Teleseminar Audio CD: The Two Sides of Cost Trackers

Whether you missed the original broadcast of this teleseminar or you attended and just want to listen to the presentation again, order the CD of this event. Use it for yourself, or better yet, set up a training session for other members of your staff at a time that’s most convenient for you. State utility commissions and NASUCA members pay only a shipping and handling fee of $15. You can expect your CD about 10 days after you place your order.

The Two Sides of Cost Trackers: Why Regulators Must Consider Both

Recorded Tuesday, October 27, 2009

State commissions traditionally have limited the use of cost trackers, partly because of the perception that they create "bad" incentives and shift risks to utility customers. And yet several state commissions have approved new cost trackers for a wide array of utility functions in both the electric and gas sectors. But aren’t these approvals a serious departure from past regulatory practices that sanction trackers only under “extraordinary conditions”?

Critical to regulatory review are the negative features of cost trackers, which are often at odds with the public interest. Specifically, cost trackers diminish the positive effects of regulatory lag and retrospective reviews in deterring utility waste and cost inefficiency. And they reduce regulatory scrutiny in evaluating costs.

These are just a few of the critical issues that state public utility commissions must consider as they evaluate the costs and benefits of these devices. Get the details you need to help your commission improve its review of cost trackers, which have proliferated in recent years when you purchase the recording from the latest NRRI teleseminar, “The Two Sides of Cost Trackers: Why Regulators Must Consider Both,” which was originally broadcast on October 27, 2009.

Ken Costello starts the program by offering details from his recent paper on cost trackers. Then our panel of speakers provides its expert assessment of cost trackers and illustrates just how disparate the views about them are. You’ll come away with the information you need to help determine the best course of action for your organization.

Here’s just some of the information you’ll get from this in-depth 90-minute teleseminar:

• Why regulators should view cost recovery in a rate case as the “default” practice.
• What utilities can do to prove that cost trackers are in the public interest.
• The advantages of replacing cost trackers (excluding fuel and purchased gas cost trackers) with a single rate-of-return tracker.
• The reasons regulators give for approving cost trackers such as purchased gas and fuel cost adjustment mechanisms.
• The benefits of cost trackers and why utilities want them.
• The problems consumer groups have with cost trackers, and how to overcome their objections.
• The meaning of “extraordinary circumstances” and how to determine whether or not they exist.

Seminar panel of experts:
Ken Costello, Principal, Natural Gas Research and Policy, NRRI
Michael McFadden, Founder and President, McFadden Consulting Group
Carl Peterson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Accountancy, University of Illinois
Joseph W. Rogers, Assistant Attorney General, Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office
 

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