Oct. 19--A special hearing of the Arizona Corporation Commission will likely be held in the coming weeks to review the impact of the shutdown of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station on Arizona Public Service customers' bills.

Commissioners William Mundell and Kris Mayes on Tuesday formally requested the hearing during a regular meeting of the ACC, the state body that regulates utilities in Arizona.

The goal is to see how APS will handle the cost of idling two of its three reactors, Mundell said.

"Does APS intend to ask customers to pay for these outages?" Mundell said.

APS spokesman Jim McDonald said it's likely consumers will see some effect from the shutdown in their bills.

Two of Palo Verde's three reactors were shut down Oct.11, after APS officials were unable to demonstrate to Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors that a key safety system would perform as designed.

Because the third reactor had been idle since Oct.7 for maintenance, the plant was effectively closed down.

Palo Verde is the nation's largest nuclear power plant and generates electricity for 4million customers.

The two reactors have been restarted and could be at full power by late this week "if everything goes very well,"nMcDonald said. But, it's more likely the reactors will be at full power next week, he said.

The third reactor remains idle.

Mundell said that in the summertime, electricity generated at Palo Verde is used within Arizona, but during cooler months, excess electricity is sold to utilities in other Western states. As a result of higher natural gas prices -- a commodity used to make electricity -- the ACC approved a 4.21percent rate hike requested by APS in March.

But part of the agreement took into consideration those cooler months and "any off-system sales would protect the consumer and reduce the (overall) cost of those higher natural gas prices," Mundell said.

With the recent closure, "not only could they not sell power on the open market to offset those (higher natural gas) prices, they had to go out on their own and buy power on the open market," Mundell said. "It is much more expensive than the power we could have gotten from Palo Verde."