The City of Richland Energy Services (RES) Department retained FCS GROUP to provide professional services related to retail rate design for the City’s electric utility. The services requested included a professional review of the City’s internally developed cost-of-service study, and development of alternative retail rate designs that better align with the wholesale power contract methodology. Included in the rate study process was an audit of customer statistics to verify revenue levels and generation of bill frequencies to inform rate structure changes and bill impact analyses. FCS group provides annual ongoing support of the electric cost of service rate-setting process. Key project tasks included:

• Review of cost allocations in compliance with policy guidelines for 100% adherence to cost causation principles.
• Reclassified customers to appropriate groupings.
• Development of alternative rate structures including tiered rates for the residential class, revision of demand charges and elimination of declining block energy charges.
• Development of a bill calculator to communicate customer impacts to customers.
• Meetings with Utility Advisory Committee, Key Customers and Council.
• Outline new large discrete load policy considerations.
• Evaluated impacts of different funding mechanisms for the water utility’s twenty year capital plan of over $90 million.
• Cost of service analysis to determine class cost shares and equitable cost recovery.
• Financial planning modeling toolset user guide to facilitate internal updates.