The principal force in the advertising campaign against Proposition 127 is Arizona Public Service (they've provided 98%+ of the funding for the entity nominally paying for the TV ads).
Their principal scare tactic is to tell Arizonans an average electric bill will go up $1,000 per year.
I've done some back-of-the-envelope calculations indicating it should not cost nearly as much.
Assumptions
Arizona can exceed the Prop 127 renewable standard by taking these 5 steps.
1) Cover the entire Central Arizona Project (CAP) Canal (Arizona's single-largest electrical customer by far) with solar panels.
2) Cover the roofs and parking lots of non-residential real estate (including apartment complexes) to the tune of the land area of 25 times all of Arizona's Wal Mart stores (and their parking lots) with solar panels.
3) Cover 25% of the space underneath APS' 6,000 miles of high-voltage power lines, plus the land associated with any fossil-fuel power plants to be decommissioned, with solar panels.
4) Cover every single-family home in Maricopa, Pima, Pinal and Yuma County not currently covered in solar panels with solar panels.
5) Installations would occur gradually over time, commensurate to worldwide solar panel production.
Who would pay?
Let's break it down by the steps listed above:
Why, the Central Arizona Project, of course. How much would it cost CAP water users? Little or nothing.
Why? Beginning in 2019, CAP's principal source of electricity, Navajo Generating Station, is expecting to charge them $60 per megawatt hour (MWh) for power. Utility-scale solar (the scale of solar installation it would take to cover 200+ miles of canal) already costs so little, the unsubsidized price of its electricity is less than $60 per MWh. The Department of Energy's (DOE) target price for solar-produced electricity in 2030: $30 per MWh. The DOE hasn't missed a long-term solar-energy price target this century.
Solar makes business sense for CAP.
Central Arizona Project
Why, the Central Arizona Project, of course. How much would it cost CAP water users? Little or nothing.
Why? Beginning in 2019, CAP's principal source of electricity, Navajo Generating Station, is expecting to charge them $60 per megawatt hour (MWh) for power. Utility-scale solar (the scale of solar installation it would take to cover 200+ miles of canal) already costs so little, the unsubsidized price of its electricity is less than $60 per MWh. The Department of Energy's (DOE) target price for solar-produced electricity in 2030: $30 per MWh. The DOE hasn't missed a long-term solar-energy price target this century.
Solar makes business sense for CAP.
Non-Residential Property
Why, the property owners, of course. How much would it cost property owners? It actually would save them money. They might even be able to pass along lower costs to their customers. Here's how.
The average price for which APS sells a MWh of electricity at retail prices is $121.40 (12.14 cents per kWh). Commercial-scale solar (the scale of solar installation it takes to cover each of 125 Wal Marts and their parking lots x 25) already costs so little, the unsubsidized price of its electricity is about $103.30 per MWh. Long-term, $90 per MWh is very realistic.
Again, this is good for business for all land-using businesses.
APS Own Property
Why, APS, of course. How much will they sock it to their customers to pay for it? They shouldn't have to charge anything? Why?
Remember that DOE price target of $30 per MWh? It costs APS about $40 per MWh just to put fuel in coal and natural gas plants -- at today's fuel prices. Before 2030, it'll be cheaper to build solar than to fuel polluting plants.
Installing solar would be good business for APS.
On Homeowners Property
This the only place that gets a bit dicey. There are federal tax subsidies for solar installation, but there's no real guarantee they'll persist. And right now, the unsubsidized price of residential solar is slightly higher than what APS charges.
For 12% of APS* gross revenue (almost all of which comes from selling electricity on the retail market) for each of the next 12 years (2019 thru 2030), they could subsidize residential solar on a declining basis (about 20% of the cost in 2019 -- down to about 12% of the cost in 2030)... bringing the unsubsidized cost of the electricity to around $101 per MWh -- enough cheaper to spur homeowners to take the plunge on solar.
*APS subsidy would only be for customers in its service area; SRP and TEP would need to do the same thing.
*APS subsidy would only be for customers in its service area; SRP and TEP would need to do the same thing.
If APS had to pass costs equal to 12% of their gross revenue on to rate payers, they'd do so by increasing rates by, you guessed it, 12%. The average Arizona electric bill is around $1500 per year. If you live in an all-electric house in metro Phoenix, keep your 1800-square-foot house at 75 degrees all day (because people are home) and you have a swimming pool (pool pumps eat electricity like crazy), $3000 per year would be typical. A 12% bump in the average bill would be $15 per month; $30 extra per month in a high bill. A far cry from $83 per month ($1000 per year) they've advertised.
Then What's The Downside?
The main downside would be to APS. They'd be selling about half the electricity they do now (because the other half would be produced on site and used by the property owners). Thus, they'd be in a position to command much much less revenue. Their shareholders would raise a stink.
APS would employ somewhat fewer people, but those job losses would be more-than offset by the job gains required to install enough solar panels to cover 50,000 football fields in just 12 years.
Some of APS job losses could be offset by the need to create massive banks of utility-scale power-storage (something APS would have expertise in doing), so electricity generated at noon could be used at midnight. By 2025, industrial lithium batteries should break the $60,000-per-MWh price barrier. For the life of those batteries (if charged and discharged carefully), one could store electricity for as little as $20 per MWh (2 cents per kWh).
So long as APS owns and operates Palo Verde, they will be in a position to be a net seller of power to other utilities. Even with as little solar power in place as is in place now, the wholesale price of electricity often falls below 2 cents per kWh. With more solar in place and more battery-storage in place -- it becomes attractive to, instead of selling that power to some other utility at less than 2 cents per kWh, they store the electricity for 2 cents per kWh and sell it wholesale for more than 4 cents per kWh (which is still less than the fuel cost of fossil plants) or retail it for 12 cents per kWh. That makes business sense. In time, APS management will make its shareholders' happy.
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But what is our priority? The planet, or the short-term grumblings of its shareholders.
The choice is yours on November 6.
