SRP reports more electric vehicle drivers in its service territory than projected for 2022
Salt River Project (SRP) surpassed its goal to have 23,000 electric vehicles (EVs) in the SRP service territory by the end of its fiscal year 2022, with a total of more than 29,200 EVs leased or purchased within the area as of April 30, 2022.
“Our overarching goal is to have 500,000 EV’s in our service territory by 2035,” said Jim Pratt, SRP’s chief customer executive. “With the latest metrics, we saw over a 40% increase in EV’s from the previous year, and we are about 6% of the way to our 2035 goal, which means we are well on track. This is the collective work of partners across industries who collaborate to make switching to EVs a simpler and nonintimidating process.”
SRP customer EV adoption rates can be at least partly attributed to effective EV-focused customer offerings, such as SRP’s residential smart charger rebate program which more than 870 customers took advantage of in the last fiscal year. This surpassed SRP’s target for total rebates claimed by more than 175%. In this ongoing program, participating customers save $250 on a Level 2 smart charger by shopping on the SRP Marketplace or applying for a rebate on eligible chargers.
“Hearing directly from our customers on their concerns, interests and questions related to EV adoption has helped us build programs to match their exact needs,” said Pratt.
In the last fiscal year alone, more than 1,200 customers enrolled in SRP’s EV Price Plan. The SRP EV Price Plan helps EV drivers save on energy bills when charging their vehicles during off-peak hours. SRP regularly receives feedback from participants in its EV community expressing that the costs associated with charging their vehicles are lower, or much lower, than expected.
“In addition to customer offerings, a big piece of the puzzle is creating access to EV education and awareness within the community, and finding ways to make this as equitable as possible,” said Pratt.
A partnership SRP has with Chargeway integrates “electric fuel” education across Valley car dealerships and improves community awareness of SRP as a fuel provider, which helps support EV sales in the community. With this partnership, EV informational kiosks are installed inside 12 Valley car dealerships, which are many times the access point where customers learn about EVs. Dealership representatives are equipped to share information including how to understand electricity as a fuel type, EV charger rebates and incentives offered by both SRP and APS, depending on a customer’s electric utility provider.
On an even more comprehensive level, SRP helped form the Transportation Electrification Activator (“TE Activator“), a cross-industry initiative to advance electric transportation in Arizona. The group has more than nine organizations including municipalities, environmental-focused nonprofits and higher education, all focused on empowering Arizona’s citizens to take an active role in the transition to EVs, as well as prioritizing high-use vehicles, deploying critical EV charging infrastructure and ensuring the benefits are equitably shared across all communities.
Since developing its 2035 Sustainability Goals in 2019, SRP tracks the number of EV drivers based on those who lease or buy an EV within SRP’s service territory across the greater Phoenix metropolitan area within each SRP fiscal year. In its fiscal year 2021, which was from May 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021, the number of EVs in SRP’s territory was just over 20,600. This total went up by 40% in fiscal year 2022, which was between May 1, 2021 to April 30, 2022. If interest in buying and leasing EVs continues the same trend, SRP is confident it will reach its targets to have 39,000 EVs in its service territory by the end of the current fiscal year 2023, and 52,600 by the end of fiscal year 2024.
SRP is a community-based, not-for-profit public power utility and the largest electricity provider in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, serving approximately 1.1 million customers. SRP provides water to about half of the Valley’s residents, delivering more than 244 billion gallons of water (750,000 acre-feet) each year, and manages a 13,000-square-mile watershed that includes an extensive system of reservoirs, wells, canals and irrigation laterals.