One of the state’s largest utilities, Arizona Public Service, reached its peak demand for power last summer at 8,200 megawatts, or enough to power more than 1 million homes.It took about 140 years to reach these levels of demand, said Ted Geisler, the president of APS, speaking at a May 17 Valley Partnership forum.In the past 15 years, power demand both across the country. and for APS, which serves about 1.4 million customers in Arizona, stayed relatively flat.”We were trained as an industry for about 15 years to just simply manage the status quo, keep up with growth but recognize that that usage was going to be offset by energy efficiency,” Geisler said.But that changed in 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic.In the next eight years alone, Geisler said they are projecting a 40% growth in demand because of a mass electrification, increased computing demand and industrial reshoring. According to an APS forecast filed last November, the company estimates its customers will need 11,350 megawatts of power, or enough to serve 1.8 million Arizona households, by 2027.”When we zoom in on Arizona, not only do we see the same growth trend, but it’s quite pronounced — more than double what you see nationally,” Geisler said.expandTed Geisler has been named president of APS.Loren AndersonArizona could see higher demand than the rest of the nation because of a confluence of factors: its increasingly hotter climate, a growing heat island effect and higher population growth. Also in the mix: Manufacturing growth from the likes of Intel Corp. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.Data centers on the waitlistTo support a …
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