About This Episode
Edwin Porter, Executive Director of Infrastructure for the City of Hamilton, Ohio, and Secretary of the AMP Board of Trustees, along with Jeffrey Stonehill, City Manager and Director of Utilities for the Borough of Chambersburg, Pa., and President of the Pennsylvania Municipal Electric Association, join the podcast to discuss how public power is good for business.
Transcription
The Public Power Line – S1E2
Public Power is Good for Business
Tracy Reimbold: Public power systems are the heartbeat of a community, powering the homes, businesses and schools across the country. But do you know all that goes into operating a public power system? So, whether you’re an AMP Member, employee or partner organization, or you’re simply passionate about the energy that powers our towns and cities, we invite you to plug in and listen to this podcast where we explore the topics and issues most important to AMP Members and public power. This is The Public Power Line. I’m your host, Tracy Reimbold with American Municipal Power, the nonprofit wholesale power and services provider for more than 130 public power communities across nine states. In this episode, we’ll be discussing lineworker training and the growth of AMP’s training program.
Today, we are joined by Edwin Porter, Executive Director of Infrastructure for the City of Hamilton, Ohio, and Secretary of the AMP Board of Trustees, along with Jeffrey Stonehill, City Manager and Director of Utilities for the Borough of Chambersburg and President of the Pennsylvania Municipal Electric Association.
We will be discussing why public power is good for business. Throughout 2025, AMP has been highlighting the benefits of public power from the perspective of both commercial and industrial customers and a variety of AMP Member communities through a campaign which is titled Public Power is Good for Business. The campaign is highlighting the reasons that public power communities are an attractive option for businesses.
How would each of you explain the value of public power in supporting your businesses in your communities? Edwin, let’s start with you first.
Edwin Porter: Tracy, thank you so much for having me on the Public Power Line. I’m really excited to have this opportunity. So as a public power community, our sole mission is to serve our customers and that includes our local businesses. The value we bring is a trifecta of affordability, reliability and local control. Our rates are based upon the cost of service, which helps us keep the operating costs low for businesses.
Since we’re right here in Hamilton, we can be extremely responsive to the needs of our business partners, offering a high level of personalized service. So, we view ourselves as an economic development partner. You know, our goal is to help businesses grow and thrive here, creating jobs and strengthening our local economy. The money from our utility stays in our community and we reinvest into our infrastructure, which benefits everyone.
This makes us an attractive location for businesses that are looking for a stable, long-term home.
Tracy Reimbold: Excellent. Jeffrey, what are your thoughts?
Jeffrey Stonehill: Hi, Tracy. Thanks a lot for having me on, and it’s a great opportunity to talk about the Borough of Chambersburg and some of the incredible things that we’re doing here in Pennsylvania. I’ve noticed in my role as the City Manager here in Chambersburg, as well as through my association with the Pennsylvania Municipal Electric Association, that a lot of our member communities have business relationships with industry and other commercial operations in their systems.
I think that one of the advantages of public power is the relationships that we can build with our customers. It’s a partnership. It’s a relationship. It helps them grow their businesses. And because we’re small, home-town systems, we’re able to concentrate on their particular needs. We’re able to deal with technical needs that certain industries have. And so, it’s no mistake that many public power systems across Pennsylvania and across the United States have close working relationships with industry and commercial businesses.
It’s one of the advantages of public power that we can build those relationships and work in partnership. And we’ve seen that specifically in Chambersburg, but we see it in many other public power systems across the United States.
Tracy Reimbold: And, Edwin, I know the City of Hamilton was recently featured in the Public Power is Good for Business campaign. Can you talk a little bit about that relationship between the Hamilton Department of Infrastructure and 80 Acres, and then beyond that, can you speak broadly about the sort of work that your department does to support local businesses?
Edwin Porter: So, the relationship between the City of Hamilton and the Department of Infrastructure and 80 Acres is extremely important. It’s a prime example of what makes public power work. So, a great example of this is the annual key accounts meeting we hold with 80 Acres. This meeting is used to show how 80 Acres uses and is charged for their utilities, specific to electric usage.
We take that one step further and we walk through the specifics of their load profile, you know, and more broadly, because we manage all four of our major utilities — electric, natural gas, water, wastewater, as well as commercial broadband and transportation — a business can come to us to get everything they need to get up and running. So, this really streamlines the process and eliminates the need to deal with multiple separate companies.
And we also work with businesses on everything from initial site selection to infrastructure planning, to ongoing maintenance and energy efficiency programs. So, our focus is on being a resource and a partner, not just a service provider.
Tracy Reimbold: And Edwin, you mentioned something there that was very interesting in that you had an annual meeting with your key accounts. You know, that’s an aspect that a large utility is not oftentimes going to be in that business and actually meeting face to face with that business on a regular basis.
Edwin Porter: Yeah, absolutely. So, we’ve got really close relationships with them, and really all of our businesses and all of our community members. And, you know, our goal is to be available to those who need to get ahold of us so that they know what number to call. They see the same faces year after year. And although we do have a key accounts program, which is typically focused on our top 25 accounts within each one of our utilities, we try to bring that level of service to everyone.
But of course, the top utility users have a more direct impact on our cost of service, which then directly impacts, you know, the rates for themselves and everybody else. So, that’s why we think it’s really important that they understand how their usage impacts the charges to our system and how if they can more efficiently use their utilities, then we can, you know, lower the cost for them.
Tracy Reimbold: Which is a great level of communication between the utility and the business, helping you, helping them to understand those factors really plays into how they operate and do business. So, great point.
Jeffrey. Much like Hamilton, the Borough of Chambersburg provides those multiple utilities as well. How beneficial is that to Chambersburg when it comes to attracting new businesses and in retaining your existing businesses?
Jeffrey Stonehill: Economic development obviously is important to every municipality, but one of the things that we’re able to do here in Chambersburg, and it sounds like it’s very similar to what’s done in Hamilton, is that we use the utilities as a focus, not only to retain our businesses, but to grow the economic base for our community by providing all of the utilities — electric, natural gas, water, wastewater, etc., and sanitation and other things.
We’re able to, work with prospective businesses to help them with site selection, to help them during the land approval process, design their facilities so that they are making the best use of our utilities. And it’s really a cooperative venture that grows the economic base of our community, which obviously is good for our citizens and our entire local economy.
We are not just seeing our customers as, sources of revenue, but they’re really partners in the process of building and sustaining their businesses. And that’s an important key that both of our communities have.
Tracy Reimbold: And, Jeffrey, are you able to meet with those key accounts, those customers, on a regular basis?
Jeffrey Stonehill: We are meeting with and developing those relationships, face to face, throughout different civic organizations, being a part of the community. You know, our surrounding investor-owned utilities do not have those kind of relationships in other communities. It’s incredibly valuable, both to the municipal utilities, but also to the businesses themselves. They know they can pick up the phone to call us about any issue whatsoever, and we’re going to be responsive to their needs.
Tracy Reimbold: One of the common things that we’ve heard from businesses who’ve been interviewed for this campaign is how important reliability and responsiveness is to their business. How do each of you feel about public power communities? What sets them aside or apart from [other forms of utilities] in these critical areas? Jeffrey, let’s start with you this time.
Jeffrey Stonehill: In Chambersburg, reliability is one of our primary focuses. Reliability isn’t just a statistic; it has to do with business expenses. The amount of downtime you have as a business directly relates to your bottom line. And the fact that we’re able to have such incredible statistical reliability compared to our investor-owned utilities in Pennsylvania, that sets us apart not only in terms of convenience, but also in terms of making sure that our commercial and industrial customers can continue to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
And we do have customers — commercial and industrial customers — that rely on that power supply.
In Chambersburg, we have a metal foundry, for example, that smelts metal at specific hours of the day, off peak. They need to have the power supply to smelt that metal or they’re not functioning. We have two food processing companies — one that makes applesauce. That applesauce factory, if it shuts down because it’s lost its power, they’re not making applesauce, and that’s what they’re in the business to do. So, supporting those kinds of industries, we must make sure that we can reliably provide power supply to all of our customers, and with very little interruption. And that’s a key part of public power everywhere in the United States, who has excellent reliability statistics because we put so much time and energy into the maintenance of our system and making sure that our customers are out of service for very, very short periods of time, you know, over the course of a year.
Tracy Reimbold: You know, and I think to the examples that you’ve given, what a lot of people don’t recognize, is that when you do have an interruption due to loss of power, depending on the business, it’s not just that temporary interruption, that time period. If they come down, it’s not just a matter of “they’re down for an hour.” They’re bringing everything back up [which] takes a considerable amount of time.
Jeffrey Stonehill: I was talking to a business who was considering building a manufacturing plant in my municipality, and they make, bread products — they bake bread. And one of the things they talked about was when they have an interruption of power supply, whatever bread is in the process of being baked, has to be thrown away. So, they find that in their business interruption, they are literally throwing away inventory, which is throwing away money. That reliability actually accrues to the bottom line of a business and whether it’s profitable and successful.
Edwin Porter: Jeffrey, you hit the nail on the head. And, you know, another great example is we had a manufacturer here in town. They were very sensitive to any interruption whatsoever. And so, something as simple as a reclosing event would actually trip the entirety of their operation, and it would take them two days to sequence all of their machines to get their process back up and running.
And so, what we were able to do is we’re able to work directly with them to understand our systems and their systems, and we were able to come up with a way to where those events did not have such a heavy impact to them. But we were also able to maintain that reliability, because obviously, a reclosing event means something happens and it’s a protection to say, “okay, well, let’s go back on and see if that’s gone away.” And so it maintained the reliability of their service, but also, prevented them from having those significant upsets. So that’s just a really great example of a collaborative effort between us and one of our businesses.
And, you know, Hamilton — like Chambersburg and all public power utilities — excels in reliability and responsiveness because of our direct connection to the community. Our crews live here, they know the system and they’re personally invested in the well-being of their neighbors. So, this leads to faster response times and shorter outage durations. We’re able to quickly respond to the needs of our community, which includes our businesses.
Hamilton’s proud to be recognized with the APPA [American Public Power Association Reliable Public Power Provider] RP3 Diamond designation, which recognizes utilities that demonstrate high proficiency in reliability, safety, workforce development and system improvement. So, we have metrics that we measure ourselves against, not only other public power utilities, but the electric industry in general, and we take pride in our reliability because, once again, that affects the bottom line of our business partners.
Tracy Reimbold: And Edwin, you know, you brought up yet another good point there in the location of your crews, actually there in your community. Whereas you can find, oftentimes, you know, in the IOUs, those crews might be coming from some other part of the state, some other state entirely. And the necessity to bring customers back online is not necessarily going to be specific to your customer, as your system is.
Edwin Porter: That’s right. You know, our system and our personnel who service that system, that’s set up and ready to go. So, when something happens — and let’s be honest, we’re in an industry where things happen — and our goal is to, you know, understand how can we safely bring that system back up in a responsible manner to get everyone back up and going quickly? And so, when you know your system — you know the ins and outs of it, you know the topography, you know how everything’s integrated into itself — that really gives us an advantage because our lineworkers — and also our electric production team, who does all our switching operations and, you know, all of our, you know, they support the system in that manner — you know, they know the system very well.
Tracy Reimbold: In the current world, innovation and sustainability are extremely important in the business environment. How do each of you feel that public power provides help to businesses in these two vital areas?
Jeffrey Stonehill: So, as we know, a lot of companies, a lot of entities, do take sustainability as an important goal for their organization. Chambersburg is lucky enough to host Wilson College, and like many institutions of higher learning, Wilson College had a commitment to renewable power supply as part of their organizational goals. We were able to work with Wilson College to make sure that a significant portion of the borough’s power supply portfolio was coming from renewable sources, so as to help them meet their individual goals.
I do not believe that in investor-owned utilities or in the private sector, outside of public power, that customers can influence directly the make-up of the power supply of their utilities. It is only because we have these special relationships with our customers — they are not just our ratepayers, they are our owners, and as such, they can influence the policies that are made and the directives that are agreed upon.
And so as organizations want to have investment in sustainability, our public power systems are able to be directly responsive to their needs.
Edwin Porter: Yeah, Jeffrey, once again, hitting the nail on the head. So, when it comes to innovation and sustainability, we believe that public power and Hamilton have a distinct advantage. So, Hamilton has a long history of industrial prowess — from building a hydraulic canal in 1845 to harness the energy of water for industrial work to our current ownership of advanced hydroelectric assets, Hamilton’s always blazed a path. So, for businesses that have their own sustainability goals and want to reduce their carbon footprint, Hamilton participates in an EcoSmart Choice® program. And, you know, our flexibility and local expertise allow us to be a partner in a business’s journey toward a more sustainable and innovative future.
Tracy Reimbold: So, Edwin, you did mention the EcoSmart Choice program. Can you tell me a little bit more about anything else that you’ve been able to collaborate with through AMP, or any of the other programs that might actually support the efforts that you undertake for sustainability and innovation in Hamilton?
Edwin Porter: Well, I would just take it just much more broadly. So, like, I think that public power, especially being part of a joint action agency and being a Member of AMP, that really creates connections across utilities that are, you know, local here, but across the board. And those connections just have such significant value.
And, you know, whether it’s picking up the phone and saying, “Hey, you know, we’re looking for this piece of equipment and does anybody have something like that?” Or, “Hey, we’re looking for this transformer. We’ve got a new business that’s looking to site, the lead time is kind of long, we’ve got one on order, but does anyone have one on the shelf? And you know, we could potentially swap it out and replace out here in X number of months. Maybe you have an extra.” And so, whether it’s expertise — you know we’re appropriately staffed, but also it’s something where it’s good to have somebody to be able to pick up the phone, and you know, bounce something off of and say, “have you looked at this” or “have you tried this?” And those connections are really made at the public power level, right.
So, whether it’s, you know, being involved with the board or the committees or the conferences at AMP directly, whether it’s going to the APPA National Conference, whether it’s going to O&M (operations and maintenance) conferences and really just making those connections. I can’t tell you how frequently I pick up the phone and I say like, “hey, we’re looking to do this,” or “we want to know a little bit more about that,” and there’s always someone that’s willing to pick up the phone and take the time to have a conversation. And, you know, I just can’t explain the value.
Tracy Reimbold: So, let’s move into the future just a little bit. What is your vision for how public power can evolve to meet the needs — the changing needs on a regular basis — of the businesses that you serve over the next decade?
Jeffrey Stonehill: So, I would start by saying that we have seen some dramatic changes recently and we have seen — with the growing development of data centers and other large users of power supply — that there is a real strain on the system, and this is affecting everybody. It’s affecting public power systems, it’s affecting IOUs [investor-owned utilities], and a lot of states, including Pennsylvania and Ohio, are contemplating what kind of policies they need to adopt, what kind of initiatives they need to explore, to try to address the growing demand for electricity and the shortages of both power supply and transmission, which affect everybody.
I would say that, in my opinion, public power is probably best situated to address that oncoming concern. In Chambersburg for example, we have, over the last couple of generations, really invested in generation. We have behind-the-meter generation from natural gas — which of course we are a natural gas utility — as well as from solar and from our landfill gas to energy plant. And we will continue to invest in local, behind-the-meter generation. And I have heard from other public power communities across AMP that there is a growing need to invest in power supply, and public power systems, like the ones in AMP, are really well situated to address that oncoming concern in the way that investor-owned utilities may struggle because of their size, their footprint, political complexities and state and local regulations.
So, I am saying that, if I was concerned as a business owner what electrification might mean to my business, or whether I should site my business in one electric system or another, and I was comparing things, I would think the public power community is probably a better place for me to make my business investment, because they are going to be able to adapt to these oncoming challenges in ways that, potentially, investor-owned utilities might struggle.
Edwin Porter: All great points. Obviously, capacity, you know, growing energy demand and, you know, a trend of decreasing supply is creating a significant challenge that public power and all electric utilities in general are going to have to face. And, you know, my vision for public power, and the future of public power, is to first continue doing what it’s always done — right — staying true to the fundamentals to provide safe, reliable, affordable utilities under local control.
So, building upon this foundation, I see public power growing partnerships with businesses, like through innovative technologies, such as advanced metering, data analytics, smart grid infrastructure, virtual power plants, we can assist businesses with their strategic priorities. So, whether it’s looking to increase their reliability, drive their profits, expand their operations, or all of the above, I think the utility of the future is going to be a strategic resource, not just a service provider.
And so, I think through these collaborative efforts, businesses will be able to optimize their energy usage and lower the cost for both themselves and the utility.
Tracy Reimbold: All great points, I think, moving into the future. Important from all aspects, both from your utility and your customer aspect.
Edwin, Jeffrey, thank you both for joining us. Any parting words or final thoughts?
Edwin Porter: Tracy, I just want to say thank you again for having me on the Public Power Line and allowing me to share a little bit about Hamilton and the benefits of public power.
Jeffrey Stonehill: Thank you very much, Tracy, for allowing me to be on the Public Power Line. We’re great supporters of American Municipal Power, as well as public power in general, and we’re happy to welcome anybody to come visit us here in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Tracy Reimbold: Thank you both.
Reimbold: I’m Tracy Reimbold, your host for The Public Power Line, where we explore the topics and issues most important to AMP Members and public power. If you like what you’ve heard on The Public Power Line podcast, please share it and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. Search for The Public Power Line wherever you get your podcast. This podcast is produced by Zachary Hoffman, AMP’s Manager of Communications and Publications. If you have ideas for future podcasts, please reach out to AMP’s Communications Team at [email protected].