In today's world, with growing emphasis on energy efficiency, intermittent renewable resources, and fast technological progress in metering and communications, many utilities are taking a closer look at their existing electricity rates and options available for demand response rates and programs. Time-differentiated marginal costs provide the starting point for such analysis, and are also critical when it comes to developing cost-benefit analysis of smart metering, or the impact of net metering on the utility costs. This NERA course, to be held in Los Angeles on 29-30 May 2014, will provide details on best-practice marginal cost estimation and ratemaking. Taught by NERA Vice President Amparo Nieto and Affiliated Consultant Dr. Hethie Parmesano, the course provides in-depth discussions of methods to estimate marginal costs, an overview of the pricing principles and steps, methods for allocating revenue requirements to customer classes, steps required to develop a set of efficient time-differentiated rates, including demand-response and dynamic rate options, and methods to deal efficiently with net metering. As part of the training, attendants will be required to form groups and conduct rate design exercises.

To learn more about this NERA course, please view the materials in the right-hand column of this page.