William Steven Seelye
It is with a heavy heart and great sorrow for the members of The Prime Group to report the passing of Steve Seelye on the morning of July 2nd after losing his fight with cancer. He was 66 years old. Steve was not only a colleague and co-worker, but he was also a long-time friend. Steve was one of the founding partners of the Prime Group, which was formed in 1996 alongside Marty Blake.
Steve retired full-time from The Prime Group in July 2022 but continued to occasionally assist us with special projects. He was an integral part of the firm's regulated utility practice which saw him testify in front of numerous state and federal regulatory bodies. His curiosity, inquisitiveness, and desire to continuously learn about statistics, engineering, and finance, made him nationally renowned for his innovative approaches to utility ratemaking and regulatory strategy.
Each of us here at the Prime Group worked with Steve for years and will miss him dearly.
Steve Seelye was the Managing Partner of The Prime Group. He had more than 40 years of experience in providing ratemaking, planning, regulatory and marketing support for electric, gas and water utilities. Steve has assisted investor-owned, cooperative, and municipal utilities all over the United States and Canada in performing cost of service studies, developing retail and wholesale rates, analyzing revenue requirements, managing major regulatory initiatives, preparing depreciation studies, and performing economic studies. He has worked with more than 100 electric, gas and water utilities. He co-founded The Prime Group with Marty Blake in 1996.
Steve Seelye testified as an expert witness before numerous state regulatory commissions and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) in the areas of revenue requirement support, embedded and marginal cost of service studies, rate design, merger and acquisition studies, depreciation studies, lead-lag studies, fuel adjustment clauses, territory disputes, and the pricing of reactive power service. During his tenure with The Prime Group, Steve Seelye has testified on behalf of Nevada Power Company, Sierra Pacific Power Company, Mobile Gas Company, LG&E Energy, Kentucky Utilities, Columbia Gas Company, East Kentucky Power Cooperative, Big Rivers, Delta Natural Gas Company, Vectren, Central Illinois Lighting Company, Richmond Power and Light, Intermountain Rural Electric Association, Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, Prestonsburg Municipal Utilities, and other utilities.
Prior to joining The Prime Group, Steve Seelye led the Market Management and Rate department at Louisville Gas and Electric Company (a gas and electric utility) where he was responsible for rate and regulatory filings for the gas and electric businesses at the utility. He has managed gas and electric rate cases including strategy development, witness preparation, timeline development, filing preparation, witness preparation, cost of service study development, financial pro forma analysis, rate and tariff development and responding to data requests.
His accomplishments include developing performance-based, environmental cost recovery and fuel supply cost recovery rate mechanisms, as well as negotiating numerous special contracts with large industrial and commercial customers. He also has experience in negotiating sales of generating assets and in negotiating unit power sales. Steve has designed load research programs, prepared electric and gas demand forecasts, prepared system planning studies, and performed numerous economic studies.
With expertise in applied mathematics, his technical background includes performing optimization and statistical studies, developing pricing structures for utility products and services, developing cost studies for complex rate filings, preparing financial pro-formas and business cases for new product development, managing the rate case preparation and filing process and preparing financial support for rate case filings. He has a B.S. degree in Mathematics and extensive graduate training in engineering and physics from the University of Louisville. Steve also taught linear algebra, differential equations, college algebra, and AP Calculus to college and high school students.
To view some samples of Mr. Seelye's submitted testimony, please click here.
