The Arizona Corporation Commission decided to eliminate a decade-old grid access fee for residential solar customers in Arizona. The grid access fee, which was imposed by Arizona Public Service, averaged about $100 per year per solar customer and unfairly targeted solar customers under the guise that it cost more to provide them with electricity service.
The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) testified against the charges in October 2020 and December 2020 and demonstrated that solar customers paid their fair share of grid costs compared to non-solar customers. In addition, SEIA was able to demonstrate that APS’ claims about increased service costs for solar customers were unsubstantiated.
“Today, Arizona got rid of an unjustified and outdated charge that has been a drag on the Arizona solar economy,” said Sara Birmingham, senior director of state policy, West, at SEIA, in a statement. “Nearly a decade ago, the Arizona Corporation Commission imposed an unfair grid access charge for solar customers, after Arizona Public Service stated that it cost more money to serve solar customers. SEIA testified during this case and was able to prove that solar customers in Arizona pay their fair share of grid costs and do not introduce additional costs to other customers.
“We are at a point in our country where we need to focus on deploying more clean energy and unnecessary utility charges and fees can be a major deterrent to potential solar customers. This change will more fairly recognize the benefits of local solar adoption and we hope we can expand solar accessibility to even more Arizonans. We commend the commission for reversing course on this harmful and discriminatory charge for residential solar customers in Arizona,” she continued.
News item from SEIA
“The grid access fee, which was imposed by Arizona Public Service, averaged about $100 per year per solar customer and unfairly targeted solar customers under the guise that it cost more to provide them with electricity service.”
APS has several “programs” that are still under scrutiny for their ledger domain of rates during certain times of the day that cause electricity rates to fluctuate from $0.12/kWh up to around $0.25/kWh during ‘certain’ times of the year and ‘certain’ hours of the day. The problem I find with the “grid access fee”, is the total ignorance of who originally installed and “paid for” those copper wires to the utility transformer sitting on a “right of way” [given] to the utility for “their” infrastructure. IF the utility can charge ‘me’ a grid access fee, then I should be able to erase this fee with the “customer right of way charge”, the community loses property to insure the utility has a clean and clear access to every property they service.
In Arizona there is also TEP in Tucson and SRP in the Phoenix area. Both TEP and APS are under the ACC scrutiny while SRP does not “sell” stocks and is not an IOU but is considered a “special electric district”. The board of directors are elected by the people in the service area and in the case of SRP, votes are counted in Acres of land owned. SO, farmers and cattle ranchers get many votes for the board member of their choice and the hundreds of thousands of voters in those “retirement communities” get about 1/5th of a vote. Even SRP has found out that mentioning a grid access fee will garner a class action lawsuit from these hundreds of thousands of retirement community citizens that can change the tide of such a program.