By Linda Kor Arizona Public Service Co. recently presented its annual report to the Arizona Corporation Commission, showing that the state’s largest utility will be moving away from coal and nuclear power and increasing the use of natural gas and solar power in the coming years. In an assessment of resource scenarios, the report shows that the combined use of those two resources pro-duce electricity less expensively than coal and nuclear power plants. The scenarios included various levels of energy sources, including solar, natural gas, coal, nuclear and wind. As natural gas costs tend to fluctuate, solar power would step in during those times until those costs decrease. An additional incentive to move away from coal and nuclear power is the ongoing pressure by the Environ-mental Protection Agency to implement costly upgrades. While the EPA is being forced to reconsider some of those demands due to court rulings, there is also the cost associated with the building and operation of coal and nuclear plants to be taken into consideration. According to the report, four separate public opinion surveys conducted in May 2011 by APS and the Mor-rison Institute for Public Policy revealed that 94 percent of APS customers support increasing the use of solar energy. At present, APS generates more than five percent of its electricity from renewable resources, a number that APS expects to grow to almost 18 percent by 2027. That growth will be necessary to help accommodate the company’s estimates that Arizona’s electrical demand will grow three percent each year over the next 15 years. In an endeavor to increase the use of solar power, APS is acting on approval received from the Arizona Cor-poration Commission for the AZ Sun Program. The program is designed to increase access to solar power through the development of solar projects throughout the state. The most recent project in the permitting proc-ess is the Hyder II near Yuma, which is the sixth such project for APS. According to Barbara Lockwood, APS general manager of Energy Innovation, these solar projects are an integral part of company’s move toward greener production. “Through the AZ Sun Program, we are adding 200 megawatts of solar photovoltaic power plants across the state by 2015. We expect that these plants will generate clean energy for at least the next 30 years,” she said. Those projects, while financed and owned by APS, are being designed and constructed by third-party solar developers, contractors and equipment providers. In addition to those facilities, APS also obtains solar power from privately owned solar companies through power purchase agreements.