Arizona electric rates compared: APS vs SRP

On a flat rate plan in July, an Arizona household using 1,100 kWh pays almost exactly the same on APS as on SRP. The published arithmetic lands two cents apart.

That is not a coincidence so much as an accident, and it hides everything interesting about the two utilities. They get to the same monthly total by opposite routes: APS charges more for power and almost nothing to be connected, SRP charges less for power and $30 a month before a single kilowatt-hour moves.

More to the point, they are heading in different directions right now. SRP cut summer prices for 2026. APS has asked the Arizona Corporation Commission for a 15.99 percent base-rate increase and is waiting on a decision.

Who sets your price, and why it matters

The two utilities are governed by completely different bodies, and this is the single most useful thing to know about them.

APS is an investor-owned utility. Its rates are set by the Arizona Corporation Commission (opens in a new tab), an elected five-member body created by the state constitution in 1912. Changing an APS rate requires a formal rate case: an application, sworn testimony, discovery, an evidentiary hearing before an administrative law judge, and a vote at a public open meeting.

SRP is not under that jurisdiction at all. The Commission states it plainly on its own utilities FAQ: “The Salt River Project (SRP) is not under the jurisdiction of the Corporation Commission for rates, rules and regulations.” SRP’s own pricing process page (opens in a new tab) says the same from the other side: “SRP is a political subdivision of the State of Arizona, and our price process is not governed by the Arizona Corporation Commission. Our publicly elected Board of Directors has the authority to establish electricity prices.”

There is a wrinkle in “publicly elected” worth knowing. Per SRP’s governance page (opens in a new tab), the Board President, Vice President, Council members and 10 of the 14 District Board members are chosen on an acreage basis: one acre, one vote. A landowner with two acres casts two votes; a landowner with a quarter acre casts a quarter of a vote. Four at-large directors are elected one landowner, one vote. Only eligible landowners inside the district boundary vote at all.

So an APS customer votes for the people who set their electricity price on the same statewide ballot as everyone else. An SRP customer who rents does not vote for their board.

Can I switch from APS to SRP?

No. Service territory is fixed by geography, and neither utility competes for customers inside the other’s boundary. Whichever name is printed on your bill is the only residential provider available at your address. Everything below is about picking the right plan within your utility, not about picking a utility.

Is APS or SRP cheaper in Arizona?

On a flat rate plan in a July billing cycle, they are effectively identical: a 1,100 kWh household pays $183.80 on APS and $183.78 on SRP. The answer flips with consumption. Below roughly 1,000 kWh a month, SRP’s $30 monthly service charge makes it the more expensive of the two. Above that, SRP’s cheaper energy price wins.

Both utilities charge more in summer, but they cut the year differently. APS defines summer as the May through October billing cycles. SRP splits it: May, June, September and October are “Summer,” while July and August are “Summer Peak,” priced higher again.

July and August are therefore the only months where both utilities are at their published maximum, which makes them the fairest month-to-month comparison.

• APS
• SRP

View the numbers as a table

July and August residential energy prices, APS vs SRP — full dataset

Category	APS (¢/kWh)	SRP (¢/kWh)
Flat plan	15.418¢/kWh	13.98¢/kWh
Time-of-use on-peak	34.396¢/kWh	40.2¢/kWh
Time-of-use off-peak	12.345¢/kWh	12.76¢/kWh

Sources: APS tariff sheets R-1 (Tier 3) and TOU-E; SRP 2025 Ratebook, plans E-23 and E-28. A temporary SRP fuel adjustment reduces summer prices through the October 2026 billing cycle and is not reflected here.

SRP’s 40.20 cent on-peak price in July and August is the highest published residential energy charge of any plan in this comparison. It applies for three hours a night, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., on the Conserve and Save plan.

The flat-plan arithmetic

Take a household averaging 1,100 kWh a month, in a 31-day July billing cycle, on each utility’s flat rate plan.

On APS, that average puts the customer in Tier 3 of the R-1 Fixed Energy Charge Plan, which begins at 1,000 kWh:

Energy   1,100 kWh x $0.15418 = $169.60
Service      31 days x $0.458 =  $14.20
                        Total = $183.80

On SRP, that is the E-23 Basic Price Plan at the Summer Peak price, plus a Tier 2 monthly service charge for a standard house:

Energy   1,100 kWh x $0.13980 = $153.78
Monthly service charge        =  $30.00
                        Total = $183.78

Two cents apart. APS charges 10 percent more per kilowatt-hour and recovers $14 in fixed charges; SRP charges less per kilowatt-hour and recovers $30.

The practical consequence: the lower a household’s consumption, the worse SRP’s fixed charge looks, and the higher the consumption, the better it looks. At 500 kWh in July, APS R-1 Tier 1 comes to about $75.85 and SRP E-23 to about $99.90. The gap runs the other way at the low end, and it is not small.

What each utility charges just to be connected

SRP’s tiers are set by dwelling type and service size, not by usage. Its Tier 3, for homes with more than 225 amps of service, applies to about 3 percent of residential customers per SRP’s own overview of residential changes (opens in a new tab).

When are APS and SRP peak hours?

APS runs on-peak from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, year round, on every one of its time-of-use plans. SRP’s newest plans run either 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. or 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., also weekdays and year round. The windows overlap for one hour and disagree for the rest.

Time-of-use pricing only helps if you know when to avoid. The two utilities disagree about when that is.

APS runs a three-hour window that ends at 7. SRP’s cheapest new plan runs a three-hour window that starts at 6. A household that shifts dinner and laundry to 7:30 p.m. saves money on APS and loses it on SRP.

Both offer a cheap midday window, and here the difference is larger than it looks. APS’s super off-peak runs 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., weekdays only, and only in the November through April billing cycles. SRP’s runs 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., every day including weekends and holidays, year round.

What is driving both up

Is APS raising rates in 2026?

It has asked to, and no decision has been issued. APS requested a 15.99 percent base-rate increase in June 2025. The hearing closed July 7, 2026, a judge’s recommendation is expected in late November 2026, and the Commission vote is due by December 31, 2026. Any approved rates take effect in early 2027, not in 2026.

APS filed its current general rate case on June 13, 2025. The application requests a base-rate revenue increase of $662.44 million, or 15.99 percent, against a test year ending December 31, 2024. Net of adjustor transfers, APS presents the customer-facing figure as $579.52 million, or 13.99 percent. The residential class increase in the filing is 16.44 percent gross, 14.58 percent net.

That is Docket No. E-01345A-25-0105 (opens in a new tab). The evidentiary hearing began May 18, 2026 and closed July 7, 2026 after 31 hearing days, which the Commission called one of the longest in its recent history. Per the ACC’s July 10, 2026 case update (opens in a new tab), the administrative law judge’s Recommended Opinion and Order is expected in late November 2026, a Commission vote is due by December 31, 2026, and new rates would take effect in early 2027.

No decision has been issued. Anyone quoting a final 2026 APS rate is quoting a request. For the full detail of what was asked for and what happens next, see the APS rate increase page.

SRP: an increase, then a temporary decrease

SRP’s board approved a 2.4 percent overall price increase on February 27, 2025, effective with the November 2025 billing cycle. The residential class increase was 3.4 percent; residential solar customers took 5.5 percent. For the reference customer using 1,117 kWh a month, SRP put the impact at $5.61, or 3.5 percent.

Then on March 26, 2026 the board approved a temporary summer decrease (opens in a new tab): roughly 3 percent overall, delivered through a reduction in the Fuel and Purchased Power Adjustment Mechanism, running from the May 2026 billing cycle through the October 2026 billing cycle. Average residential bills fall about $5.57 a month for those six months. SRP attributed the balance to higher-than-projected retail sales and lower-than-forecast natural gas and market power costs.

That decrease is in effect as you read this. It is also temporary by design and expires with the October billing cycle.

Where Arizona sits nationally

Arizona electricity is still cheaper than the national average per unit. Arizona bills are not necessarily cheaper, because cooling load in July is not a national average problem. Price per kilowatt-hour and dollars per bill are different questions, and rate comparisons that only cite the first one are answering the easier one.

Which utility pays more for exported solar?

APS, on headline rates, though the two are not measured the same way. APS pays a fixed export rate locked for ten years from approval. SRP’s newer plans pay $0.0187 per exported kWh, recalculated annually. Its legacy plans do not pay a rate at all: they subtract exported kilowatt-hours from delivered ones.

The two utilities compensate exported power in structurally different ways, and the gap between them is wide.

APS pays a fixed export rate set under the Resource Comparison Proxy methodology, locked for ten years from the date a system is approved. SRP’s newer plans, E-16 and E-28, pay a per-exported-kWh credit of $0.0187, effective as of the May 2026 billing cycle, recalculated annually from a three-year average of hourly energy prices. Legacy plan E-13 pays $0.0345, roughly 1.8 times the new-plan credit.

SRP’s older customer-generation plans work differently again. E-15 and E-27 are true net metering: kilowatt-hours exported are subtracted from kilowatt-hours delivered within the billing cycle. Both, along with E-13 and E-14, will be eliminated as of the November 2029 billing cycle, with remaining customers moved to E-16.

APS applies a Grid Access Charge to the nameplate kW-dc rating of a customer’s generation, $0.242 per kW-dc on TOU-E and $0.215 on R-3. The pending rate case proposes raising it.

For what APS actually pays for exported power and how the ten-year lock works, see APS solar buyback rates explained.

Reading your own bill against this

1. Confirm the utility and the plan code. SRP prints the plan code (E-23, E-28, E-16 and so on) on the bill. APS prints the plan name; the tariff code is on the rate schedules page (opens in a new tab).
2. Check which season you are in. SRP’s July and August prices are not its May and June prices. APS treats all six months the same.
3. Separate the fixed charge from the energy charge before comparing anything. A household at 400 kWh and a household at 2,000 kWh are having different arguments about the same two utilities.
4. Adjustors are excluded from every APS figure here. APS tariffs state that adjustment clauses apply on top of the base rates, so real APS bills will run higher than the arithmetic above.

APS rates in this article were read from published tariff sheets on August 9, 2026, all on the March 8, 2024 revision issued under Decision No. 79293. SRP rates are from the ratebook stamped effective with the November 2025 billing cycle including the January 2026 transmission cost adjustment. Confirm current figures against the source documents before acting on them.

Related reading

• APS rate plans explained walks through all four open APS residential plans and the demand-charge crossover math.
• APS solar buyback rates explained covers export compensation and the ten-year rate lock.
• Is solar worth it in Arizona? puts utility rates into the wider payback question.
• The APS rate increase tracks the live 2026 rate case as it moves through the Commission.

• APS
• SRP
• Rate Cases
• Arizona