Services

Past utility spending prudence examination

The Wired Group helps clients assess whether utility spending was prudent in rate cases—the standard regulatory proceedings in which utilities seek rate increases to recover past costs. Our experts scrutinize utility policies, operating practices, decisions, and capital project and program costs to identify spending that may be unnecessary for safe and reliable service, premature, cost-ineffective, or otherwise inappropriate. When regulators determine that spending was imprudent, they reduce the rate increases utilities request and discourage utilities from making imprudent spending decisions in the future.

Utility spending plan evaluation

In recent decades, legislators and regulators have introduced changes to the traditional regulatory and ratemaking practices that have governed investor-owned electric, gas, and water utility spending since the early 20th century.  These changes typically require utilities to submit future spending plans for advance review by regulators, regulatory staff, and stakeholders. The Wired Group helps clients identify proposed spending that may be unnecessary, premature, cost-ineffective, or otherwise inappropriate.  When regulators reduce the size of these spending plans, they reduce utilities’ proposed rate increases and bill surcharges.

Utility spending program and operating practice cost-effectiveness testing

Electric, gas, and water utilities increasingly make discretionary spending decisions and proposals to improve outcomes such as reliability and safety. The Wired Group uses risk-informed benefit-cost analysis to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of these decisions and proposals. We analyze historical reliability and safety data to establish baseline risks and measure the risk reductions achieved through similar investments at other utilities or locations. This evidence is essential for identifying overstated safety and reliability benefits utilities claim or project from past or proposed spending.

Utility infrastructure investment and customer incentive program optimization

Legislators and utility regulators increasingly assign utilities responsibilities beyond providing safe and reliable service. Electric, gas, and water utilities may undertake mandated or incentivized infrastructure replacement programs to improve safety or reliability. Electric utilities also commonly offer customer incentives for energy efficiency, demand response, distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar and battery storage—often aggregated as virtual power plants—and the adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps. Drawing on our experience designing and operating these programs as utility employees and evaluating such programs across multiple utilities, the Wired Group helps clients optimize program performance, strengthen ratepayer protections, and maximize societal and customer value per dollar of utility spending.

Regulation and ratemaking policy and practice evaluation

Recent departures from standard regulatory and ratemaking practices can create unintended consequences that legislators and utility regulators may overlook. Intended to reduce rate case frequency and expand utilities’ opportunities to earn authorized returns on investment, these changes can shift spending risk from shareholders to customers, leading to excessive spending and avoidable rate increases. Drawing on experience in utility infrastructure, operations, regulation, and ratemaking, Wired Group associates evaluate the customer impacts of approaches such as formula and performance-based ratemaking, capital cost recovery riders, and future or multi-year test years. This practical perspective helps clients—and the legislators and regulators they seek to inform—understand the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches.

Legislator, regulator, Staff, advocate, and stakeholder education sessions

Combining utility infrastructure knowledge with regulatory and ratemaking expertise, Wired Group experts provide practical perspectives free of utility bias through in-person and virtual workshops, appearances before legislative and regulatory committees, legislator briefings, working groups, and other customized activities. Educational topics include:

• Electric transmission and distribution infrastructure, operations, and planning;
• Natural gas transmission and distribution infrastructure, operations, and planning;
• Water and wastewater infrastructure, operations, and planning;
• Regulatory and ratemaking policies and practices, including their advantages and disadvantages.