Best Way For SRP Customers To Reduce Their Electric Bills For Free

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

SRP Rate Plan	Off-Peak Rate (per kWh)	On-Peak Rate (per kWh)
E27p Demand Rate Plan	$0.05	$0.06 from 2-8 pm with a demand charge*
​E26 aka Time-of-Use	$0.07	$0.24 from 2-8 pm with NO demand charge
E21 aka EZ-3	$0.09	$0.34 from 3-6 pm no demand charge

*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?

1. Having The Right AC System On Your Home. An undersized AC system will not be able to pre-cool your home down to 74 degrees, and you may even notice that your AC system doesn’t cool your home past 78 degrees during the heat of the summer.  In this case, your won’t be able to really pre-cool your home and when the thermostat goes up during peak hours, your AC system will probably kick on almost to it’s normal schedule.  That’s where having good insulation and a well sealed duct system help.
2. Have Good Insulation and Well Sealed Ductwork. Having a well insulated attic and sealed ductwork also plays an essential role in the super-cooling strategy.  It’s important to keep all that cool air INSIDE your home once you’re A/C has done all that hard work.  If you’re home is leaking 30% of its air into the attic before it ever gets to your rooms and you’re insulation is below the rafters, all the cool air will leak out like when you first shut off your car A/C in a hot parking lot.  The ROI for putting more insulation and sealing the ductwork makes sense and we like to say that you are lowering your energy bills without raising the thermostat.
3. Programmable Thermostat. A programmable thermostat is not as essential as #1 and 2 are, but it sure makes life easier.  The ability to set-it-and-forget-it reduces the friction of having to remember when to adjust your thermostat each day.  Smart thermostats like Nest, Eco Bee or Lyric are not recommended with load controllers because of the 5 minute time delay after the thermostat has been turned off.  A regular programmable thermostat is the best option.
4. Single Story Home. Why a single story home and why not a two story home?  A single story home has more attic area to add insulation to, whereas a two story home has more wall area that cannot have insulation added (it can, but it can be cost prohibitive).  Having more attic insulation will help keep all the super cooled air inside your home compared to a two story home which has great heat gains from less wall insulation and from the stack effect of warm air rising to the 2nd floor.  

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!