Ben Claassen has more than 25 years of energy experience as an engineer, corporate planner, manager and consultant. In supervising the Resource Planning Group at Entergy Corporation, Dr. Claassen effectively served as an internal consultant to the firm's senior management. He gained extensive experience and provided executives with unique business insights while focusing on a variety of corporate issues, including gas supply planning, transmission planning, generating unit capital investments, system operation analysis, production costs and planning studies.

Dr. Claassen worked for a client on their FERC filing before Order 888 was written. The issues of ancillary service pricing, limitations to transmission access through tariff design and procedures, market power and the cost basis of the utility filings were critical to the client. Once issued, FERC Order 888 was reviewed for the client and his market position was identified.

Dr. Claassen provided consulting services to several developers to work through a utility's procedures for generation interconnection and facility upgrades. This assignment involved review of the procedures for transmission access on the OASIS web sites and the development of key insights for the implementation of transmission access and the costs related to the transmission interconnection.

Earlier work included coordination of real-time system operations with generating plant goals and operating expectations. On an assignment with a utility, Dr. Claassen played a crucial role in implementing their performance goals for fossil operations, planning, business, and finance. On another assignment with the same utility, he evaluated the critical influences for economic success of a cogeneration project in one of their facilities. For another client, he evaluated the operational benefits and the market value of ancillary services for electrical generating units that use compressed air energy storage.

He has completed consulting assignments for a diversified client base, including such companies as: Shell Western E&P, Inc.; TPC Corporation; Sithe Energies, Inc.; Aluminum Company of America; CAJUN Electric Cooperative; Energy Management Technology, Inc.; Coors Brewing Company, ARKLA Natural Gas and APTECH Engineering Services, Inc.

Prior to his employment with Entergy Corporation, Dr. Claassen was a Mechanical Equipment Development Engineer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well as a Thermodynamics Engineer at Chrysler Corporation Space Division.

Dr. Claassen also teaches a graduate course in Quantitative Decision Analysis at the University of New Orleans in the Engineering Management Program.

He holds a B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from Tulane University and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Claassen has also attended a number of Entergy's Management Training courses, including utility regulation, financial planning and employee performance improvement.

See who else makes up the ENERGY ADVISORY GROUP team.