Mayes: APS won’t shut off power when temps hit 95 degrees

APS will no longer cut off customers’ electricity when temperatures spike above 95 degrees, no matter the time of year.

On Wednesday, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced a $7 million settlement agreement with Arizona Public Service over the utility’s account disconnection policies during periods of high heat.

The utility agreed to stop turning off power to customers for nonpayment on days when the temperature is 95 degrees or higher. (APS already had a disconnection moratorium period, but it covered only part of the calendar.) It will also pay $2.75 million in monetary relief, provide $1 million in credits to eligible consumers with outstanding balances and invest $3.1 million in “consumer protection improvements.”

Mayes’ announcement also noted that APS’s payments “must be funded solely through APS shareholder funds and may not be recovered from ratepayers through future rate cases or surcharges.”

The settlement comes after 82-year-old Kate Korman died in her home in Sun City West on May 19, 2024, after APS disconnected her electricity. Korman owed $500 when the utility disconnected her electricity six days earlier. Temperatures were in the high 90s that week, reaching nearly 100 degrees the day she died.

“No Arizonan should be put at risk because they cannot afford their electric bill,” Mayes said in a statement. “This settlement ensures that APS will no longer disconnect power based on the date on the calendar alone — if temperatures are dangerous, the power stays on.”

In the aftermath of Korman’s death, an official with the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities, feuded on social media with one of her sons, saying it was unreasonable to ask utility companies to monitor daily temperature highs. Mayes, a former corporation commissioner herself, had advocated for a temperature-based, and not a calendar-based, system.

Korman is not the first high-profile heat death from an electricity shut-off. Seventy-two-year-old Stephanie Pullman, also of Sun City West, owed just a few dollars to the utility when she died on a 105-degree day in September 2018. Pullman’s death prompted an overhaul of APS’s disconnect policies in 2019 by the corporation commission, which established new rules prohibiting APS and other utilities from disconnecting past-due residential accounts between June 1 and October 15.

However, temperatures in Phoenix often reach the 90s and higher outside those dates. Just this March, Phoenix experienced a heatwave with record high temperatures in the hundreds, around 30 degrees hotter than normal for that time of year.

Maricopa County confirmed the first heat death of 2026 in early April.

There were 430 confirmed heat-related deaths in Maricopa County last year, according to the county’s Heat Surveillance Dashboard. This is down from 608 in 2024 and 645 in 2023.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.