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Discover more resources and partnerships from the Energy Transitions Initiative.

The Standardized Utility Pro-Forma Financial Analysis (SUPRA) tool provides regulators, policymakers, utilities, and project developers in the island and remote communities with a simple and publicly accessible financial analysis tool to better assess utility opportunities.

SUPRA's analysis can help support the financial health of an island or remote utility by quantifying the financial impacts from pursuing changes to the utility's regulatory and business model. See more about SUPRA's functions and use cases below.

SUPRA was developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with funding support and guidance from the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Transitions Initiative.

Resources

  • Development of an annual revenue requirement for a 10-year analysis period based on a variety of different operating, maintenance, and capital cost categories, each characterized by a first-year value and an independent compound annual growth rate. 
  • Identification of major capital asset additions and retirements. 
  • Inclusion of feedback effects between certain utility costs and changes in retail sales or peak demand due to customer adoption of distributed energy resources (i.e., energy efficiency, demand response, solar photovoltaic systems, electric vehicles). 
  • Rate setting for up to four customer classes during user-identified scheduled general rate cases that incorporate current/historic test year data as well as regulatory lag. 
  • Application of utility surcharges, revenue adjustment mechanisms, and other types of balancing accounts to ensure more timely recovery of utility incurred costs (e.g., fuel adjustment clauses, revenue decoupling mechanisms). 
  • Implementation of utility or third-party incentive programs to promote customer adoption of distributed energy resources. 
  • Implications from catastrophic events (e.g., hurricanes) on utility costs and collected revenues.
  • Quantification of the utility’s financial health including cash position, debt service coverage, and days liquidity, as well as earnings and return-on-equity for investor-owned utilities.
  • Creation of up to 10 different characterizations representing municipal and/or investor-owned utilities.
  • Ability to directly compare the 10-year present value of key utility physical and financial metrics for any two of the developed utility characterizations. 

Contact

For more information about the SUPRA Tool, contact eti@ee.doe.gov.