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Retirement Plans and Other Benefits
 3 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2015
Compensation and Retirement Disclosure [Abstract]  
Retirement Plans and Other Benefits
Retirement Plans and Other Benefits
 
Pinnacle West sponsors a qualified defined benefit and account balance pension plan, a non-qualified supplemental excess benefit retirement plan, and an other postretirement benefit plan for the employees of Pinnacle West and our subsidiaries.  Pinnacle West uses a December 31 measurement date for its pension and other postretirement benefit plans.  The market-related value of our plan assets is their fair value at the measurement dates. On September 30, 2014, Pinnacle West announced plan design changes to the other postretirement benefit plan. Because of these plan changes in 2014, the Company is currently in the process of seeking IRS and regulatory approval to move approximately $100 million of the other postretirement benefit trust assets into a new account to pay for active union employee medical costs.
 
Certain pension and other postretirement benefit costs in excess of amounts recovered in electric retail rates were deferred in 2011 and 2012 as a regulatory asset for future recovery, pursuant to APS’s 2009 retail rate case settlement.  Pursuant to this order, we began amortizing the regulatory asset over three years beginning in July 2012.  We amortized approximately $2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2015 and 2014, respectively. The following table provides details of the plans’ net periodic benefit costs and the portion of these costs charged to expense (including administrative costs and excluding amounts capitalized as overhead construction, billed to electric plant participants or charged or amortized to the regulatory asset) (dollars in millions):

 
Pension Benefits
 
 
Other Benefits
 
Three Months Ended 
 March 31,
 
 
Three Months Ended 
 March 31,
 
2015
 
2014
 
 
2015
 
2014
Service cost — benefits earned during the period
$
16

 
$
15

 
 
$
4

 
$
5

Interest cost on benefit obligation
31

 
32

 
 
7

 
11

Expected return on plan assets
(45
)
 
(40
)
 
 
(9
)
 
(12
)
Amortization of:
 

 
 

 
 
 

 
 

Prior service cost
—

 
—

 
 
(10
)
 
—

Net actuarial loss
8

 
2

 
 
2

 
—

Net periodic benefit cost
$
10

 
$
9

 
 
$
(6
)
 
$
4

Portion of cost charged to expense
$
6

 
$
5

 
 
$
(2
)
 
$
3


 
Contributions
 
We have made voluntary contributions of $60 million to our pension plan in 2015. The minimum contributions for the pension plan are zero for the next three years. We expect to make voluntary contributions totaling up to $300 million for the next three years (up to $100 million each year in 2015, 2016, and 2017).  We expect to make contributions of approximately $1 million in each of the next three years to our other postretirement benefit plans.