E3 consultants serve as expert witnesses before state and provincial commissions, FERC, and in commercial arbitration, on subjects including planning reserve margins and capacity accreditation, market rules and tariffs, cost allocation and rate design, resource plans, procurement decisions, and avoided cost methodologies. Utilities, commission staff, trade associations, developers, and intervenors all retain E3 for this work, because the analysis behind the testimony is independent, transparent, and built to withstand cross-examination.
Testimony rests on the same analysis E3 produces outside of litigation. A planning reserve margin comes out of a loss-of-load probability study, a resource plan out of capacity expansion modeling, a class revenue requirement out of a cost allocation study, and each of those has to hold together when opposing parties work through it in data requests, rebuttal, and cross-examination. We document assumptions and sources while the analysis is being built, so the record behind a filing is there before anyone asks for it.
Some engagements never reach a hearing, and we spend as much time on filing strategy, drafting the technical sections of an application, responding to data requests, and preparing a client’s own witnesses. Commissions and state agencies also retain E3 for work that sits outside the legislative process. When the CPUC took up income-graduated fixed charges, for example, it hired E3 to build a public model, and six parties used it to develop and critique competing rate design proposals, including the utilities, environmental groups, ratepayer advocates, and an environmental justice advocate.
Arne Olson
Nick Schlag
Zachary Ming
Ari Gold-Parker
