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While performing SRP energy audits, we are surprised how many homeowners don’t actually know what SRP rate plan they are. As energy auditors our job is not only to perform the cool test on homes like our thermal camera scan and depressurization test, but also to seek out areas of energy waste that can be changed by managing energy usage and are more lifestyle changes. We’ve seen homeowners reduce their energy bills by as much as 60% simply by managing their energy use on the right SRP rate plan. By simply managing your energy better, you can cut your energy bills without doing any other work. In this post we will go into the best SRP rate plans you should choose for your home and how best to manage your energy to get the most savings. By far the biggest way to reduce your electric bills is with SRP’s E27p plan or SRP Time-of-Use plan. The E27p plan is a pilot plan that SRP uses for solar customers and is similar to APS demand based rate plans, however you don’t have to have solar on your home to sign up for this plan, anyone can do it. SRP’s E27p plan charges a low off-peak energy rate, a high on-peak energy plus a demand charge if your energy usage exceeds a certain amount during a 30 minute period. The important thing about the E27p and Time-of-Use plan is that the off-peak energy rate is very low, cheap energy. We suggest customers use this plan and take full advantage of the cheap off-peak energy. Typical SRP energy rates are $0.12 per kWh, the E27p plan is only $0.05 per kWh and $0.07 per kWh for Time-of-Use. Since the E27p energy is so cheap, we want you to turn your thermostat down to 72 degrees in the summer during off-peak hours. Yes, that’s right, you want to stay nice and coo during the summer months, even if you are gone to work. This strategy is called super-cooling and pre-cools your home before SRP’s peak hours of 2-8 pm with E27p or 2-8 pm with Time-of-Use plan. Then at peak hour time, your thermostat will be programmed to turn up to 84 degrees (or higher) and if your home is well sealed and insulated, your AC system will ideally never turn on and you avoid SRP’s high on-peak rate charges. For SRP’s Time-of-Use, during peak hours their energy rate balloons to $0.24 but there is no demand charge with the high peak hour rate. Both the E27p and Time-of-Use plan are good options if you can take advantage of supercooling your home. SRP Rate Comparison
*Demand charges are$9.43 for the first 3 kW, $17.51 for the next 7 kW, $33.59 each additional kW Which Type Of Homes Would Benefit Most From Pre-Cooling Your Home?
Who Would Not Benefit From Changing Their SRP Rate Plans? Depending on your lifestyle, pre-cooling your home with these rate plan changes may not be a good option. If you or someone in our home works nights or as an irregular schedule, it may be hard to keep the AC system off during peak hours if they want the temperature to be 76 degrees during the middle of the day. To take full advantage of demand control (penalty) rate plans, the pre-cooling strategy is essential. You need to be able to reliably, day after day, lower the thermostat during off-peak hours and then raise it during peak hours to take advantage of the utility company’s cheap off-peak energy rate. If you are like me and sometimes work from home or have someone home on an irregular schedule then following the pre-cooling plan will be difficult to do because, of course we need to be comfortable in our own homes!
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 Supercooling aka precooling your home is an effective strategy to lower your energy bills by lowering your thermostat during off peak hours, buying cheap energy, and then raising your thermostat during peak hours, ideally so your AC system never turns on during peak hours. To supercool your home, you take the temperature to extremes and go down to 70 degrees off peak, and then raise the thermostat to 84 to 86 degrees on peak. With APS rate plans shifting towards more demand based rate plans, they punish homeowners for using their AC systems when it’s hottest out from 3-8 pm by charging a demand fee. How the new APS rate plan works is from the peak hours of 3-8 pm, in addition to a premium energy cost, APS tacks on an additional demand fee when your energy usage exceeds a certain amount every 30 minutes. Demand is a term that means how much energy your home is using at any time. This demand fee can be a significant part of your monthly energy bill and most homeowners are hardly aware it exists. APS calculates your demand fee every hour based on your home’s highest energy usage during that hour. A demand fee is similar to watching Netflix back when our internet speeds were slower, if you have two people streaming videos at a time, your internet speed may slow down because the usage is to much at one time, just like if you are running both air conditioner systems at the same time, you’ll reach a demand peak and APS will charge an extra fee. Not all APS rate plans have a demand fee, but the ones that do not have a much higher kWh base fee. The APS rate plans that do not include a demand charge are the Lite Choice, Premier Choice, Premier Choice Large and Saver Choice. Of the APS plans without a demand charge, we recommend only the Lite Choice if you are single and keep the thermostat at 80 degrees day and night. All the other APS rate plans will pay more than the rate plans with a demand charge. The APS rate plans that include a demand fee are the Saver Choice Plus, Saver Choice Max and Saver Choice Tech. APS makes it so that the demand based plans have the opportunity for more energy savings than the rate plans without a demand fee because of these precooling strategies. How To Take Advantage Of APS’s Rate PlansSince APS calculates their demand charge every hour, if you have two air conditioners, run only one of them for 30 minutes, then the other AC for the next 30 minutes, never having both of them on during the same time. This way your entire home will stay cooler than if you run only one system most of the day, then after 8 pm the other unit plays catch up trying to cool a hot part of the house, AND you only pay a demand fee of 0.5 x the highest energy usage during that half hour, around 1.8 (average energy usage for a 4 ton heat pump).
Alternatively, the strategy above is better than any of the following scenarios: 1. Having both ACs running at the same for a full hour or your normal temperature range of 77-80 degrees. 2. Having one AC cool one part of your home for a full hour, then having the other AC cool the other half of your home for the next hour. By properly shifting your AC run times, the new APS rate plan of Saver Choice Max can yield lower energy bills. |
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