Policy decisions made by public utility commissions flow from precedents set over decades of regulation, but the quickly changing environment of the power sector requires those decisions to be grounded in those precedents while also reflecting new realities. In a half-day workshop for staff at the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC), Jim Lazar put into perspective the history of utility regulation and Washington state’s place in it since the 1978 passage of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, then applied the lessons drawn from that history to a discussion of residential rate design, distributed generation, and strategies for integrating renewables into the grid. In addition to exploring the rate design principles and best practices outlined in “Smart Rate Design for a Smart Future,” the discussion drew on other RAP work such as “Teaching the Duck to Fly,” and examined relevant examples from the United States and Europe.