Melissa Firestone, Research Consultant

melissafirestone@acadianconsulting.com

Melissa Firestone is a Research Consultant at ACG. She has worked in regulated industry and consulting for more than twenty years, including several years at utilities such as San Diego Gas and Electric and Eversource.

Ms. Firestone has expertise in regulated utilities focusing on cost of service proceedings, revenue requirements, and rate design. At San Diego Gas and Electric, she managed and prepared rate and revenue analysis for California Public Utility Commission regulatory filings. She led year-end LNS true-up analysis for Eversource companies and analysis of interconnection agreement provisions for National Grid’s transmission system. Her second area of expertise is the US natural gas market focusing on supply/demand modeling to accurately project US natural gas storage seasonal balances and weekly withdrawals/injections to inform trading and hedging decisions.

Melissa has experience working in consulting. At FCS Group, she worked with small municipal utility clients to create cost of service models and employed detailed Bonneville Power Administration tariffs to calculate historical and forecast future expenses.

Over the years, she has gained experience in analyzing natural gas pipeline constraints, regional import/export flows, planned pipeline build out to inform basis price modeling, analyzing & formulating outlooks for US oil prices, negotiating contested regulatory issues, and with rate riders to recover unique items such as storm recovery costs and energy efficiency and demand side management programs.

Ms. Firestone holds an MA in Economics with an emphasis in Public Utility and Regulatory Economics from the University of Wyoming and a BA in Business Economics with an emphasis in Environment and Natural Resources from the University of Wyoming.