4. Positions of the Parties
ORA was the only party to specifically review the utilities' LIEE earnings claims in this proceeding, and does not protest any of the LIEE earnings claims associated with program years 1998 to 2001. As ORA explains:
"ORA reaches this conclusion based upon its review of each of the AEAP applications and its ongoing participation in the various working groups. These working groups, comprised of representatives from the utilities, Energy Division and ORA, prepare the load impact studies, bill savings analyses and cost-effectiveness analyses that are used in utility LIEE measure assessment and overall program design, and that form the analytical basis supporting utility claims for shareholder earnings. Because of ORA's ongoing involvement with these working groups, by the time the utilities filed their AEAP applications each year, ORA had already thoroughly reviewed and commented, via the working groups, on these studies and analyses.
"Having already reviewed the underlying basis for the shareholder claims, ORA's remaining primary task in its review of the 2000, 2001 and 2002 AEAP applications was to verify whether the utilities had met the criteria for making earnings claims and had correctly calculated the claims. To that end, ORA carefully reviewed installation and savings data, making sure that these compared with existing study results and activity levels. Moreover, ORA assured itself that the utility claims were calculated in accordance with the incentive mechanism applicable at the time. [Footnote omitted.]14
As a result of its review, ORA concludes that all of the utility LIEE earnings claims in this consolidated AEAP proceeding are warranted.
WEM makes no individual recommendations concerning the utilities' LIEE earnings claims, but generally concludes: "there is no way to determine whether utilities' deserve performance awards because the information those awards should be based on is impossible to obtain, given utility secrecy, lack of clarity of their documentation, and the enormous disparity in resources between the utilities and the various watchdogs...Therefore, WEM believes that the utilities deserve no shareholder incentives in the current AEAP, and should refund to ratepayers their shareholder incentives from earlier programs as well."15
14 Comments of the ORA on LIEE and Load Management Cost Recovery, March 28, 2003, pp. 2-3. ORA did not file any additional comments specific to the 2002 AEAP LIEE claims on June 2, 2003, the due date for any supplemental comments on the utilities' first-year PY2001 claims. See the ALJ Ruling Regarding Schedule and Need For Hearings on LIEE Earnings Claims and Load Management Cost Recovery, April 15, 2003. 15 Case Management Statement, October 15, 2001, pp. 3-4.
