On November 2, the Arizona Corporation Commission voted its final approval to eliminate Arizona Public Service (APS) company’s “grid access charge,” ending a decade-old unfair practice of charging residential solar customers a discriminatory fee. The grid access fee, a monthly fee based on $0.93 per kW-dc of generation. This fee averaged about $100 per year per solar customer. The Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association (AriSEIA) and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) argued that the fee unfairly targeted solar customers under the pretense that it cost more to provide them with electricity.

APS is also reducing the "on peak" hours for time-of-use electricity plans eventually will shift to 4 to 7 p.m. Today, those rate plans use on-peak hours of 3 to 8 p.m. APS said it could take 10 months to implement the change.

The changes regulators made to APS revenue will affect bills starting in December, but the company said it would take several months to adjust the new on-peak hours on time-of-use energy plans.