time next year where we could revisit some of these topics.
I'm sure there's a lot that also will be going on with the utility that we could discuss as well.
Chris Fredericksen
I appreciate the opportunity and we're always willing to get back together and talk.
It's an exciting industry and I imagine there'll be a lot of changes unfolding here in the next decade, so we're looking forward to that.
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 with more from the world of public power next week.
