Local opinion: TEP refuses to refund solar over-collection in rate case

For the past four years Tucson Electric Power has unscrupulously been charging solar customers an unnecessary fee for their meters. TEP has no intention to refund the overpaying customers and instead plans to keep the money. TEP should be required to refund customers as this is clearly unfair.

The fee was assessed against solar customers beginning in 2019 and is only now coming to light because of TEP’s current rate case. TEP knew or should have known the fee was unnecessary in 2019 but continued to charge customers for the past four years. In fact, they did not even include eliminating the fee in their current rate case application.

This fee was part of the utility’s advanced metering infrastructure rollout, which was approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) in January 2019. Originally, it was based upon different meters used for customers with rooftop solar compared to other residential customers. However, soon after the fee was approved, the extra cost for solar customers should have been eliminated as TEP began using the same meters for all customers. Despite this, TEP took no action to end the fee and continued to charge the needless fee for years.

With no other special costs associated with solar customers’ meters, there is no reason solar customers should be paying an increased meter fee. Without any justification for the increased meter fee, it appears the utility is penalizing customers who install rooftop solar systems, undermining the economic and health benefits of residential clean energy. It is well known that distributed solar energy, such as rooftop solar, has many benefits, both locally and globally for the environment, the grid, and the economy. TEP portrays itself to be pro-renewable energy and pro-solar, but assessing this unnecessary fee and refusing to refund it undermines their claims of support.

In the initial application for the utility’s current rate case, TEP was planning to continue charging the fee it knew was unwarranted. The Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association (AriSEIA) and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) notified the Arizona Corporation Commission of this outdated and incorrect fee and it was only then that TEP agreed to end it later this year. Although the fee will not continue going forward, TEP has profited over $1.5 million from over-collecting on its rooftop solar customers. This is money that rightfully deserves to be back in the hands of the affected customers. As of June 2024, the average rebate for customers who would be owed one is almost $60. There are thousands of customers who have been paying this fee since January 2019; they have each been charged $270 for an unjustified fee.

The utility was not required to notify the ACC or customers of the fee’s obsolescence and, therefore, TEP has an incentive to withhold this information and continue to over-collect. This behavior by a regulated public utility is inappropriate, unfair to customers, and should not be permissible.

Unfortunately, the ACC has not required TEP to refund customers. Therefore, TEP customers should call on the utility to voluntarily refund its ill-gotten gains. You can directly contact TEP’s customer care center at 520-623-7711 and urge them to refund the over-collected fees.