Regulatory Overreach - Rocky Mountain Voice

Ratepayer risk? State law forces Xcel into costly ‘Markets+’ grid deal

Xcel Energy’s plan to join a short-term, wholesale electric market is drawing fire from critics who, in hearings before state regulators this week, said that the price tag is too high and the benefits are minimal.

The market for purchasing day-ahead power Xcel Energy wants to join, Markets+, is run by the Southwest Power Pool, or SPP, whose grid stretches across all or parts of 14 states from Texas to North Dakota.

In hearings before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, business and consumer groups are challenging the $30 million in upfront costs to join Markets+ and Xcel Energy executives are defending it as the best economic and operational choice.

Hancock: The future of Colorado hangs between boom and blackout

Substack, Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories / May 14, 2025 / 75th Colorado Legislature, Colorado Policy, Democrat Lawmakers, Economic development, Energy Crisis, Free Market Solutions, Governor Jared Polis, Housing affordability, Nuclear Innovation, Progressive politics, Regulatory Overreach, State Governance

There’s a difference between dreaming big and hallucinating. Colorado’s progressive legislators have yet to figure that out.

Once a beacon of frontier grit and entrepreneurial promise, Colorado is drifting into a twilight of self-imposed stagnation. This isn’t the result of some unforeseeable external shock. No. The decline is being engineered — brick by legislative brick — by a political class more interested in social signaling than in fostering economic vitality.

The question isn’t whether Colorado faces a reckoning. The question is whether we will admit the cause before we hit the wall.

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