Expertise
Our Team of Energy Industry
and Regulatory Experts
Experience and Knowledge Count
The ETE team combines business, technical, and legal experience to provide an interdisciplinary approach to solving client issues. James Bride and Dara Flynn worked together in business and engineering roles, respectively at EnerNOC where the idea for ETE began. Jamie Tosches brings the perspective of state policymakers and regulators through her experience at various Massachusetts energy and environment focused state agencies. The unique challenges of our clients and the variety of work related to energy rate issues has allowed ETE to attract highly qualified staff.
Our Team
James Bride, President
Jim has been working in retail energy in some form for the last 16 years. He is an experienced expert witness with appearances in multiple states on topics including rate design, cost allocation, electric vehicles, storage, net metering, and service quality.
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Jamie Tosches, Vice-President
Jamie is the Vice President at ETE where she applies her multi-faceted skillset forged through two decades of work experience to provide customized, innovative, and detailed energy-related rate and policy solutions to ETE’s clients.
FULL BIO
Lexa Nutter, Consultant
Lexa is a Consultant at ETE. She has appeared as an expert witness in
proceedings regarding rate design and marginal costs and has extensive
experience supporting clients in the energy storage sector.
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Dara Flynn, Sr Analyst
Dara is a Sr. Analyst at ETE and has been working in the business since 2018. She leverages her 18 years of experience to conduct rate and load data analysis, economic feasibility and cost analysis studies.
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Sam Knoll
Sam is a Research Analyst at ETE. He has experience performing tariff optimization studies, maintaining rate and tariff datasets, and conducting research tasks in support of regulatory monitoring and expert witness engagements.
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Project Expertise
Modeling and Decision Support
PURPA Tariff Study and Solar Business Models
ETE was retained by an Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm to study the options for large scale solar development within a medium size municipality in a western state. The tariff book for the electric utility serving this municipality had limited net metering provisions and confusing PURPA tariffs. ETE Vice President Jamie Tosches researched relevant state utility commission filings, origins and historical iterations of PURPA tariffs including avoided cost methodologies, and payment regimes for existing PURPA projects within the state. Her research led to the recommendation that the only viable tariff option for solar development required colocation with existing load at the municipality’s largest electric accounts. This research and report gave the municipality and EPC confidence that they were pursuing the highest value development option available.
Modeling Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) Charging Costs in New York
ETE maintains a rate database of electric rates for the distribution companies in New York. ETE used this data to create an interactive spreadsheet model that calculates to the costs to charge a BESS under a variety of scenarios for utilities, interconnection voltages, commercial rate options, and BESS charging and discharging profiles. ETE used its detailed knowledge of Standby and Buyback rates to accurately capture the costs arising from contract demand, daily as-used demand, and applicable distribution riders in this model. ETE consultant Lexa Nutter has been able to use this model to provide insight to BESS developers as they assess development opportunities and tradeoffs in BESS sizing and available incentive programs.
Regulatory Support
Due Diligence Support for a Buyer of Clean Energy Projects
ETE was retained by an investment fund that was actively purchasing portfolios of operating renewable assets throughout the United States. ETE’s task was to identify sites with high levels of contract or regulatory risk. ETE reviewed the applicable rate designs for Behind the Meter (BTM) offtakers as well as compensation structures that could be subject to revision by regulators due to political pressure or affordability concerns. ETE provided information on known and emerging risks and conducted an assessment of compensation structures or rate designs that could be vulnerable to future changes that could impact renewable asset valuations. Contract provisions such as guaranteed savings clauses, etc. were also evaluated to determine their relative levels of risk.
Assessment of the Impact of a Change in the Community Solar Garden Program for a Governmental Authority
ETE conducted an assessment of the financial impacts of a change in the compensation structure for existing Community Solar Gardens (CSGs) for a governmental authority that had aggressively subscribed to CSG capacity and developed CSGs on its own land as part of its utility strategy. ETE Sr. Analyst Dara Flynn collected multiple datasets from the customer to determine the volume of subscribed CSG credits, Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) rates, and CSG compensation values to determine the magnitude of the CSG credit revenues at risk from the proposed changes in CSG compensation for existing CSG sites. ETE Vice President Jamie Tosches communicated an executive summary with supporting detail to the authority’s government affairs team to help them determine their position on the issue and level of advocacy an engagement with the utility commission.
Expert Witness Services
Reverse Engineering Utility Owned EV-Charger Costs
In a Transportation Electrification Proceeding, ETE witness James Bride reverse engineered the cost to operate utility owned Direct Current Fast Chargers (DCFC) using workpapers and discovery requests. This analysis helped demonstrate that the utility’s proposed DCFC station ownership program would distort the competitive market for EV charging and increase the risks for private capital investment in competitive EV charging services in Colorado. This analysis was cited in shaping the report of the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) and the Proposed Decision from the Public Utility Commission.
Securing Improved Streetlighting Rate Designs in Minnesota
ETE was retained by an organization representing municipalities in Minnesota to advocate for fair and cost based streetlighting rates. Most of these municipalities had converted to LED streetlights as part of a program stemming from a prior settlement agreement and wanted to ensure that streetlighting rate designs in the current rate case reflected actual costs of service. ETE witness James Bride entered testimony into the record demonstrating areas where streetlighting rates should be adjusted to reflect the efficiencies and lower operations and maintenance costs of LED lights relative to other lighting technologies. This testimony led to constructive discussions with the utility leading to a partial settlement agreement and a favorable set of decision options presented to the Public Utility Commissioners on streetlighting issues.
Jim has been working in retail energy in some form for the last 16 years. He is an experienced expert witness with appearances in multiple states on topics including rate design, cost allocation, electric vehicles, storage, net metering, and service quality. He is also a strong report writer, researcher, and modeler and is able to use these skills to complete assignments ranging from benchmarking projects to economic feasibility studies for various conventional and renewable energy technologies. As a result, Jim has become a trusted advisor to a diverse range of clients throughout the energy industry in North America. Prior to founding ETE, Jim was a subject matter expert in the energy procurement consulting practice group at EnerNOC, Inc. where he focused on North American power and gas markets. Jim has an M.B.A. from Cornell University and a B.S. in Geophysics from Boston College.
Jamie Tosches is the Vice President at ETE where she applies her multi-faceted skillset forged through two decades of work experience to provide customized, innovative, and detailed energy-related rate and policy solutions to ETE’s clients. Her consulting practice focuses on providing a suite of complimentary services to advance her client’s energy interests within state energy regulatory and legislative environments, and to also improve their business decisions during project development and operational phases. Her clients rely on her to provide expert witness and strategy support before state public utility commissions, in-depth analysis of state and federal level energy regulatory and policy environments, and programs, relationship building strategy and execution through coalitions and targeted outreach to regulators, and evaluation and monitoring of state energy policies, regulation and legislation. Her substantive work at ETE focuses on rate design, electric vehicle, solar and battery storage rates, programs and policies, merchant generation rates and regulatory environments, and natural gas safety-related investments. Jamie draws on over 16 year years of experience in working on state energy matters as a lawyer and in a leadership role of a state agency to efficiently simplify the complex energy rate, policy and program questions of her clients. Prior to joining ETE, Jamie held a senior leadership role serving as the Assistant Commissioner of the MA Department of Energy Resources. She also served as the Deputy General Counsel of Energy for the MA Executive Office of Energy and Environment, and as a ratepayer advocate with the MA Office of the Attorney General. Jamie has a J.D. from Suffolk University Law School (2005) and a B.S. from UMass Amherst (1999) with an environmental science major.
Lexa is a Consultant at ETE. She has appeared as an expert witness in proceedings regarding rate design and marginal costs and has extensive experience supporting clients in the energy storage sector. In addition, Lexa leads ETE’s service delivery to retail energy suppliers, clients where ETE provides analysis and support on a white label basis, customers of the Price to Compare data product, and anything related to VDER in New York. She is also experienced writing comment letters and coordinating materials required for regulatory reporting obligations. Lexa has a B.S. in Business Management from Boston University.
Dara is a Sr. Analyst at ETE and has been working in the business since 2018. She leverages her 18 years of experience to conduct rate and load data analysis, economic feasibility and cost analysis studies, development of cost reduction strategies for end use clients, and analysis of large datasets. Previously, Dara was a founding team member of the data-driven energy efficiency product at EnerNOC, Inc where she managed a team of energy analysts delivering recommendations for operational energy efficiency improvements. Dara has B.S. and M.S. in Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Sam is a Research Analyst at ETE. He has experience performing tariff optimization studies, maintaining rate and tariff datasets, and conducting research tasks in support of regulatory monitoring and expert witness engagements. Sam is an EnerKnol power user has developed strong domain expertise in EVs and retail energy markets. He has an M.S. in Energy and Environment and a B.A. in Environmental Analysis and Policy from Boston University.