Dive Brief:
- Arizona’s dominant electricity providers — Arizona Public Service (APS), Tucson Electric Power, and UNS Electric — are on track to meet or exceed the state's interim mandate that they source 6% of their electricity from renewable resources, the Associated Press reports.
- The Arizona Renewable Energy Standard (RES) began at 1.25% in 2006 and aims for 15% renewables by 2025. It requires 6% in 2016, and continues to escalate at 1% per year after that. Since 2012, it has required that 30% of each year’s total renewables to be distributed resources.
- Tucson Electric Power’s most recent rate case challenges the current definition of distributed solar and asks the ACC to include its planned $10 million, 5 MW community shared solar array in its 30% obligation because the project will be subscribed to by individual utility customers.
Dive Insight:
The 30% distributed generation carve-out requires that “half of this must be from residential installations and half from non-residential, non-utility installations.”
APS expects to obtain 12% of its power from renewables by the end of 2015, largely on the strength of its power purchase agreement for the 280 MW output of the storage-equipped Solana Generating Station and a series of smaller photovoltaic solar power plants. The Abengoa-built Solana concentrating solar power plant uses parabolic trough technology and molten salt storage.
UNS Electric expects to get to the 6% level by the end of 2016 through its utility-scale and rooftop solar resources.
The renewables that qualify for the RES obligation are: Solar Water Heat, Solar Space Heat, Geothermal Electric, Solar Thermal Electric, Solar Thermal Process Heat, Solar Photovoltaics, Utility-Scale Wind, Biomass, Hydroelectric, Geothermal Heat Pumps, Combined Heat & Power, Landfill Gas, Small Wind, Small Hydroelectric, Geothermal Direct-Use, Anaerobic Digestion, and Renewable Fuel-Powered Fuel Cells.
