The 4-1 vote by the Arizona Corporation Commission came after the majority rejected a bid by Bob Burns to delay the rate case until his lawsuit with APS and his fellow commissioners is resolved.

The Arizona Supreme Court will hear a case about a mechanism used by water companies to increase rates outside of a rate case.

Irony,” says literary critic Harold Bloom, “demands a certain attention span, and the ability to sustain antithetical ideas, even when they collide with one another.”

An administrative law judge has concluded that Arizona Public Service hasn’t “established an urgent need” for addressing any cost shift attributed to rooftop solar outside of a rate case.

In a clear break from his predecessor, RUCO Director David Tenney suggested that the Corp Comm immediately tackle the issue of “cost shift” associated with rooftop solar instead of waiting to handle it in a rate case, which takes a comprehensive look at issues in a judicial setting before deciding to raise utility rates.

Less than two years after the Arizona Corporation Commission approved a small monthly surcharge on residential solar, the state’s largest utility is asking energy regulators to impose a 320-percent increase in the solar fee.

Navajo County Board of Supervisors chairman David Tenney was appointed Monday as the director of the Residential Utility Consumer Office, replacing director Patrick Quinn.

At least two energy regulators are highly skeptical of a proposal by the state’s biggest utility to enter the rooftop solar market.

The small state agency responsible for looking out for Arizona consumers’ interests on energy policy roundly opposed on Nov. 18 a plan to reconfigure the state’s energy-efficiency standards.

Arizona’s Residential Utility Consumer Office today recommended Arizona’s utility regulators to reduce solar “net metering” incentives by a fraction of what the state’s largest utility has sought in recent months.

Instead of cutting the monthly savings of solar net metering customers in half, or by around $75 each month, as Arizona Public Service has asked the state’s energy regulators to allow, RUCO suggested a more modest savings reduction of about $7 per solar panel user.