Consumer Reports told Arizona regulators on October 6 that Arizona Public Service customers would pay about $240 more a year on average if the commission grants the utility’s request for a 16% residential rate increase. The case is still pending. A judge’s recommended order is expected by late November, and commissioners must vote by December 31.
What Consumer Reports told the commission
The advocacy group filed a letter in docket E-01345A-25-0105, the APS rate case. Christopher Harto, the group’s manager of energy policy, signed it. The letter says the increase would cost customers an additional $240 a year on average, which is $20 a month.
Consumer Reports describes itself as an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan organization. Its letter went to the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates electric service in the state, in October, three months after the hearings ended.
Consumer Reports attached a petition signed by 1,035 APS customers who asked the Arizona Corporation Commission to reconsider the increase, along with 19 testimonials from its members in Arizona about how rising bills affect them. Its letter is advocacy, not a ruling.
The figures describe a request, and the commission can approve a different amount. A household on APS service should treat $240 as the group’s estimate of the average, not a charge that has been set for any one account.
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The letter leans on the utility’s profits. It cites the Energy and Policy Institute as finding that 13 cents of every dollar APS residential customers pay becomes profit. It says APS reported about $3.1 billion in profits from 2021 to 2025 and that customers’ electricity costs reportedly rose 58% over five years.
Consumer Reports also points to executive pay, estimating that the chief executive of APS parent Pinnacle West was paid more than $11 million in 2025. The group asks regulators to reduce APS’s authorized return on equity, the profit rate the utility may earn on shareholder money, rather than raise it.
Its argument is market-based. Pinnacle West’s price-to-book ratio, a measure of how investors value the company against its accounting worth, was 1.6 as of October 2, 2026. Consumer Reports says that shows investors accept lower returns and that APS could still raise capital without hurting its credit rating.
The third request is oversight. Consumer Reports asks the commission to allow only necessary, prudent investments to be recovered from ratepayers and to make sure costs follow cost-causation principles, meaning that the customers who cause a cost are the ones who bear it.
Data centers and who pays for the grid
The letter asks the commission to make sure residential customers do not pay for infrastructure that would not be built without expected data center growth. It says investments serving large customers should be recovered through transparent tariffs or negotiated agreements that protect existing customers from upgrade costs and stranded assets.
It also says residential customers should not be required to prepay for infrastructure for data center demand that may never arrive. A Consumer Reports survey of 2,146 U.S. adults in November 2025 found that 78% were at least somewhat concerned that new data center development will raise their electricity bills.
The commission’s own case update shows the issue is live. It says the case turned in part on changes to APS’s Extra High Load Factor rate, which applies to large users such as manufacturers and data centers, and on whether to authorize a Formula Rate Adjustment Mechanism.
The calendar from here
Hearings began May 18 and ended July 7, lasting 31 days. The commission says the case drew nearly three dozen intervenors, more than 50 witnesses, more than 300 exhibits and about 3,400 data requests between June 2025 and June 2026.
The administrative law judge will weigh the evidence and briefs and is expected to issue a recommended opinion and order by late November. The commission must vote on it at an open meeting by December 31, which is 68 days from today. If approved, new rates are expected to take effect in early 2027.
The Arizona Corporation Commission offers a public comment form for utility dockets, a way to request to speak at an open meeting and live video of proceedings. Its eDocket system holds the filings. The Consumer Reports letter takes no position on the monthly fixed charge.
A recommended order is not a final decision. The commissioners can accept, change or reject what the judge proposes, and the vote is the point at which a number becomes a bill. Until then, the $240 figure is an advocate’s estimate of a request.
For an APS household the open question is not whether the commission cuts the request. It is whether a bill that is $20 higher on average, or whatever number the commission lands on, can be absorbed by a household that already pays to run air conditioning through an Arizona summer.
Who helps with the power bill if the increase is approved?
A bill about $20 higher a month does not arrive with a program attached. Cooling and heating help, bill assistance and home-repair programs each run on their own applications, and a household that learns about them after new rates take effect has already paid the difference.
The story’s money question is the rate request, and the related job The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit finishes is help with heat and power bills. It covers heating, cooling and home-repair help and includes an application log and renewal calendar.
Plan for a higher power bill with the Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit →
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
