APS prioritizes customer partnerships by developing innovative programs to help customers manage their energy use and potentially reduce their costs. To support our clean energy goals, our customer programs are also focused on shifting customer demand to align with solar production. The APS demand response (DR) portfolio offers a variety of technologies, which give customers options to best fit their needs. With high customer participation, the program builds a network of connected customer devices, creating a Virtual Power Plant (VPP).
APS Virtual Power Plant (VPP)
A VPP uses a virtual network of smart home products like thermostats, water heaters and batteries to reduce energy use on Arizona's hottest summer days. These connected products enable customers and APS to reduce energy use on Arizona's hottest days by shifting load and curtailing peak demand.
Cool Rewards. The APS Cool Rewards 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 program event day. The program had 83,538 residential smart thermostats enrolled in 2023, with the ability to provide up to 145 megawatts of dispatchable peak capacity to help meet demand for energy on hot summer days. This program is just one of the strategies and innovative solutions for our customers to collaborate with us to reduce carbon emissions to meet our clean energy goals.
We leverage the APS Marketplace to help us scale our Cool Rewards program. The APS Marketplace is an online shopping site where customers can shop for energy efficient or demand -friendly technologies to help customers save energy and manage their energy usage. Customers can directly enroll into certain APS programs with the purchase of their connected device and can also claim rebates for eligible equipment.
Residential Battery Pilot. The Residential Battery Pilot Program encourages customers who adopt energy storage to operate their battery for bill savings and provide peak demand savings value to the energy grid. The pilot has helped us learn about battery performance in a variety of conditions, while providing a mutual benefits to customers managing energy use at their residence while also helping reduce stress on the electric grid. APS will continue to expand and evolve on the existing pilot.
Energy Saving Days. The Energy Saving Days program is a behavioral demand response program that provides valuable energy about 6,000 MWh and peak demand of about a 5.5MW reduction. Throughout the demand response season, participants receive emails before and after each event. Pre-event emails let participants know the date and time of the upcoming Energy Saving Days event, when they should shift or reduce energy usage.
Transportation Electrification
APS is working to support as many as 450,000 electric vehicles (EV) in its service territory by 2030 by focusing on EV education and outreach, fleet electrification, EV grid integration through managed charging, and expanding access to EV charging infrastructure. In addition, APS Cars Marketplace is a resource for customers to compare car models based on fuel efficiency, available incentives, and total cost of ownership. Cars Marketplace is available in Spanish translation which allows more customers to utilize the site to learn about EVs. In addition, customers can use Cars Marketplace to view real-time EV inventory at our local, partner dealerships. In 2023, we launched the APS Fleet Marketplace, which is aimed at helping our business customers understand the costs and benefits of fleet electrification.
Take Charge AZ. Through the Take Charge AZ program we install and owns EV charging equipment at various workplace, fleet and multifamily communities, enabling us to gain knowledge that will help facilitate the electrification of the transportation sector while maintaining grid reliability. As of year-end 2023, we have installed 704 Level 2 (L2) charging ports at customer locations. In addition, APS energized five Direct Current Fast Charging sites in the communities of Show Low, Globe, Payson, Prescott and Sedona. While in effect for the majority of 2023 the program was closed to new customers by the Arizona Corporation Commission in December 2023.
Learn more about the Transportation Electrification Program.
Green Power Partners
The Green Power Partners program provides commercial and industrial customers pathways to achieve their unique sustainability goals by receiving renewable energy from utility scale renewable resources. The program demonstrates our shared commitment to a clean energy future for all Arizonians, while providing an economic development tool to attract corporations to our service territory.
Solar Communities
This program makes solar and its clean-energy benefits available to limited- and moderate-income customers, as well as governments, schools and nonprofits. As of year-end, 2023, the program has resulted in the following installations since program inception:
- 1,013 limited- and moderate-income household installations
- 18 multifamily systems
- 23 nonprofits, Title I schools and rural or government buildings
In March 2024, the Arizona Corporation Commission ordered APS not to expand or extend the Solar Communities Program. APS will continue to work on projects in the queue prior to that decision.
Conservation Behavior Programs
The Residential Conservation Behavior program portfolio delivered in partnership with Oracle Opower, is made up of several customer offerings such as Home Energy Reports, plan coaches, Energy Saving Days, and high usage alerts. The behavioral portfolio is intended to motivate participants to reduce and/or shift their home energy usage. This is an important program that provides education and awareness and drives participation in other Demand Side Management (DSM) programs and energy savings opportunities. The conservation behavioral portfolio is responsible for nearly 50 percent of APS's residential DSM annual savings.
Energy Efficiency Programs
APS develops and implements Demand Side Management (DSM) programs and educational outreach efforts that seek to help all customers save on their energy costs, with a focus on helping limited-income customers, nonprofits, small businesses and disadvantaged communities. APS develops and implements many DSM measures focused on providing customers with the tools needed to save energy, reduce peak demand and effectively shift their loads to off-peak hours.
Our portfolio of energy efficiency programs provided approximately 408,644 MWh of energy savings for 2023. That is enough energy to power more than 33,400 typical Arizona households for an entire year. Since 2005, the lifetime energy savings from our energy efficiency programs have avoided approximately 27.5 million metric tons of carbon emissions.
Learn more about our DSM program accomplishments in our 2023 DSM Annual Report.
Weatherization Assistance
We provide funding for limited-income home weatherization in partnership with community action agencies throughout Arizona. This weatherization program enables qualified customers to make their homes more energy efficient. In 2023, APS invested $7.25 million complete limited-income weatherization projects around the state.
Learn more about our weatherization programs.
Recognitions
As we continue to design programs to meet our customers’ needs, we received the following industry awards in 2023:
- 2023 ENERGY STAR Award Partner of the Year: Sustained Excellence for excellence, energy efficiency and program delivery.
- Oracle Energy and Water Strategic Vision Award for demonstrating the ability to foresee trends, needs, or issues pertaining to the utility industry, advancing the industry through the adoption of technology, and delivering successful energy efficiency and demand-side management programs for customers.
- Association of Edison Illuminating Companies Achievement Award for the APS’s Green Power Partners program as an innovative program for commercial customers to help them achieve their sustainability goals, while ensuring no cost shift for non-participating customers.