APS Rate Plans, What to Choose (Phoenix: apartment, appliances, how much)

[indianamike]

In a few weeks we will be taking posession of a new home in the Phoenix area served by APS. I could not find any threads on the subject of current rate plans since they seem to have changed.


My question is how do I determine which plan is best for our situation.


@ 1600 sq ft one story house
gas cooktop, oven, clothes dryer and water heater
Two occupents
We will spend 6 months here, snowbirds.


The choices are


Lite Choice [SIZE=3][SIZE=3]This rate has two parts: a basic service charge and an energy charge. Energy charges are basedon how much energy (kWh) is used during the month. This rate does not have time-of-use charges, seasonal charges, or a demand charge. 600 kWh per month or less.[/SIZE][/SIZE]
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Premier Choice [SIZE=3][SIZE=3]This rate has two parts: a basic service charge and an energy charge. Energy charges are based on how much energy (kWh) is used during the month. This rate does not vary by time-of-use, season, or demand (how much energy is used at one time).[/SIZE][/SIZE]
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Saver Choice [SIZE=3]This rate has two parts: a basic service charge and an energy charge. The energy charge will vary by season (summer or winter) and by the time of day that the energy is used (On-Peak or Off-Peak). This rate does not include a demand charge. [/SIZE]
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Saver Choice Plus [SIZE=3][SIZE=3]This rate has three parts: a basic service charge, a demand charge for the highest amount of demand (kW) averaged in a one hour On-Peak period for the month, and an energy charge forthe total energy (kWh) used for the entire month. The energy charge will vary by season (summer or winter) and by the time of day that the energy is used (On-Peak or Off-Peak). The demand charge will not vary by season.[/SIZE]

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Saver Choice Max [SIZE=3][SIZE=3]This rate has three parts: a basic service charge, a demand charge for the highest amount of demand (kW) averaged in a one hour On-Peak period for the month, and an energy charge for the total energy (kWh) used for the entire month. The energy charge will vary by season (summer or winter) and by the time of day that the energy is used (On-Peak or Off-Peak). The demand charge also varies by season.[/SIZE]

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Saver Choice Tech. We do not Qualify


I can understand the on peak and off peak rates and I know the plans without the demad charge and/or on peak and off peak rates have a higher cost per KW, but I do not have a clue what the demand charge is and how it works. Can someone explain the demand charge to me?


Thanks for helping figure out what we need and thank you for your answers.

[HX_Guy]

I can help here.

Demand is basically an appliances real time electrical usage, or electrical demand. For example, an AC unit may draw 5kW of power in real time, and if that AC runs for an hour, it's usage would be 5kWh (5 kilowatt hours). If you are on one of the APS demand plans, APS will monitor your highest demand over the month, and then multiply it by a fee. They do average out that demand though over an hour, so just because your AC was on, doesnt mean your demand would be 5kW, it would actually be a fraction of the hour, depending on how long the AC ran that hour. And of course, the AC is just an example, as everything in your house uses electricity and therefore has a demand, and therefore gets taken into consideration in their calculation. But essentially say your AC ran for 15 minutes, it's demand that hour would be 1.25kW (5kW / 4). Then say your dryer ran for 30 min and that had a demand of 3kW (6kW / 2). Then say your TV, lights, etc had a demand of 2kW for the whole hour. Your total demand for that hour would be 1.25 + 3 + 2 = 6.25kW. APS would take that 6.25 and multiply it by their fee and it would be part of your bill that month. They take the highest one hour of the month, and it resets every month, so if you hit a high one once, the rest of the month you can hit the same again and it won't affect the bill (at least not in the sense of the demand charge).

The upside to this kind of billing is that the kWh rate they charge is lower, so if you dont use a lot of appliances within the same hour, you can come out cheaper than their other plans. We normally do see homeowners (I own a solar company so I see lots of customer bills on a daily basis) spending less per kWh on average on the Saver Choice Max than the other plans, but you have to be mindful of when you run your appliances. By the way the demand is only monitored/calculated during the on-peak hours, the rest of the hours it doesn't matter what your hourly demand is.

[indianamike]

Thanks for the explanation.

[Ponderosa]

The trick to a demand charge is not to run more than one big thing at a time during peak hours and not even that if you can help it. AC is not optional, but dryers, water heaters, pool pumps etc should all be on timers if you use this rate. That said, your best rate is likely the lite user rate. You won't be using that much with all those gas appliances.

[Potential_Landlord]

This is where the new plan sucks because my wife and daughter love to cook extensively for dinner, so before 8pm. I love to bake stuff but I'm more flexible.

[HX_Guy]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

The trick to a demand charge is not to run more than one big thing at a time during peak hours and not even that if you can help it. AC is not optional, but dryers, water heaters, pool pumps etc should all be on timers if you use this rate. That said, your best rate is likely the lite user rate. You won't be using that much with all those gas appliances.

That's not entirely true about running multiple things, and APS' marketing on it is deceptive.

It doesn't matter at all if you run everything at the same time or staggered, if its within the same hour, since APS averages out the entire hour.

So if you have an AC that pulls in 5kW, and a dryer that pulls in 4kW, and a stove that pulls 8kW...you could run each for 20 minutes staggered or run them all at the exact same time for 20 minutes and your average would be the same 5.67kw of demand for that hour, as its based on top of the hour to top of the hour.

What you'd actually need to do is run the AC for 20 minutes this hour, then wait for top of the hour and run the dryer, then wait till top of the hour and run the stove. That would then result in a max demand of 2.67kW.

[Ponderosa]

Originally Posted by HX_Guy

That's not entirely true about running multiple things, and APS' marketing on it is deceptive.

It doesn't matter at all if you run everything at the same time or staggered, if its within the same hour, since APS averages out the entire hour.

So if you have an AC that pulls in 5kW, and a dryer that pulls in 4kW, and a stove that pulls 8kW...you could run each for 20 minutes staggered or run them all at the exact same time for 20 minutes and your average would be the same 5.67kw of demand for that hour, as its based on top of the hour to top of the hour.

What you'd actually need to do is run the AC for 20 minutes this hour, then wait for top of the hour and run the dryer, then wait till top of the hour and run the stove. That would then result in a max demand of 2.67kW.

Unless one wants to sit around with a stopwatch then I'll stick to my advice. Keep down the load and it keeps down the bills. It's been working for me for well over 20 years of APS demand rates. I used to have a load controller that could handle things - just set the hourly demand and it did what you state, but it conked out years ago and new ones are hard to find/expensive. In lieu of that, timers are advised, because if you don't have them and try to wing it, you are going to forget and get burned.

[Ripper3785]

Originally Posted by HX_Guy

That's not entirely true about running multiple things, and APS' marketing on it is deceptive.

It doesn't matter at all if you run everything at the same time or staggered, if its within the same hour, since APS averages out the entire hour.

So if you have an AC that pulls in 5kW, and a dryer that pulls in 4kW, and a stove that pulls 8kW...you could run each for 20 minutes staggered or run them all at the exact same time for 20 minutes and your average would be the same 5.67kw of demand for that hour, as its based on top of the hour to top of the hour.

I agree with what you say but I'm a little surprised APS does it this way. I'd be ok with them charging people more for using more power at the same time vs. averaging an hours kWh use. My only experience with this stuff is in a commercial environment in another state. Something like half of our (several thousand/mo)bill is kWh usage and the other half is peak demand availability. When we start certain machinery, the first few seconds or so require a huge amount of power to get big motors moving, then drops to 10% or so of the peak. If we were to start several of these machines at the same time, we would see a huge change in our electric bills. Our power company 'polls' our system several times a second tracking our peak usage. Watching our peak demand contributes to stability of the grid and whatnot. It seems sensible to me. But so does charging people airfare based on their weight.

[wannabeaTexan]

I moved here in July, so I’ll give my experience. Not sure if it’ll help. I’m in a 1300 sq ft apartment, West facing, with windows on that side. All electric. Four people (three are teenagers). My APS bills were about $400 the first few months on the Saver plan. They said that’s the plan they recommend to newbies until you know what your usage will be. Being not able to use peak rate electricity from 3-8 pm during those months stressed me out. I was constantly opening blinds/closing blinds, freaking out if my kids started laundry at 2:30 pm & we waited til after 8 most nights to eat dinner unless I decided to order pizza or just said whatever, I’m cooking early.

After 3 months, I checked out their new recommendation for me, which was the Super Saver plan. Since that’s based on our behavior, I’m not sure it would help because I’ve slacked off a lot on worrying about it. I don’t want to think about it all day, so I don’t lose it when I hear the washing machine or shower going in the afternoon anymore. Once I turned off the A/C, the bill went down considerably.

My advice is to go with what they suggest at first....that might be the Saver plan. Since you’re not going to be here during the Summer, as snowbirds, I don’t think I’d worry much about the plan though. My bill has gone down every month to $140-$170 beginning in October and I turned on the heat once for a few days. For me, I’d be annoyed trying to make things work with the demand plans. I work from home, so I’m there basically all day