Projects of litigation support and Expert testimony Sector

Baltimore Gas and Electric Multi-year Rate Plan Pilot

Organization: DHInfrastructure

Description

The Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC), through Order No. 9482, found that the use of multi-year rate plans (MYPs) had the potential to be in the public interest and announced that any electric and/or gas utility may submit a proposal to serve as the Pilot Utility. In response, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE) filed a MYP for its combined gas and electric services that sought to increase revenues by $235.5 million over a three- year period. Included in the revenue requirement for were $2.87 billion in capital investments that were reflected in the rate base for the MYP's three future test years. The Maryland Office of People's Counsel (OPC) required an expert witness to review these capital projects and provided recommendations on their reasonableness and prudency.

Service Provided

DHInfrastructure's Brendan Larkin-Connnolly submitted direct and oral testimony on behalf of OPC on BGE's proposed gas and shared capital budgets proposed for the MYP. This review included an evaluation of all projects and categories of investments planned by BGE and the justification used to support the investment plans. To conduct this review he compared the average budgets by project/program to recent historic spend and then evaluated if BGE had demonstrated in the record why a budget increase was necessary. His testimony provided recommendations on adjustments to the MYP budgets for various projects where he found that BGE had not sufficiently demonstrated the need for a budget increase.