The centerpiece of Duncan & Allen’s energy practice is counseling operating utilities in their interconnected utility operations. We advise municipal electric utilities, rural electric cooperatives, irrigation districts, joint action agencies, and non-profit merchant transmission entities on all areas of energy and utility law.

Our work ranges over the following activities:

• Advise clients in generation, distribution and transmission operations
• Litigation and business advice in both transmission interconnection and access
• Consultation on control area operations and interface
• Drafting of documents and consultation pertaining to utility power supply acquisition, power pooling, and operational agreements
• Resource acquisition and disposition
• Structuring and restructuring utility functions
• Energy crisis management
• Utility bankruptcy and merger counseling
• Negotiation and litigation on wholesale and retail rates
• Formation of new public power entities, agencies, and associations
• Advise clients on standards of conduct and anti-market manipulation matters
• Development of bulk power supply plans, demand-side management, and consultation on acquisition of federal and non-federal hydroelectric power

In virtually every region of the country, we have worked with operating, consumer-owned utilities individually and in groups to solve legal problems.

Transmission access is a particular specialty of Duncan & Allen. Since helping the Village of Elbow Lake, Minnesota resist the efforts of the Otter Tail Power Company to prevent the Village from establishing and operating its own electric system, we have helped lead the way in establishing modern federal law regulating transmission access.

One of our lawyers created the only case book (888 Annotated and www.888Annotated.com) to treat all extant federal law on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s open access transmission tariff.

Utility Organization

We have assisted in the successful establishment and actual operation of more electric utility systems (including the Village of Elbow Lake, Minnesota, Clyde, Ohio and Kanab, Utah) than any other firm of electric utility lawyers. We routinely help clients study the legal and business feasibility of establishing electric systems.

Our lawyers have been instrumental in the formation, financing and bringing into business of joint action agencies in the Southeast, the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain West.

As lawyers who create utility organizations and major jointly owned and operated projects, we act as joint project advisors and issuer’s counsel in debt financings.