Bates White has provided independent evaluator services to clients seeking to incorporate demand-side resources and distributed energy resources into their portfolios. Examples include:
On behalf of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, we served as Independent Observer for Hawaiian Electric's competitive procurement of “grid services,” including capacity and fast frequency response, from customer-sited distributed energy resources on O’ahu, Maui, and the Island of Hawai’i. This innovative procurement allowed customer-sited resources – such as residential rooftop solar and energy storage – to compete against utility-scale projects, head-to-head. Bates White was involved in all aspects of the procurement, from procurement and evaluation methodology design, to conducting and/or monitoring the evaluation process, and overseeing contract negotiations with winning bidders. Vincent Musco led this work.
In Illinois, Bates White served as the Procurement Monitor for the Illinois Commerce Commission for procurement of community solar resources, community non-solar resources, and brownfield solar projects.
Our work includes review of procurement and evaluation design, contract and RFP documents, independent evaluation of projects and bids, bidder qualification, and project selection. We help create strict price benchmarks for each procurement, which requires consideration of construction costs, O&M expenses, financing costs, taxes, and other assumptions. We brief Commission Staff and provide a full report with our findings and recommendations to the Commission. Vincent Musco leads this work.
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