Power & Utilities

Utility Consulting

Between maintaining financial viability, a shortage of experienced employees, and scrutiny from customers, shareholders, and governing authorities, the operating environment for utilities has become increasingly complex.

For many utilities, the burden of critical business activities including rate studies and general rate cases, finding and complying with grants, planning for capital improvements and financing, and strategic planning takes resources needed to keep services running. But failing to do these tasks properly can leave the utility out of compliance and without the proper funds to support its infrastructure and core services.

Working with a team of experienced professionals can help you effectively manage these activities and free your team to focus on your mission of delivering reliable service to your customers.

Create a Solid Business Foundation

Our professionals can help you handle some of the most challenging business activities.

Determine and Justify Rate Changes

The complexity of determining appropriate rates to fund your current operation and long-term goals—and providing the information to shareholders, boards, and governing authorities to justify this revenue requirement— can be overwhelming for smaller utilities.

Our professionals can help you forecast costs and investments; design rates that balance cost recovery, customer impact, and regulatory requirements; and develop rate studies and rate case filings.

Maintain Regulatory Compliance

Maintaining compliance and laying the groundwork for rate changes requires preparing and submitting annual reports to regulatory agencies. It also means filing updated tariffs when services, terms and conditions, or rates change.

Our professionals can help you provide audited financial and operating data in the consistent, structured format your regulator requires. We can also help you prepare and submit updated tariffs to properly reflect changes in rates.

Protect Data and Assets

Your utility is potentially under attack by two types of cybercriminals: those who want to steal the rich data you have on your customers and those who want to take down your service.

Our advisors help you strengthen your cybersecurity, testing your current systems to evaluate your safety levels, identifying controls that would increase preventative measures, or determining if a new system could better protect your service and your assets.

Take Advantage of Grants

Government grants can significantly reduce the cost of infrastructure construction and upgrades. But it’s time-consuming to find programs you may qualify for, navigate the complex application process, and maintain compliance after a grant is awarded.

Our professionals can take the burden off your team, helping you find and apply for federal and state grants, and document and report compliance.

Plan for the Future

Strategic planning is vital to long-term stability yet is easy to overlook in the day-to-day running of your organization. From financial forecasting—including budget planning and analysis, debt management, financial feasibility studies, and cost allocation studies—to staffing and organizational development to planning for performance and capital improvement projects, your strategic plan is your success roadmap.

Our professionals can facilitate your strategic planning process, whether you’re laying the groundwork for the next decade or for an upcoming capital project.

Evaluate Your Financial State

Understanding your financial state of readiness can enable you to address immediate economic development prospects, plan for future opportunities, or monitor ongoing projects. This helps you translate strategic visions into immediate opportunities and long-term benefits.

Our professionals can help you gain insight into your current financial state and work with you to fulfill your vision through:

  • Economic development financial planning
  • Private, federal, and state incentive structuring and negotiation assistance
  • Tax increment financing and incentive administration services
  • Project financing, including debt issuance, grant pursuits, and pay-as-you-go analysis
  • Project financial and economic impact analyses
  • Tax credit assistance

How Our Process Works

Our services are designed to help you advance your business and services while maintaining compliance and reducing the burden on your staff. To achieve this, we work with you to:

  • Understand your goals. To help you get where you want to be, from setting the right rates for the next year and beyond to catching up on annual reports to long-term planning, we first work with you to understand the unique qualities of your business.
  • Assess your current situation and how we can help. Next, we dig into your financial and compliance data and collaborate with you to understand your current situation.
  • Offer solutions tailored to your needs. Finally, we offer recommendations based on your unique business situation and goals, and undertake activities we agree to, to help you move forward.

Expansive Utility Consulting Experience

Deeply immersed in the financial and regulatory sides of utility operations, our professionals have extensive knowledge of client needs and customer, shareholder, and agency expectations.

Our team collaborates with you, using their deep understanding from years of partnering with our clients to help you establish a solid economic foundation, plan for the future, and maintain compliance.

With our one-firm approach, you can also tap into the full resources of our firm, integrating finance, tax, and audit concerns, along with regulatory compliance, cybersecurity, strategy, and other key support areas.

Insights

Baker Tilly US, LLP, Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP and Moss Adams LLP and their affiliated entities operate under an alternative practice structure in accordance with the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct and applicable laws, regulations and professional standards. Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP and its subsidiaries, and Baker Tilly US, LLP and its affiliated entities, trading as Baker Tilly, are members of the global network of Baker Tilly International Ltd., the members of which are separate and independent legal entities. Baker Tilly US, LLP and Moss Adams LLP are licensed CPA firms that provide assurance services to their clients. Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP and its subsidiary entities provide tax and consulting services to their clients and are not licensed CPA firms. ISO certification services offered through Moss Adams Certifications LLC. Investment advisory offered through either Moss Adams Wealth Advisors LLC or Baker Tilly Wealth Management, LLC.