Arizona net metering and net billing: how solar credits actually work today
Arizona ended retail net metering for new solar customers in 2017. APS now pays 6.171 cents per exported kWh, SRP still nets kilowatt-hours on two plans, and the difference decides your bill. Here is what each utility actually does.
In this article
- The short version
- Does Arizona have net metering?
- When did Arizona end net metering?
- Net metering, net billing, and export credits are three different things
- How much does APS pay for exported solar?
- SRP nets kilowatt-hours, but at its own price
- What is an exported kilowatt-hour actually worth?
- Why doesn’t my solar bill go to zero?
- What is still being decided
- What to check
- Related reading
Arizona does not have retail net metering. The Arizona Corporation Commission ended it for new solar customers in Decision No. 75859, issued January 3, 2017. If you put solar on an APS, TEP or UNS Electric home after that decision took effect, your exported power is not credited kilowatt-hour for kilowatt-hour. It is bought from you at a set export rate, and that rate is currently 6.171 cents at APS.
Most content on this topic is still wrong about it, including pages that rank well. The confusion is understandable: SRP, which serves much of the East Valley, is not regulated by the Commission and still nets kilowatt-hours on two of its four solar plans. So both answers are true, depending on whose wire runs to your house.
Here is the actual mechanism at each utility, with the tariff language.
The short version
| Utility | What happens to exported power | Current value |
|---|---|---|
| APS | Bought at a fixed export rate under Rate Rider RCP, credited in dollars | $0.06171/kWh, Tranche 2025 |
| SRP, E-27 and E-15 | Netted in kWh against delivered kWh, by time-of-use period | The plan’s own retail price, 5.60 to 8.23 cents |
| SRP, E-13 and E-14 | Credited per exported kWh at a fixed rate | $0.0345/kWh |
| TEP and UNS Electric | Bought at a fixed export rate under an RCP rider | See TEP’s posted rate below |
Does Arizona have net metering?
No, not in the traditional sense, and not for anyone who interconnected on an ACC-regulated utility after the 2017 decision. Traditional retail net metering means an exported kilowatt-hour cancels an imported kilowatt-hour one for one at full retail value. Arizona replaced that with export-rate compensation, where the utility buys your surplus at a price closer to what it would have paid a wholesale solar plant.
SRP is the exception, because SRP is not an ACC-regulated utility. On two of its plans it still subtracts exported kilowatt-hours from delivered kilowatt-hours. That is genuine netting. It is just netting at a low retail price, which is a separate problem covered further down.
When did Arizona end net metering?
January 3, 2017, in Arizona Corporation Commission Decision No. 75859. It applied to new solar customers on Commission-regulated utilities, so APS, TEP and UNS Electric. Anyone already interconnected kept the old treatment. SRP was never covered by the decision at all, because SRP is not under Commission jurisdiction.
The proceeding was the Commission’s investigation into the value and cost of distributed generation, Docket No. E-00000J-14-0023 (opens in a new tab). Decision No. 75859 issued January 3, 2017. It was modified by Decision No. 75932 later that month, and implemented for APS specifically in Decision No. 76295 in August 2017.
The replacement mechanism is the Resource Comparison Proxy, or RCP. Rather than crediting exports at retail, the utility credits them at approximately what it would have paid for utility-scale solar. APS’s tariff builds the number from a five-year rolling weighted average of grid-scale solar costs, plus a fixed two-cent adder covering avoided transmission capacity, avoided distribution capacity, and line losses.
What grandfathered means
Customers already interconnected when the decision took effect kept the old treatment. The order in the docket is explicit that pre-decision customers “will be considered to be fully grandfathered and continue to utilize currently-implemented rate design and net metering.”
That protection attaches to the system, not to the person. On the APS side, materially increasing capacity or relocating the array ends the locked treatment. The APS export tariff defines material as “increasing the capacity by 10% or 1 kW-ac, whichever is greater.”
Net metering, net billing, and export credits are three different things
The terms get used interchangeably. They are not the same, and the differences are worth money.
| Term | What it means | Where you see it in Arizona |
|---|---|---|
| Retail net metering | Exports cancel imports 1:1 at full retail price | Grandfathered pre-2017 systems only |
| Net billing | Imports and exports are valued separately, exports at a lower rate | APS, TEP, UNS Electric |
| kWh netting at plan retail | Exports subtract from imports, but at that plan’s own price | SRP E-27 and E-15 |
| Fixed export credit | A flat cash rate per exported kWh | SRP E-13 and E-14, at 3.45 cents |
Arizona’s regulated utilities run net billing. The phrase “net metering Arizona” mostly returns pages describing a regime that ended nine years ago.
How much does APS pay for exported solar?
6.171 cents per kilowatt-hour for anyone interconnecting between September 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026. It has fallen by exactly 10 percent in each of the last eight years, from 12.9 cents in 2017, which is a cumulative drop of 52 percent. Your own rate locks for ten years from interconnection.
APS’s export rate is set by Rate Rider RCP, tariff A.C.C. No. 6241. The current figure is $0.06171 per kWh, applying to anyone who interconnects between September 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026. Source: the APS Rate Rider RCP tariff sheet (opens in a new tab).
APS export rate by tranche, 2017 to 2025
Cents per exported kilowatt-hour under APS Rate Rider RCP, by the tranche a customer interconnects in. Each step down is exactly 10 percent, the maximum the tariff allows in one year.
View the numbers as a table
| Period | APS export rate (¢) |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 12.9¢ |
| 2018 | 11.61¢ |
| 2019-20 | 10.45¢ |
| 2021 | 9.405¢ |
| 2022 | 8.465¢ |
| 2023 | 7.619¢ |
| 2024 | 6.857¢ |
| 2025 | 6.171¢ |
Source: APS Rate Rider RCP tariff sheet, A.C.C. No. 6241, effective September 1, 2025.
Every step is exactly 10 percent. That is not coincidence. The tariff caps the annual decline: “The RCP rate may not be reduced by more than 10% each year.” For eight consecutive years the calculated rate has apparently come in below the cap, so the guardrail has set the price rather than the formula. Cumulatively the export rate is down 52 percent.
-52%
Change in the APS export rate since 2017
12.9 cents in Tranche 2017 to 6.171 cents in Tranche 2025
Exactly -10% in each of eight consecutive years
Three details in the APS tariff change the math more than most people expect.
Metering is instantaneous
APS “will meter this Export Energy on an instantaneous basis.” Your production first serves whatever the house is drawing at that exact moment. Only the surplus above instantaneous load is an export. Self-consumed power never enters the export calculation at all, which is good for you, because it offsets electricity you would otherwise buy at retail.
Credits are dollars, not kilowatt-hours
The rate is applied and a monetary credit is posted. That credit cannot later be redeemed at a different retail price, because it was never a kWh balance.
Rollover has a payout threshold
Excess credit carries to the next month. After the December bill, a remaining balance above $25 is paid out by check. Below $25 it carries into the new year.
And the sentence people skip: “All terms and charges in the Customer’s retail rate schedule continue to apply.”
SRP nets kilowatt-hours, but at its own price
SRP is not an investor-owned utility under Commission jurisdiction. Per SRP’s governance page (opens in a new tab), it is “an agricultural improvement district and political subdivision of the State of Arizona,” with an elected board that sets rates.
That board has kept kWh netting on two plans and moved to fixed export credits on two others.
The two plans that net
On E-27 Customer Generation and E-15 Average Demand, the tariff says exported kilowatt-hours are subtracted from delivered kilowatt-hours each billing cycle, tracked by time-of-use period. If the net is negative, “SRP will credit customer for the net kWh at the retail per-kWh price under this price plan.”
That last clause is the catch. Both plans carry demand charges, and both have deliberately low per-kWh prices in exchange. E-27’s summer peak prices are 8.23 cents on-peak and 6.13 cents off-peak. So netting at retail on E-27 means netting at roughly half what a customer on the Conserve 6-9 p.m. plan pays for the same off-peak kilowatt-hour.
The two plans that pay a fixed rate
E-13 Time-of-Use Export and E-14 EV Export carry no demand charge. Both credit “all kWh delivered to SRP” at $0.0345 per kWh at the end of each billing cycle. SRP’s own page draws the contrast directly, describing the export plans as “different from net metering, used on the Customer Generation and Average Demand plans, in which the excess kWh is subtracted from the delivered kWh.”
One planning note: SRP’s price plan sheets state that E-27, E-13 and E-14 will each be eliminated as of the November 2029 billing cycle, with remaining customers moved to E-16 or E-28. Check the E-15 sheet directly if you are on the Average Demand plan; its status was not confirmed here.
What is an exported kilowatt-hour actually worth?
Roughly half of what the same kilowatt-hour is worth used inside the house. An APS TOU-E customer avoids 12.35 cents by using it and earns 6.17 cents by exporting it. On SRP’s export plans the credit is 3.45 cents against an 11.19 cent off-peak retail price, so the gap is wider still.
The comparison that matters is not utility against utility. It is what you get for exporting against what you avoid by using the same power yourself.
Retail price you avoid versus credit you receive, per kWh
For an APS TOU-E customer and an SRP Time-of-Use Export customer, the off-peak retail price of a kilowatt-hour compared with the credit for exporting one.
View the numbers as a table
| Category | Retail price avoided (off-peak) (¢) | Credit for exporting (¢) |
|---|---|---|
| APS TOU-E | 12.35¢ | 6.17¢ |
| SRP TOU Export | 11.19¢ | 3.45¢ |
Sources: APS TOU-E tariff (March 8, 2024 revision) and Rate Rider RCP; SRP E-13 price plan sheet, November 2025 billing cycle (summer peak off-peak price).
On APS, a kilowatt-hour used at home is worth about twice one sent to the grid, and against the large-tier fixed rate of 15.418 cents the ratio is closer to 2.5 to 1. On SRP’s export plans the gap is wider still.
That single ratio drives nearly every downstream decision: system sizing, whether a battery makes sense, and which rate plan you should be on.
Why doesn’t my solar bill go to zero?
Four reasons, and none of them means anything is broken. Fixed charges do not scale with production, APS applies a Grid Access Charge to solar customers specifically, demand charges are set after production has fallen off, and a system sized to your annual kilowatt-hours was never sized to a zero bill under net billing.
Fixed charges do not scale with production
APS’s daily basic service charge stays. SRP’s monthly service charge of $20, $30 or $40 stays, and on SRP that charge is the minimum bill.
Solar customers pay a Grid Access Charge at APS
It is applied to the nameplate kW-dc of the generation facility: $0.242 per kW-dc on TOU-E and $0.215 per kW-dc on R-3.
Demand charges barely move
On SRP’s demand plans, and on APS R-3, the charge is set by a peak interval that lands after production has fallen off. Panels do very little about it.
Sizing to annual kilowatt-hours is not sizing to a zero bill
A system that produces 100 percent of your annual consumption does not zero the bill under net billing, and never has in Arizona since 2017.
What is still being decided
APS has a general rate case pending, Docket No. E-01345A-25-0105, filed June 13, 2025, requesting a base-rate revenue increase of $662.44 million, or 15.99 percent. Per the Commission’s own summary (opens in a new tab), the evidentiary hearing began May 18, 2026 and was expected to run about eight weeks. No decision has been issued as of August 9, 2026.
Solar customers have a direct stake. APS’s rate case page (opens in a new tab) states that “customers with rooftop solar will see an additional increase,” and the application includes an updated Grid Access Charge. Whether the case also touches the RCP methodology, the 10 percent annual cap, or the 10-year lock is not stated in the ACC or APS materials currently posted.
TEP runs the same mechanism under its own Rider-14. Its RCP page (opens in a new tab) posted $0.0570 per kWh for the period October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025 and had not published a newer figure as of August 9, 2026. Check TEP’s Statement of Charges for the rate tied to your interconnection date rather than relying on that page.
What to check
- Identify your utility from the top of your bill. APS, SRP, TEP and UNS Electric run four different compensation regimes. Guessing from your city is a rough guide at best.
- Find your interconnection date. On APS and TEP it determines which tranche you are locked into and when the 10 years expire.
- On SRP, find your plan code. E-27 and E-15 net. E-13 and E-14 pay 3.45 cents. The word “solar plan” covers both, and they behave nothing alike.
- Compare your export credit line against your total energy charge. If exports are a small share, your economics run on self-consumption, and shifting load matters more than the export rate does.
- Before adding panels on APS, check the 10 percent or 1 kW-ac threshold. Added capacity can move an entire older system to the current year’s lower rate.
Tariff language, rates and dates in this article were verified against the APS Rate Rider RCP tariff sheet, the SRP E-27, E-13 and E-14 price plan sheets, ACC docket materials and TEP’s published RCP page on August 9, 2026. APS resets the RCP each September 1 and SRP’s board adjusts price plans on its own schedule. Confirm current figures against the linked tariffs before deciding.
Related reading
- Is solar worth it in Arizona? works the full payback arithmetic that this compensation regime feeds into.
- APS solar buyback rates explained covers the export rate, the annual step-down and the 10-year lock in detail.
- SRP’s E-27 rate plan explained shows why netting at that plan’s retail price is worth less than it sounds.
- Solar payback period in Arizona turns the export rate into a number of years.
- Arizona solar incentives and tax credits covers the state credit and what the federal repeal changed.
- Net Metering
- APS
- SRP
- Solar Basics
- Arizona