Part of EnergyBiz® Network »
Customer Care Group
This special interest group is where customer care professionals share tactics on how utilities are improving interactions with their customers.
Post
COVID-19 - The Great Rate Debate
image credit: depositphotos.com
COVID-19 has created unique regulatory and recovery challenges. COVID-19 has increased cost, decreased demand, increased uncollectable revenue, and for some utilities, delayed scheduled rate increases. The majority of state regulators have approved some regulations to allow utilities to recover COVID-19 related costs and lost revenue.
These challenges will lead to a mountain of new rate case filings this year, and next. The rate cases will have to accurately assess COVID-19 load & revenue effects, increases in uncollectables, and generate new load and revenue forecasts. All of this is necessary to understand “the new normal”.
These types of analyses are extremely data intensive requiring large data sets to be moved between different models in different applications. Even with the simplest requirements, this could take weeks, even months. When an underlying assumption is changed, the whole process may need to be redone, taking several months. This limits the range of assumptions and ‘what-if’ scenarios that can be thoroughly analyzed when time is critical.
Combining load research and revenue modeling into a single big data application can provide utilities with greater and faster modeling capabilities to prepare for COVID related rate cases. An Enterprise Rating Engine serves this purpose, providing granular load analysis and whole population rate analysis (WPRA). WPRA calculates every customer’s bill on a new or proposed rate plan providing the net utility revenue change and the rate transition bill impact for each and every utility customer, increasing customer satisfaction.
With rate cases on the horizon, and multiple new factors needed for consideration, Utilities can employ Enterprise Rating Engine technology to perform robust analyses in a short period of time.
Rob Girvan
Thank Rob for the Post!
Energy Central contributors share their experience and insights for the benefit of other Members (like you). Please show them your appreciation by leaving a comment, 'liking' this post, or following this Member.
Discussions
Spell checking: Press the CTRL or COMMAND key then click on the underlined misspelled word.
Get Published - Build a Following
The Energy Central Power Industry Network is based on one core idea - power industry professionals helping each other and advancing the industry by sharing and learning from each other.
If you have an experience or insight to share or have learned something from a conference or seminar, your peers and colleagues on Energy Central want to hear about it. It's also easy to share a link to an article you've liked or an industry resource that you think would be helpful.
Your access to Member Features is limited.
Sign in to Participate