E. F. Barrett is the second largest power generation facility on Long Island by nameplate capacity behind Northport Power Station, and the third in net energy generated in 2020, behind Northport and Caithness Long Island Energy Center.

[8] The E. F. Barrett facility is also planned to serve the interconnection point for the Empire Wind offshore wind farm project, after then-State Senator Todd Kaminsky and Island Park Mayor Michael McGinty lobbied for the connection to be moved from the originally planned Gowanus Substation in Brooklyn.

[8] The main steam plant is in the Barnum Island census-designated place, while a parcel north of Barnum's Channel in Oceanside houses the gas turbine generators, and a parcel across the Long Beach Branch railroad tracks in Island Park hosts fuel tanks.

[8][14] Two more units were originally planned for the site, but because Barnum's Channel would not provide sufficient cooling water for four generators, they were constructed at the Port Jefferson Power Station instead.

[8][20] The next year, officials from the Town of Hempstead and Island Park urged LIPA to reconsider the study's conclusion.

LILCO had initialed challenges against several plants including E. F. Barrett in the early 1990s, but these were dropped in 2004 after they had been inherited by LIPA.