Ben Havumaki

Ben Havumaki consults on topics such as rate design, performance-based regulation (PBR), grid modernization, benefit-cost analysis, and macroeconomic modeling. Much of Mr. Havumaki’s recent work has focused on regulatory approaches to managing risk and optimizing benefits from utility grid modernization investment programs. Examples include developing best practices for benefit-cost analysis of grid modernization investments in Minnesota and designing utility performance incentives to guard against excessive spending on reliability and grid modernization initiatives in Illinois. He has also worked on rate design issues related to fixed customer charges in New Hampshire and Nova Scotia, as well improvements to legacy utility class structure and rate designs in Prince Edward Island. Mr. Havumaki has also previously worked on rate design in Missouri, Georgia, Colorado, and California.

In addition, Mr. Havumaki provides expert witness services. He has provided testimony in proceedings in Illinois, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Georgia. He has assisted in drafting comments in several other jurisdictions, including Nevada, Mississippi, the District of Columbia, and New York.

Mr. Havumaki holds an MA in Applied Economics from the University of Massachusetts, where he received the Arthur MacEwan Award for Excellence in Political Economy, and a BA from McGill University. His graduate thesis research, reflected in a 2019 article in Energy Policy, focused on hybrid energy system design in Mauritius and entailed investigating economic and technical prospects for storage hydropower under a full-decarbonization constraint. Mr. Havumaki also co-authored a benefit-cost analysis primer for the World Bank entitled “World Bank Water Management, Sanitation, and Conservation Projects in Developing Countries: A Guide to Cost-Benefit Analysis.”