Members of the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) heard from electric and gas companies at a special open meeting held recently to ensure customers statewide will have reliable service during the hot summer months.

Arizona Public Service Electric Company (APS), Salt River Project (SRP), Tucson Electric Power (TEP), UniSource Energy Services (UNS), Arizona G & T Cooperatives, Transwestern Pipeline Company and El Paso Natural Gas each presented summer preparedness plans to the commission. The plans include estimating peak demands, summarizing the resources available to meet the demand and emergency and communications plans in the event of an outage.

“As we move toward summer, Arizonans will start cranking down the thermostats on their air conditioners,” ACC Chairman Doug Little said. “This dramatically increases the amount of electricity our utilities must produce. One of the jobs of the Corporation Commission is to ensure that our utilities are prepared to supply the energy needs of the ratepayers, no matter how hot it gets or how much demand there is on the system. We want to make sure that contingency plans are in place to protect reliability in times of peak demand and minimize outages during the summer monsoons. Overall, our electric utilities do a fantastic job of providing affordable, reliable electricity to Arizonans.”

APS projects a peak demand of 6,986 megawatts with nearly 8,500 megawatts in available resources to meet that demand. TEP forecasts a 2,091 megawatt peak demand with over 2,800 megawatts available, and SRP estimates peak demand at just over 6,700 megawatts with more than 8,000 megawatts available.