March 2024
Member Spotlight
Throughout 2024, SECC will recognize one member every month, providing an organizational profile and highlighting the member's accomplishments in the smart energy space.
About Arizona Public Service
Arizona Public Service (APS) is a leader in delivering reliable, affordable and clean energy for approximately 1.4 million customers in Arizona. APS is committed to serving customers with 100-percent clean and carbon-free power by 2050 while maintaining reliable energy to meet customer needs.
As owner and operator of Palo Verde Generating Station, the nation’s largest producer of carbon-free electricity, and with one of the country’s most substantial renewable energy portfolios, APS’s current energy mix is 51-percent clean. APS offers customers a diverse set of flexible programs, which provide mutual benefits to the grid and meets customers’ needs in ways that best fit their lifestyles.
APS’s Virtual Power Plant
APS’s demand response (DR) portfolio is comprised of multiple residential and non-residential customer programs. To deliver this portfolio of programs, APS works with industry partners to offer customer rebates and discounts for eligible devices, including smart thermostats, batteries and water heaters. With high customer participation, the program creates a network of connected customer devices, creating a virtual power plant. In 2023, APS’s DR portfolio of programs provided approximately 175 megawatts (MW) of capacity to support grid reliability.
Most of the virtual power plant capacity comes from APS Cool Rewards. The program enables customers to participate by allowing their smart thermostats to automatically adjust the temperature in customers’ homes by just a few degrees during a Cool Rewards program day. The combined impact is amplified as more customers join the program and is seen as a growing resource that helps APS serve all customers during the critical summer months. The program has over 80,000 enrolled smart thermostats and provides up to three hours of load reduction with the maximum single hour capacity of 138 MW.
One tool helping scale the program is APS Marketplace, an online shopping site where customers can be better informed and motivated to buy demand-friendly electrical products and can directly enroll into programs with the purchase of their connected device.
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is also increasing in APS’s service territory. APS is working to support approximately 450,000 EVs by 2030. In order to best support its customers, APS is focused on EV education and outreach, fleet electrification, EV grid integration through managed charging and enabling access to EV charging infrastructure across Arizona.
Renewable Energy and Battery Storage
As Arizona continues to see an increase in residential population and economic growth, the demand for energy from extra-large energy users has also increased significantly. APS customers are adopting their own clean energy goals and are looking to APS to help them achieve their ambitious goals. APS developed the award-winning Green Power Partners (GPP) program, which consists of three distinct solutions that provide business customers options related to how they invest in renewable energy. Most importantly, there is no cost shift to non-participating customers and the revenue generated through GPP is passed back to all APS customers.
Additionally, APS supports customers who choose to install clean energy technologies like rooftop solar and battery storage. In 2023, APS interconnected more than 20,000 residential rooftop solar systems and over 100 commercial photovoltaic systems. Further, residential customers installed more than 1,000 energy storage systems. APS continues to expand its virtual power plant by including residential battery customers through pilot programs.
