Rocky Mountain Voice

Menu

Tag: Colorado energy

Xcel’s large load tariff fight: Who will pay for Colorado’s data centers?
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Xcel’s large load tariff fight: Who will pay for Colorado’s data centers?

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice One of the biggest open questions about who pays for Colorado's data center boom is being decided this fall at the Public Utilities Commission, and the answer testimony that frames the fight is already filed. By Aug. 19, intervenors had filed a stack of answer testimony in Proceeding No. 26AL-0137E, Xcel Energy's proposed Large Load Tariff. The case has drawn a crowd. Google is in it. So is Walmart. So is the City and County of Denver, the City of Boulder, the electric cooperative United Power, the state's own energy office, and the commission's trial staff. The evidentiary hearing is set for 5 days across late October, Oct. 21, 22, 26, 27 and 28. A second public comment hearing is set for Oct. 20. The hearing wraps 6...
Read More
Colorado Supreme Court Rejects Xcel Bid to Fast-Track Ranchland Dispute
No Comments
The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Colorado Supreme Court Rejects Xcel Bid to Fast-Track Ranchland Dispute

By Mark Jaffe | The Colorado Sun Xcel tried to condemn a 550-foot strip of Cheyenne County ranchland to connect two wind farms to a substation. The landowner objected to the route. Xcel Energy’s bid to have the state Supreme Court weigh in on a dispute with a Cheyenne County landowner over a 550-foot right-of-way to connect wind farms to the Goose Creek substation was rejected by the court Monday. In a brief unanimous decision, the court denied the utility’s attempt to have the state’s highest court overturn a Cheyenne County district judge’s ruling that Xcel Energy did not have the power to use eminent domain to acquire the right of way. Xcel Energy argued that the case raised serious statewide issues on the future of clean energy policy in Colorado...
Read More
Is Raeden setting a new data center standard in Colorado Springs?
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Is Raeden setting a new data center standard in Colorado Springs?

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Jason Green will take the hard questions. That is the pitch. The co-founder and president of Raeden says his industry has never done a good job showing up to answer for itself, so he has. "I've just kind of held the mantle of that," he said. In interviews before his data center goes to the Colorado Springs City Council, he made himself available for whatever anyone wanted to throw at him. Whether that adds up to a new way of building data centers, or a well-argued case for a project a lot of his neighbors still do not want, is the question Colorado Springs has to settle on Sept. 17. The project Project Taurus would put an artificial intelligence data center in the old Intel chip plant at 1565 High Tech Way, off Gard...
Read More
Colorado Voters Will Decide Right To Natural Gas in November
No Comments
Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Colorado Voters Will Decide Right To Natural Gas in November

By Marissa Ventrelli | Colorado Politics A citizen initiative that seeks to enshrine the right to natural gas has qualified for the November ballot, Colorado’s election office confirmed on Thursday. Petitions containing signatures for Initiative No. 177 were turned in to the Secretary of State’s Office for review in late June. On Thursday, the Secretary of State’s Office said 146,165 of the 189,508 signatures collected were valid, surpassing the threshold. The initiative from Advance Colorado establishes consumers’ right to purchase natural gas for cooking and heating their homes and businesses, as well as the right of distributors and utilities to sell natural gas to homes and businesses. “Natural gas is a clean, reliable and affordable form of energy...
Read More
Colorado’s Renewable Energy Milestone Looks Different When Coal Outages Are Counted
No Comments
Independence Institute, Approved, State

Colorado’s Renewable Energy Milestone Looks Different When Coal Outages Are Counted

By Sarah Montalbano | Independence Institute On July 9, 2026, I wrote an article for the Independence Institute breaking down the math behind Colorado’s renewable energy milestone in Q1 2026 and explaining why it is largely driven by the Comanche 3 coal outage, rather than a surge in wind and solar generation. For Coloradans, it’s worth checking if milestones like these are real, because figures like these are cited as proof that the state can shed its remaining coal and natural gas without consequences for reliability and affordability. The article’s main point, which was supported with EIA generation data, was that Colorado produced less in-state electricity in Q1 2026, and therefore the share of electricity generated by wind and solar looked larger beca...
Read More
Colorado’s newest coal plant hasn’t run since August 2025. A national report suggests why.
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s newest coal plant hasn’t run since August 2025. A national report suggests why.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Xcel Energy's Comanche 3 power plant in Pueblo went offline on August 12, 2025, after elevated vibrations damaged the turbine. Nearly a year later, it still hasn't produced a single watt. According to Xcel's most recent monthly report to state regulators in Proceeding 25V-0480E, filed July 22, the plant's turbine rotor had to be shipped off-site for repair by Mitsubishi. The parts came back this summer. Workers are now in the middle of reassembling the unit. The company's current estimate for return to service is mid-August 2026. That's twelve months offline for Colorado's newest, largest coal plant, a 750-megawatt facility that cost $1.3 billion to build and runs about $34.5 million a year to operate. The outage ha...
Read More
Colorado’s renewable milestone deserves a reality check
No Comments
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s renewable milestone deserves a reality check

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Sarah Montalbano, the author of the Complete Colorado piece below makes a great point in her article about renewables. In response to a recent article by fellow energy writer Allen Best, see the second link below, about Colorado hitting an energy milestone of “More than half the state’s electricity came from wind, solar and hydro during the first months of 2026”, Montalbano notes that perhaps it’s not time for celebrating yet. Quoting from her Complete piece, “The trouble is that this jubilant announcement of a ‘majority’ renewables power grid owes more to a stark drop in coal-fired generation than the wind and solar that was added. Percentages rely on both the numerator — how much wind, solar, and hydropower...
Read More
Xcel says it has no affordability crisis. Its customers and regulatory filings tell another story.
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Xcel says it has no affordability crisis. Its customers and regulatory filings tell another story.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Every week, Carlos H. sits down with his bills and works out what his family can go without. Some weeks it is dinner. “I just opt out to say, hey, okay, maybe won’t be cooking up something tonight, so we can just make ends meet,” the Denver father said. Some weeks it is gas—a quarter tank instead of a full one, and the math of whether that gets him to the next payday. He has a 14-year-old daughter and a baby due in February. His electric bill runs $120 to $150 a month. A proposed Xcel settlement could push it higher. “We don’t have an affordability crisis,” Robert Kenney, president of Xcel Energy Colorado, told the House Energy and Environment Committee on April 23, arguing against a proposal to give regulators more power over how util...
Read More
Behind Colorado’s Renewable Energy Headlines Are Critical Missing Details
No Comments
Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Behind Colorado’s Renewable Energy Headlines Are Critical Missing Details

By: Sarah Montalbano | Commentary, Complete Colorado Allen Best, at his blog Big Pivots, published recently that Colorado for the first time saw a majority of the state’s energy   generation come from renewables:   Colorado achieved an energy and climate milestone during the first quarter of 2026. During those three months, 53% of electricity in Colorado came from renewable sources, up from 43% in 2025, according to an Energy Information Administration report filed in May.  Details matter The trouble is that this jubilant announcement of a “majority” renewables power grid owes more to a stark drop in coal-fired generation than the wind and solar that was added. Percentages rely on both the numerator — how much wind, sola...
Read More
NERC Report Raises New Questions About Colorado Energy Reliability
No Comments
Complete Colorado, Approved, State

NERC Report Raises New Questions About Colorado Energy Reliability

By: Sarah Montalbano | Complete Colorado The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) 2026 State of Reliability report contains lessons for Colorado’s electricity sector. While the grid as a whole “continues to deliver reliable electric service,” challenges are mounting thanks in part to the “declining availability of aging combustion generation.”  NERC’s report finds that power plants failed more in 2025, with the fleet-wide forced outage rate climbing to 9.2 percent against “historical norms rarely exceeding” 8 percent. Coal-fired plants saw their forced outage rate rise from 11.2% in 2024 to 14.1% in 2025. NERC surveyed owners of generators that s...
Read More