Rebecca Bachelder, President of Blueflame Consulting, LLC has extensive experience in utility ratemaking and as an expert witness in utility matters including issues associated with utility rates and costs. She has presented testimony on utility ratemaking and regulatory policy in New England, New York and Pennsylvania. Most recently, she has analyzed and/or provided expert testimony regarding natural gas expansion programs in Maine, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. She managed the accounting and regulatory groups for Boston Gas through major base rate proceedings as well as through the introduction of competitive markets and their evolution. She was instrumental in the development of unbundling policy and methodology in New England. She has a thorough understanding of utility forecasting, planning and operations, energy markets and regulation. She has testified, participated in settlements and provided written expert testimony in more than 90 regulatory proceedings over the course of her 35 years in the utility industry.
Prior to founding Blueflame, Ms. Bachelder was responsible for legislative and regulatory policy for AllEnergy, an unregulated energy marketer. Ms. Bachelder presented policy options and elements required to unbundle energy markets in New England, New York and New Jersey. She was an active participant in gas and electric collaboratives and restructuring proceedings in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New Hampshire, and co-chaired the Massachusetts Gas Unbundling Collaborative. As a lead participant in the Massachusetts unbundling collaborative and Connecticut Unbundling proceedings, she demonstrated the ability to work with diverse groups of participants to come to resolution and settlement for significant portions of the unbundling plans in both states. She participated and testified in numerous dockets of behalf of AllEnergy.
During her 18 year tenure at Boston Gas, Ms. Bachelder managed the Rates and Accounting groups, and oversaw and developed testimony and exhibits for: performance-based rate making, natural gas rate unbundling, special contract services, conservation and load management, resource planning, revenue requirements and cost of service including revenue adjustments, depreciation and normalization of expenses; cost allocation and development of allocated cost of service studies; marginal cost studies; rate design and tariffs. She was also responsible for the sales forecast used for both billing determinants and for long range resource planning.
Ms. Bachelder holds an MBA from Boston University and a BBA in Finance from the University of Massachusetts.