The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) voted to approve the Grid Access Charge (GAC) requested by electric utility Arizona Public Service (APS). The charge is a monthly fee applied to rooftop solar customers, ranging from $2 to $3 per month, with the ability to be increased in future rate cases.
“Residential solar customers rely on APS’ power grid to provide electricity when their systems are not producing, similar to relying on the power grid as a battery source of energy,” said administrative law Judge Belinda Martin. “It’s important to note that nearly 73,000 APS residential solar customers who are grandfathered under net metering are not subject to the GAC, therefore about 111,000 APS residential solar customers are paying the GAC.”
Martin said the GAC helps recover the costs of maintaining the range of services and equipment that helps ensure safe and reliable electricity service.
The charge was justified based on an argument that rooftop solar customers create a cost shift on non-solar customers, making electricity service more expensive for those who have not installed solar panels on their roof.
The “cost shift argument,” has been effective in advancing penalties on the rooftop solar industry across the country, particularly California, where the rooftop solar industry has faced sharp declines. The rooftop solar cost shift has been debunked in numerous analyses, and analysis shows that it may instead provide a net cost benefit to all customers on the grid.
While Arizona’s Grid Access Charge is a few dollars a month, the approval from ACC to apply the charge also came with an order for it to be increased in APS’s 2025 electric rate filing. Autumn Johnson, executive director of Arizona Solar and Storage Association (AriSEIA) said that APS requested a fee as high as $88 per customer per month.
AriSEIA said the rooftop solar customers are already paying APS a rate 15% higher than their non-solar counterparts. It said that APS itself testified that if the Corporation Commission removed solar fees, the cost to non-solar customers would be $0.25 per month per customer. Despite this, the ACC leveraged a fee of several dollars per month and authorized APS to increase it in future rate sessions.
(Read: “Ten reasons why small-scale, non-utility solar is important“)
“AriSEIA demonstrated at the hearing that based on a quantitative analysis of several national expert witnesses, APS had miscalculated the cost of service to solar customers. That miscalculation reflected that solar customers were not paying their fair share, when in fact, the inverse is true. Solar customers pay more than they should and actually subsidize non-solar customers,” AriSEIA said.
“The evidentiary record makes it clear that solar customers are subsidizing non-solar customers and yet APS and the ACC continue to penalize solar customers with unfounded and discriminatory fees,” Johnson said.
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This is a breach of Contract which APS provided to the solar customer when they gave the Permit. it should be challenged in court!
$2 or $3 a month is the little toe slipping through the door. It’s just the beginning as evidenced by the totally totally unreasonable desire for $88 per month fee. APS and ACC both need a major overhauling.
The current solar IS NOT yet econmical. People using solar must pay the TOTAL COST of their choice. No free storage from utility and no free hookup to the utility.
Why should I pay part of the solar cost when I don’t use it!
The consumer tries to save money but the utility companies are lurking in the dark to take it all away.
Solar panel program too good to be true.
The Arizona Corporation Commission is fraught with corrupt individuals who do nothing to help but only hurt individual homeowners. We should reassess their roll in our society. I have had trouble with my Doney Park water company also and the CCC did not help me. I have solar and am despised by our APS company. I sell them electricity and they want to resell it to me at a higher profit, why are we allowing solar haters to work in our state. Last December I received the round up check for solar power I made, one week later I received a bill for twice the amount they sent me. Sounds like a scam they are trying out. I complained and they gave me a sob story about how to contact them and put my account on hold for a month and then call back and cancel the hold and see if that helps. Insanity.
I totaly agree with Kathryn Adams.I am in the same situation here in Florida and for the same reasons i believe.
I am really frustrated with the ACC and APS discriminatory decision to impose an additional fee. I invested over $30k installing solar on my home 2 years ago and have been feeding excess energy into the grid since. The decision to install was based on the energy savings return on investment.
I feel this proposed fee is simply the utilities attempt to make up for a loss of revenue because we are primarily using solar. As a solar customer feeding the grid, I would say we are helping subsidize non-solar homes.
I would like to know if there is an appeal process planned or if a class action lawsuit is the next step?
Each year APS claims their demand for electricity in increasing and at one time they saw roof-top solar as a means to holding down the cost of generation during the peaks. It would also limit the cost for adding additional generation resources. I’m not sure when they saw solar as a way to help control costs vs begining to think of it as a foe. They obviously now think of roof-top solar as a foe since they’re doing everything they can to discourage it. It makes one think that perhaps being totally of their grid might be the best option.
I agree Kathryn in California sce and other utility companies blame the infrastructure issues on solar and low energy rates yet have the largest profits. We pay .61 ce ts a kwh peak. And they only purchase our produced power at .13 cens a kwh max. Then if you don’t use over a certain amount of power per month they tack on a 10 dollar “grid connection fee” it is just a scam and money grab for them and politicians.
Unless you have a battery array you aren’t helping non-solar customers as much as you think. Phoenix has one of the highest overnight power draws in the country and most of us like our houses cool while we sleep as opposed to during the sunny daytime when we mostly work. Yes, the power draw is greatest in the day because of commercial buildings and how hot the days are, but the night grid draw doesn’t dip as much as most regions and that has a big effect on to he efficiency of your and APS’s arrangement.
I’m not saying it’s totally justified, but you have to scrutinize the situation beyond monthly in/outflows.
Here in northern CA, solar homeowners pay about $12/ month fee to PG&E for the pleasure of being connected to the grid. The hope is, that some of this fee will be off-set by rebates for supplying battery stored power (Powerwalls) back to the local distribution grid during hours of peak demand, usually 3 pm to 12 pm. This might become a reality for customers without Powerwalls when Vehicle-2-Grid charging is adopted by the utilities. If you don’t have frequent power outages, there’s no reason to spend $12k on a Powerwall, but a lot of CA solar homeowners have BEVs.
I live in San Juan Island in the Puget Sound, Our local power company is charging $56.59 for service access, which is a large part of our bill as the power comes from the dams on the Columbia River at $0.12/Kw. This is the same rate for those who have solar power that go on the power grid I have been told. Rumor is that these dams will charge our local power company an access fee, which will be passed on to us. Welcome to the new solar world.
Meanwhile, most utilities are already, or have plans to greatly increase the resources they devote to community solar programs. This can be portrayed as a noble cause when the systems are constructed in Economic Zones (ie, “brown zones” – sites unsuitable for other purposes, such as an abandoned oil well drill – Texas has literally thousands of them), or urban areas where installing residential solar on rooftops isn’t feasible, or the inhabitants can’t afford it.
If solar is the economic pariah that utilities describe, why are they moving full steam ahead with community solar? Answer – they’re regulated monopolies, and have been for 100 years, they’re protecting their profits and market share. They’re going to attack any alternate energy source (ie geothermal), until they establish their own business unit in that discipline, that can also function as a monopoly.
Define “Rooftop”…
Interested in how it plays out in Arizona-San Antonio,Texas solar customer.
This is not fair. The fee should be charged to the solar company and not allow then to turn thre charge back to the customer. If not, allow me to get out of my lease and get a company with one charge Gurrentee.
This is absolutely nothing more than power companies trying to recoup the loss of revenue from Solar. How about homeowners with solar her a fee from the power company to subsidize the cost of maintaining our systems that feed power to the grid that the power companies then sell for a profit?
If I lived in Arizona and they charged these these nonscense fees, I would get more batteries and go off grid.
It’s starting to look like a few new laws need to be created to protect consumers. When these power companies begin providing solar power to their non-solar customers, you can bet that they won’t be paying their customers to use their solar produced power. Maybe homeowners with solar will have to keep a battery bank and be able to keep their solar totally separate from the grid. Then what would happen?
The Federal government pushed us to install solar. How can they allow local electric utilities (APS) to add fees to our bills? Feds should get involved.
Big Corporate Machine is irritated that some small fish are slipping by with their scales unscathed. They tell you that you are costing others to turn them against you. Then its easily proven that you are saving others money by putting cheap power into the grid. But its too late the Corporate machine has got you now for $3 a month, then $8 a month, then $88 per month, its never ending.
APS is playing a foolush gane here, banking on solar customers not going off grid. At an extra $80/mo it would not take to manny years to pay for a battery bank sufgicient for modt homes. Those customers remaining will be forced to foot the bill…This is actually about APS being saddled with billions of decommissioning cost for the Palo Verde nuclear plant. They will do what they can yo pass those costs on and they have most of the AZ Corporation Commisdiom in their pocket