We provide our clients access to one of the nation’s largest pools of expert witnesses in the field of utility regulation, with more than 20 individuals who have appeared as experts in regulatory proceedings across North America, backed up by a team of consultants that are experienced in all aspects of developing the financial, economic and technical data filed as part of regulatory proceedings.
Our utility ratemaking services range from high level rate case assistance (e.g., case management, regulatory strategy, witness training) to addressing specific technical rate case requirements (e.g., revenue requirements, cash working capital, cost of service studies, marginal cost studies and pricing, rate design, tariff design, cost of capital, attrition of earnings, and rate base, including the fair value of rate base assets).
Our consultants have experience in utility alternative ratemaking proceedings, including: incentive ratemaking approaches, revenue decoupling, capital spending recovery mechanisms, and inflation adjustment mechanisms; the alternative ratemaking approaches that our team develops are designed to fit with each client’s business conditions. Our team also provides support for a broad range of policy, regulatory, and legislative initiatives on behalf of our clients.
This month, Concentric is highlighting our Return on Equity experts. To learn more, please click here.
We perform utility performance benchmarking studies both for purposes of internal process assessment and improvement and for performance evaluations for ratemaking purposes. Our numerous utility benchmarking engagements have involved compiling data (quantitative and qualitative) in target areas and establishing a hierarchy of metrics to represent the operations or processes. Our experience allows us to move beyond a high-level analysis, which can show how an organization performs relative to its peers, and drill down into sub-process performance drivers. These analyses yield insights into root causes of performance gaps, help define strategies to address them, and provide an objective, quantifiable, and auditable analysis of operational performance.
We assist utilities by auditing management and project selection processes, preparing clients for commission-ordered management and operations audits, and reviewing and opining as to the prudence of the clients’ project management practices before state and provincial energy regulatory agencies. We often serve as an Independent Monitor, providing external oversight services for large capital projects. Our engagements have included reviews concurrent with project development and execution to ensure compliance with the clients’ existing project development procedures and to assist clients with the identification and implementation of process improvements. We have also been retained at the conclusion of major capital projects to review and opine as to the prudence of the company’s project management practices before state and provincial energy regulatory agencies.
The Depreciation Team has over 90 years of combined experience in developing and supporting depreciation studies, including the increasingly strict requirements regulators expect in order to support a depreciation study. We work with clients to gain an understanding of the current plant in service, the expected forces of retirement on the plant, and the historical retirement trends of the client. We provide seamless integration of depreciation studies into our rate case support, leveraging cost efficiencies from all components of rate case requirements for the benefit of our clients.
