Ariz. Admin. Code § 14-2-701

Current through Register Vol. 30, No. 50, December 13, 2024
Section R14-2-701 - Definitions

In this Article, unless otherwise specified:

1. "Acknowledgment" means a Commission determination, under R14-2-704, that a plan meets the basic requirements of this Article.

2. "Affiliated" means related through ownership of voting securities, through contract, or otherwise in such a manner that one entity directly or indirectly controls another, is directly or indirectly controlled by another, or is under direct or indirect common control with another entity.

3. "Benchmark" means to calibrate against a known set of values or standards.

4. "Book life" means the expected time period over which a power supply source will be available for use by a load-serving entity.

5. "Btu" means British thermal unit.

6. "Capacity" means the amount of electric power, measured in megawatts, that a power source is rated to provide.

7. "Capital costs" means the construction and installation cost of facilities, including land, land rights, structures, and equipment.

8. "Coincident peak" means the maximum of the sum of two or more demands that occur in the same demand interval, which demand interval may be established on an annual, monthly, or hourly basis.

9. "Customer class" means a subset of customers categorized according to similar characteristics, such as amount of energy consumed; amount of demand placed on the energy supply system at the system peak; hourly, daily, or seasonal load pattern; primary type of activity engaged in by the customer, including residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, and governmental; and location.

10. "Decommissioning" means the process of safely and economically removing a generating unit from service.

11. "Demand management" means beneficial reduction in the total cost of meeting electric energy service needs by reducing or shifting in time electricity usage.

12. "Derating" means a reduction in a generating unit's capacity.

13. "Discount rate" means the interest rate used to calculate the present value of a cost or other economic variable.

14. "Docket Control" means the office of the Commission that receives all official filings for entry into the Commission's public electronic docketing system.

15. "Emergency" means an unforeseen and unforeseeable condition that:

a. Does not arise from the load-serving entity's failure to engage in good utility practices,

b. Is temporary in nature, and

c. Threatens reliability or poses another significant risk to the system.

16. "End use" means the final application of electric energy, for activities such as, but not limited to, heating, cooling, running an appliance or motor, an industrial process, or lighting.

17. "Energy losses" means the quantity of electric energy generated or purchased that is not available for sale to end users, for resale, or for use by the load-serving entity.

18. "Escalation" means the change in costs due to inflation, changes in manufacturing processes, changes in availability of labor or materials, or other factors.

19. "Generating unit" means a specific device or set of devices that converts one form of energy (such as heat or solar energy) into electric energy, such as a turbine and generator or a set of photovoltaic cells.

20. "Heat rate" means a measure of generating station thermal efficiency expressed in Btus per net kilowatt-hour and computed by dividing the total Btu content of fuel used for electric generation by the kilowatt-hours of electricity generated.

21. "Independent monitor" means a company or consultant that is not affiliated with a load-serving entity and that is selected to oversee the conduct of a competitive procurement process under R14-2-706.

22. "Integration" means methods by which energy produced by intermittent resources can be incorporated into the electric grid.

23. "Intermittent resources" means electric power generation for which the energy production varies in response to naturally occurring processes like wind or solar intensity.

24. "Interruptible power" means power made available under an agreement that permits curtailment or cessation of delivery by the supplier.

25. "In-service date" means the date a power supply source becomes available for use by a load-serving entity.

26. "Load-serving entity" means a public service corporation that provides electricity generation service and operates or owns, in whole or in part, a generating facility or facilities with capacity of at least 50 megawatts combined.

27. "Long-term" means having a duration of three or more years.

28. "Maintenance" means the repair of generation, transmission, distribution, administrative, and general facilities; replacement of minor items; and installation of materials to preserve the efficiency and working condition of facilities.

29. "Mothballing" means the temporary removal of a generating unit from active service and accompanying storage activities.

30. "Operate" means to manage or otherwise be responsible for the production of electricity by a generating facility, whether that facility is owned by the operator, in whole or in part, or by another entity.

31. "Participation rate" means the proportion of customers who take part in a specific program.

32. "Probabilistic analysis" means a systematic evaluation of the effect, on costs, reliability, or other measures of performance, of possible events affecting factors that influence performance, considering the likelihood that the events will occur.

33. "Production cost" means the variable operating costs and maintenance costs of producing electricity through generation, including fuel cost, plus the cost of purchases of power sufficient to meet demand.

34. "Refurbish" means to make major changes, more extensive than maintenance or repair, in the power production, transmission, or distribution characteristics of a component of the power supply system, such as by changing the fuels that can be used in a generating unit or changing the capacity of a generating unit.

35. "Reliability" means a measure of the ability of a load-serving entity's generation, transmission, or distribution system to provide power without failures, measured to reflect the portion of time that a system is unable to meet demand or the kilowatt-hours of demand that could not be supplied.

36. "Renewable energy resource" means an energy resource that is replaced rapidly by a natural, ongoing process and that is not nuclear or fossil fuel.

37. "Reserve requirements" means the capacity that a load-serving entity must maintain in excess of its peak load to provide for scheduled maintenance, forced outages, unforeseen loads, emergencies, system operating requirements, and reserve sharing arrangements.

38. "Reserve sharing arrangement" means an agreement between two or more load-serving entities to provide backup capacity.

39. "Resource planning" means integrated supply and demand analyses completed as described in this Article.

40. "RFP" means request for proposals.

41. "Self generation" means the production of electricity by an end user.

42. "Sensitivity analysis" means a systematic assessment of the degree of response of costs, reliability, or other measures of performance to changes in assumptions about factors that influence performance.

43. "Short-term" means having a duration of less than three years.

44. "Spinning reserve" means the capacity a load-serving entity must maintain connected to the system and ready to deliver power promptly in the event of an unexpected loss of generation source, expressed as a percentage of peak load, a percentage of the largest generating unit, or in fixed megawatts.

45. "Staff" means individuals working for the Commission's Utilities Division, whether as employees or through contract.

46. "Third-party independent energy broker" means an entity, such as Prebon Energy or Tradition Financial Services, that facilitates an energy transaction between separate parties without taking title to the transaction.

47. "Third-party online trading system" means a computer-based marketplace for commodity exchanges provided by an entity that is not affiliated with the load-serving entity, such as the Intercontinental Exchange, California Independent System Operator, or New York Mercantile Exchange.

48. "Total cost" means all capital, operating, maintenance, fuel, and decommissioning costs, plus the costs associated with mitigating any adverse environmental effects, incurred by end users, load-serving entities, or others, in the provision or conservation of electric energy services.

Ariz. Admin. Code § R14-2-701

Adopted effective February 3, 1989 (Supp. 89-1). Amended by final rulemaking at 16 A.A.R. 2150, effective December 20, 2010 (Supp. 10-4).