Overview

Bill, who leads the firm’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) practice, has 25 years’ experience counseling a wide range of clients in the energy sector, including:

  • Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs)
  • Retail regulators
  • Generation developers
  • Investor-owned utilities and their affiliates
  • Public power entities
  • Transmission-dependent utilities
  • Independent transmission developers
  • Cooperatives and municipals
 

Bill advises clients that participate in RTOs and Independent System Operators (ISO), including New York ISO, New England ISO, Midcontinent ISO, and PJM Interconnection LLC., on legal and strategic issues including:

  • Day-ahead and real-time energy markets
  • Ancillary service markets
  • Congestion hedging
  • Virtual transactions
  • Locational marginal pricing
  • Installed capacity, unforced capacity, and resource adequacy markets
  • Other tariff-related issues

Bill advises clients on a range of legal and strategic issues including:

  • Open access transmission tariff rules and proposed change
  • Industry restructuring effected by FERC through notices of proposed rule-making and policy changes
  • Generator interconnection agreements
  • Generator auctions
  • Formula rate and transmission incentive rate filings
  • Market-based rate applications
  • Section 203 filings (e.g., disposition of FERC-jurisdictional facilities)
  • Settlement agreements, facilities agreements, operating agreements, scheduling agreements, marketing and settling agreements (for power marketers), and others.
  • Transactions involving futures, options, contracts for differences, for energy, and capacity
  • Section 306 complaints (filing and response)
  • Reciprocity tariffs for non-FERC jurisdictional entities
  • Electric Quarterly Report requirements, market behavior rules, and code of conduct requirements

Experience

Bill has over three decades of service to the energy industry, including six years in the engineering department on board a U.S. nuclear 688-class fast attack submarine, 12 years of on-site operations at a 1,000 MW nuclear generating station, and 22 years as an energy lawyer advising clients on all aspects of FERC regulation.

Before joining Michael Best, Bill was a partner with a multinational law firm and a Washington D.C.-based energy law firm. Before moving to Washington D.C., Bill practiced with a New York City law firm. Bill’s experience includes representing clients from Arizona to Maine, in most RTOs/ISOs, and in one instance, Ethiopia. The United Nations invited Bill in 2009 to counsel ten East African countries on the creation of centralized energy and transmission markets for the East Africa Power Pool. In 2012, he counseled the Ghana Public Utility Regulatory Commission on the development of U.S. regional transmission organizations and centralized energy and capacity markets.

Professional Activities

  • Member, American Bar Association (ABA)
  • Member, Energy Bar Association (EBA) 
  • Past Director, Charitable Foundation of the EBA

Education

Bar Admission

Court Admission

Insights

Education

Bar Admission

Court Admission

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