Arizona Administrative Code
Title 14 - PUBLIC SERVICE CORPORATIONS; CORPORATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS; SECURITIES REGULATION
Chapter 2 - CORPORATION COMMISSION - FIXED UTILITIES
Article 25 - GAS UTILITY ENERGY EFFICIENCY STANDARDS
Section R14-2-2501 - Definitions
In this Article, unless otherwise specified:
1. "Adjustment mechanism" means a Commission-approved provision in an affected utility's rate schedule allowing the affected utility to increase and decrease a certain rate or rates, in an established manner, when increases and decreases in specific costs are incurred by the affected utility.
2. "Affected utility" means a public service corporation that provides gas utility service to retail customers in Arizona.
3. "Baseline" means the level of gas demand, gas consumption, and associated expenses estimated to occur in the absence of a specific DSM program, determined as provided in R14-2-2513.
4. "CHP" means combined heat and power, which is using a primary energy source to simultaneously produce electrical energy and useful process heat.
5. "Commission" means the Arizona Corporation Commission.
6. "Cost-effective" means that total incremental benefits from a DSM measure or DSM program exceed total incremental costs over the life of the DSM measure, as determined under R14-2-2512.
7. "Customer" means the person or entity in whose name service is rendered to a single contiguous field, location, or facility, regardless of the number of meters at the field, location, or facility.
8. "Delivery system" means the infrastructure through which an affected utility transmits and then distributes gas energy to its customers.
9. "DSM" means demand-side management, the implementation and maintenance of one or more DSM programs.
10. "DSM measure" means any material, device, technology, educational program, practice, or facility alteration designed to result in increased energy efficiency and includes CHP used to displace space heating, water heating, or another load.
11. "DSM program" means one or more DSM measures provided as part of a single offering to customers.
12. "DSM tariff" means a Commission-approved schedule of rates designed to recover an affected utility's reasonable and prudent costs of complying with this Article.
13. "Energy efficiency" means the production or delivery of an equivalent level and quality of end-use gas service using less energy, or the conservation of energy by end-use customers.
14. "Energy efficiency standard" means the reduction in retail energy sales, in percentage of therms or therm equivalents, required to be achieved through an affected utility's approved DSM and RET programs as prescribed in R14-2-2504.
15. "Energy savings" means the reduction in a customer's energy consumption, expressed in therms or therm equivalents.
16. "Energy service company" means a company that provides a broad range of services related to energy efficiency, including energy audits, the design and implementation of energy efficiency projects, and the installation and maintenance of energy efficiency measures.
17. "Environmental benefits" means avoidance of costs for compliance, or reduction in environmental impacts, for things such as, but not limited to:
a. Water use and water contamination;
b. Monitoring storage and disposal of solid waste, such as coal ash (bottom and fly);
c. Health effects from burning fossil fuels; and
d. Emissions from transportation and production of fuels.
18. "Fuel-neutral" means without promoting or otherwise expressing bias regarding a customer's choice of one fuel over another.
19. "Gas" means either natural gas or propane.
20. "Gas utility" means a public service corporation providing natural gas service or propane service to the public.
21. "Incremental benefits" means amounts saved through avoiding costs for gas purchases, delivery system, and other cost items necessary to provide gas utility service, along with other improvements in societal welfare, such as through avoided environmental impacts, including, but not limited to, water consumption savings, water contamination reduction, air emission reduction, reduction in coal ash, and reduction of nuclear waste.
22. "Incremental costs" means the additional expenses of DSM measures, relative to baseline.
23. "Independent program administrator" means an impartial third party employed to provide objective oversight of DSM and RET programs.
24. "kWh" means kilowatt-hour.
25. "Leveraging" means combining resources to more effectively achieve an energy efficiency goal, or to achieve greater energy efficiency savings, than would be achieved without combining resources.
26. "Low-income customer" means a customer with a below average level of household income, as defined in an affected utility's Commission-approved DSM program description.
27. "Market transformation" means strategic efforts to induce lasting structural or behavioral changes in the market that result in increased energy efficiency.
28. "Net benefits" means the incremental benefits resulting from DSM minus the incremental costs of DSM.
29. "Non-market benefits" means improvements in societal welfare that are not bought or sold.
30. "Program costs" means the expenses incurred by an affected utility as a result of developing, marketing, implementing, administering, and evaluating Commission-approved DSM programs.
31. "RET" means a renewable energy resource technology application utilizing an energy resource that is replaced rapidly by a natural, ongoing process and that displaces conventional energy resources otherwise used to provide energy to an affected utility's Arizona customers.
32. "RET program" means one or more RETs provided as part of a single offering to customers.
33. "Revenue decoupling" means a mechanism that reduces or eliminates the connection between sales volume and the recovery of an affected utility's Commission-approved cost of service.
34. "Self-direction" means an option made available to qualifying customers of sufficient size, in which the amount of money paid by each qualifying customer toward DSM costs is tracked for the customer and made available for use by the customer for approved DSM investments upon application by the customer.
35. "Societal Test" means a cost-effectiveness test of the net benefits of DSM programs that starts with the Total Resource Cost Test, but includes non-market benefits and costs to society.
36. "Staff" means individuals working for the Commission's Utilities Division, whether as employees or through contract.
37. "Therm" means a unit of heat energy equal to 100,000 British Thermal Units.
38. "Thermal envelope" means the collection of building surfaces, such as walls, windows, doors, floors, ceilings, and roofs, that separate interior conditioned (heated or cooled) spaces from the exterior environment.
39. "Therm equivalent" means a unit of energy, such as kWh, converted and stated in terms of therms.
40. "Total Resource Cost Test" means a cost-effectiveness test that measures the net benefits of a DSM program as a resource option, including incremental measure costs, incremental affected utility costs, and carrying costs as a component of avoided capacity cost, but excluding incentives paid by affected utilities and non-market benefits to society.
