New Technology is Key to Preparedness for SRP Solar Customer

As an executive with a leading wellness consulting company and former college professor, Dr. Troy Adams is well-versed in personal preparedness. “Being prepared provides peace of mind and helps us cope with whatever life brings,” he explains.  

Planning for the future is central to his professional life and is a core tenant of his deep LDS faith. So in early 2015, Dr. Adams began researching options for adding solar to his 2,200 square-foot Gilbert home better to prepare his family for an electrical grid outage.

Midway through his evaluation, SRP complicated his research by rolling out its controversial E27 rate plan, which levies additional demand charges on solar users’ peak energy use. With these new fees, many SRP customers saw the E27 plan as the end of solar, but Dr. Adams was more determined than ever to break through the roadblock and identify a solution to meet his personal and financial goals.

“We began by establishing some key benchmarks,” he explains. “We spent six months recording and analyzing our time-of-day electrical consumption patterns. This data became the basis for evaluating various options — including rooftop solar and batteries.”

In December 2015, Dr. Adams learned about our innovative demand management technology, combining rooftop solar with a sophisticated controller that helps homeowners manage peak energy usage and mitigate against SRP’s new fees. After crunching the numbers, Dr. Adams decided the SVSS solution was the right approach for him.

By February 2016, the system was commissioned, and after just a few months of operation, Dr. Adams couldn’t be happier with his results. “In May 2015, we purchased about 28kWh daily from SRP. In May 2016, we generated almost all our power and averaged just 1kWh daily from SRP!”

In addition to this increased energy independence, Dr. Adams sees even greater benefits from the demand manager’s ability to help him shift much of his energy use to off-peak hours. “In addition to relying less on SRP overall, the demand manager also ensures that we buy as much energy as possible during off-peak periods when the rates are historically inexpensive.”

When SRP introduced new demand fees, the utility dramatically reduced the standard kWh rates to levels we’ve not seen since the 1970s. In short, by mitigating demand, Dr. Adams is buying into much cheaper hourly utility rates.

Now that he’s made solar a key part of his preparedness plan, Dr. Adams is considering taking things further by installing an SVSS PowerBank battery backup system. The PowerBank system will store energy from his solar system to provide power during times of grid outages or at night when his solar system isn’t generating electricity.

“Even though it is hot in the summer, the sun is a real blessing here in Arizona. It makes sense that we use it as a key part of our preparedness efforts,” concluded Dr. Adams. “It feels awesome knowing my family will have a comfortable living place even in an emergency.”

If you're an SRP customer who has heard that solar no longer makes sense under the new SRP E27 rate plan, contact Sun Valley Solar Solutions today for a free evaluation. As Dr. Adams did, you may quickly realize that with our demand management technology, solar can once again make financial sense for SRP customers.