Dive Brief:

• The sharp battle over net metering fees last fall may be hurting the stock of Pinnacle West Capital Corp., parent to Arizona Public Service, company officials said during a conference call with analysts.
• Last year, APS added more than 400 MW of solar to its system, including the 250-MW Solana solar plant, which is owned by Abengoa. The company expects to add 32 MW of utility-owned solar this year and 20 MW in 2015. Including planned additions, APS will spend about $695 million on 170 MW of solar.
• APS's “weather-normalized” electric sales fell 0.5% last year, but the company expects sales to grow by about 1% a year through 2016.

Dive Insight:

Here's what Don Brandt, Pinnacle West chairman, president and CEO, had to say about the company's relatively poor stock performance recently. “There was a lot of relatively ugly media coverage generated by certain parties, in particularly the second -- excuse me, third and fourth quarter last year,” Brandt said. “That's probably got some impact, a fair amount of notoriety. I think a number of other states around the country are going to take up the [net metering] cause, and we'll see where it goes.”

The Arizona Corporation Commission's decision to add a roughly $5/month fee for rooftop solar owners was a first step in a long process. “The commission made a significant first step in recognizing the cost shift embedded in the net metering construct,” Brandt said. “We will work with the stakeholders and the commission through the [upcoming] workshops and other discussions before we determine how best to proceed.”

While there has been a drop in rooftop installations this year, Brandt said it was too early to say if the new fee was affecting the levels of solar installations in APS's service territory.