IT Solutions Engineer/Analyst 1/2 - Palo Verde

APS CEO outlines pledge for responsible energy growth at Arizona conference. Arizona Public Service President and CEO Ted Geisler announced on Aug. 19 the company's Pledge for Responsible Energy Growth during remarks to community leaders at the 2026 League of Arizona Cities & Towns Conference. The pledge is intended to reaffirm APS's principles for protecting customers while serving new companies and industries investing in Arizona. "Growth should pay for growth. It's that simple. When a data center or manufacturer comes to Arizona, they pay the cost of the infrastructure needed to serve them, and those investments help to cover shared grid costs that existing customers would otherwise carry," Geisler said. "Done right, new growth doesn't threaten affordability for Arizona families and businesses. It helps protect it." The APS Pledge for Responsible Energy Growth is based on three foundational principles: safeguarding reliability by not connecting new extra-large customers faster than the grid can support; protecting customer rates by ensuring new users pay costs associated with their service needs; and preserving capacity so current and future residential, business, educational, medical, and community needs remain a priority. "These three principles aren't aspirations. They're standards we build into our agreements with extra-large customers," Geisler said. "Arizonans should be able to welcome the jobs, investment and opportunity coming to our state with confidence that their energy needs come first and their rates are protected. That's our pledge." Arizona Public Service delivers power as a regulated utility company serving about 1.4 million customers across urban, rural, and border communities in Arizona through electricity supply, power delivery services, outage support programs, and billing assistance options such as the Energy Support Program offering discounts based on income eligibility requirements - all part of its corporate structure, according to the official website.

Trump, Arizona and coal: Why 2 Republican utility regulators are facing a challenge from the right. Published July 14, 2026 at 5:00 AM MST The two Republicans seeking re-election to the Arizona Corporation Commission are running on a platform of "promises made, promises kept," saying they've fought to implement conservative policies at the agency that regulates most of the state's utilities. But they're facing a challenge from the far right by critics, bolstered by President Donald Trump, who claim they haven't done enough to keep coal power plants running in Arizona. Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has tried to boost the nation's coal industry by issuing executive orders and making public calls to reopen shuttered coal plants. "To that end, I'm also instructing Secretary (of Energy Chris) Wright to save the Cholla coal plant in Arizona, which has been slated for destruction," Trump said last spring. "We're going to keep those coal miners on the job." He made those comments after Arizona Public Service shut down the Cholla plant in Navajo County, because it could no longer meet emissions standards put in place under former President Barack Obama that were designed to reduce emissions and pollution produced by the facility. Trump's comments resonated with hardcore Republican voters, even though coal now makes up a relatively small chunk of Arizona's energy portfolio, which is dominated by natural gas and nuclear power. "Most people have come up to me about the Cholla project," Jan Shank, vice president of Sun City Grand Republican Club, told KJZZ after a debate hosted by the group in May. "That's driven everybody crazy, because they don't understand why it was closed and why we can't bring it back," Shank said. "And the other side says we can't spend all of this money." 'The math don't math' Commissioners Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers, who are both seeking re-election, say that reopening Cholla as a coal plant doesn't make financial sense, an argument they made directly to White House officials following Trump's comments. "We talked to the White House and said, unless you have some type of grant funding or some dollars that you can send to Arizona to help offset our cost, I can't, as a commission we can't, put $1.9 billion on the backs of 1.4 million ratepayers for APS," Thompson, a former gas industry lobbyist, said. "The math don't math." Thompson said the White House agreed with that logic, even though Trump never publicly acknowledged it. "I think things would have went a lot better if the administration would have talked to the state regulators, or even to the utilities, and said, 'Hey, where are you at with your coal plants across Arizona, or what's going on with your generation across Arizona?' before you just make a blatant remark about keeping coal plants open that have closed," he said. APS announced this month it will instead turn Cholla into a natural gas plant, a proposal Thompson and Myers told KJZZ they were discussing with the utility back in May. But the president's public position on Cholla is already a central part of Republican state lawmaker Ralph Heap's campaign as he seeks to oust Thompson or Myers in the GOP primary. "Coal gives us the base load power that we need," Heap said last year when he launched his campaign alongside former lawmaker David Marshall, who has since dropped out of the Corporation Commission race to become the Navajo County recorder. "And so I think it is a major deal to close down a coal plant when you don't really have anything in position to make up for the energy that's going to be lost," Heap said. In reality, Arizona has never been less reliant on coal. But that hasn't stopped Heap from trying to blame Thompson and Myers for coal's decline. Since entering the race with backing from far-right groups like the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and Turning Point Action, he's accused them of buying into the "Green New Deal," shorthand for pro-renewable energy policies mostly backed by Democrats. "Our utilities are going down with the Green New Deal. From 2020 to now, they've steadily gone down this road," Heap said at the May debate in Sun City. But Heap claims those alleged ties to the Green New Deal are leading to higher energy costs in Arizona, where the state's major utilities are seeking double-digit rate hikes for the second time in the past few years. "What do they pay for utilities in Europe? They pay triple what we pay," Heap said at the Sun City debate. "Why? Because they're totally done - the Green New Deal. Your rates are going up. Why? Because we're going down that same road." Myers and Thompson, who have both served as commission chair over the past four years, say that criticism isn't based in reality, citing their voting record. "When you don't have something to run on and you don't have successes to run on, then you make stuff up to make your opponent look bad," Thompson said. They point to their efforts to repeal renewable energy requirements and energy efficiency rules for the state's utilities, which they argue saddle customers with unjust costs and surcharges - votes some of their critics say undermine common-sense solutions that help combat climate change while actually saving ratepayers money. All of the above. Myers and Thompson have long said they support an "all of the above" approach to meeting Arizona's energy needs, which continue to grow alongside the state's population and booming data center industry. That means backing a diverse energy portfolio that includes gas, nuclear and renewables like solar. Their critics on the left, however, call that lip service, saying under Thompson and Myers leadership the all-Republican commission continues to undermine efforts to boost renewables while championing projects like Cholla and a new $5 billion pipeline to deliver gas from Texas. "It's hilarious that on one side of the political aisle we are accused of being anti-solar and anti-renewable, right?" Myers said. "On the other side, we're being accused of being pro solar and pro renewable." The incumbents' messaging is resonating with some Republicans. "They were making an effort to ferret out the excesses and do away with them, so they were very diligent about that and I support them," said Mesa resident James Reading, who heard Myers and Thompson speak at a local Republican party meeting. Ultimately, it will be Republican voters like Reading and Shank in Sun City who decide which two Republicans to send to the general election. More election news

Retired Arizona coal plant to be converted to natural gas generation. July 7, 2026 Share to: A retired coal plant in Arizona is getting a second lease on life with a conversion to natural gas generation. Arizona Public Service (APS) announced it plans to convert two units at its Cholla Power Plant in Joseph City, Navajo County, Arizona to natural gas, with operations expected to begin in 2029. Transitioning the plant to natural gas generation would add about 380 megawatts (MW) of capacity, APS said. Construction on the gas conversion is expected to begin in 2028 with a targeted in-service date in 2029. The project will still need to go through formal permitting and planning processes, including community outreach. The Cholla Power Plant was originally commissioned in 1962. Its units 2 and 4 were retired in 2015 and 2020, and units 1 and 3 were retired in 2025, following federal environmental mandates that APS argues "forced" the plant's closure. In 2023, APS filed an Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) with the Arizona Corporation Commission calling for more renewables, battery storage, and hydrogen-capable turbines in light of upcoming coal plant retirements, including Cholla's. In addition to Cholla, APS plans to retire the 1,540-MW coal-fired Four Corners Generating Station, located in New Mexico. APS said it seeks to add more than 6,000 MW of solar and wind power, coupled with about 2,000 MW of battery storage, by 2027. In the IRP, APS said its analysis demonstrated that hydrogen-capable gas turbines would complement renewables and storage in a least-cost portfolio. Even as renewables and storage are added, APS says it will need resources capable of "reliably meeting demand throughout the overnight period," especially given the retirement of the Cholla Power Plant and the planned 2031 exit from Four Corners. Once both coal plants are no longer in the picture, APS says "significant gaps" will be left in both total energy produced and reliable summertime capacity. Quick-start, hydrogen-capable, natural gas resources could be co-sited at existing generation facilities, APS said, saving costs by reusing infrastructure. New demand = new conversions. Converting former coal plants to natural gas generation continues to be a popular choice given increased power demand from data centers and manufacturing, as well as environmental regulations that can make keeping coal plants running a costly endeavor. Existing transmission lines and infrastructure at these sites make them a popular choice for new forms of generation. Earlier this year, Arizona Corporation Commission unanimously voted to approve conversion of two coal plants to natural gas. The Springerville and Coronado coal plants, owned and operated by TEP and SRP, respectively, will be converted. The Commission argued that the futures of both plants have been "in jeopardy for years" as federal mandates would have forced their closure within six years. Springerville Units 1 and 2 have the potential to produce 700-800 MW of combined baseload that would need to be replaced, the Commission said. In order to continue operation past the closure dates and meet the EPA guidelines, TEP would be required to install upgrades and retrofits in excess of $450 million, which would "ultimately be recovered from ratepayers," the Commission argued. The conversion of the boilers from coal-fired to natural gas-fired is estimated to cost $170 million. SRP noted that the cost of the Coronado conversion is estimated to be $1.1 billion through 2045, which includes the cost of the conversion and the operation of the facility. In comparison, SRP estimated that replacing Coronado with a brand-new natural gas facility would cost $300 million more than the conversion for the same timeframe. SRP also considered long-duration lithium-ion batteries, which would cost approximately $1.2 billion more than the Coronado conversion and would limit the firm capacity that would otherwise be available all hours of the day with the conversion. Late last year, Babcock & Wilcox announced the signing of a strategic partnership agreement with Denham Capital's Sustainable Infrastructure arm to jointly pursue opportunities to support the increased demand from data centers in the U.S. and Europe, including technologies for coal power generation or natural gas conversion projects as well as back-end environmental technology. Through the partnership, investments will be made to convert coal-fired power plants to natural gas solutions. The partnership combines Denham's experience in developing, building, and operating large-scale power plants across six different continents, and B&W's experience in coal power generation and the conversion of coal-fired power plants to use natural gas.