What is the renewable energy standard? 

The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) established the Renewable Energy Standard (RES) in August, 2007 to identify short– and long–term renewable energy requirements for the state. The long–term requirement is for 15 percent of retail energy sales from ACC–regulated electric utilities to come from renewable energy resources by the year 2025. The current RES requirement is 2.5 percent of total each utility’s retail sales in 2010 and the rules prescribe that 25 percent of that requirement is to come from distributed energy resources. Distributed Energy resources are installed on the customer’s premises and are used to offset customer load, such as rooftop solar panels. Half of the distributed energy or customer–owned requirement must be met by systems among residential customers and the other half from business customers. Utilities subject to the RES provide annual filings that describe how each utility intends to comply with the RES requirements for the next five years.