Revenue Recovery Mechanism Application
During the middle of a fiscal year, the Hawai‘i Public Utilities Commission issued an order that modified the decoupling mechanism and established stricter guidelines under the rate adjustment mechanism (RAM), including a lower monetary cap, for revenue recovery on small, unapproved capital projects. This order affected all of the Hawaiian Electric Companies, including Maui Electric which operated on the islands of Maui, Lana‘i, and Moloka‘i.
Maui Electric had already completed, as well as started, a number of projects (such as transmission & distribution upgrades and improvements in generation reliability) that were below the previous cap, but were now above the new lower cap. As a result, Maui Electric filed an application to recover approximately $4.25 million under the new RAM cap. Rich worked with Maui Electric staff and the Regulatory Affairs Department of Hawaiian Electric to write a Revenue Recovery Application that complied with Commission directives.
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