Posted on 08/04/2018 11:47:24 AM PDT by george76
Late last summer, and with great fanfare, Xcel Energy announced its proposal to close the Comanche I & II power units in Pueblo a decade ahead of schedule. They offered as replacement the euphemistically titled “Colorado Energy Plan” , a massive $2.5 billion fuel-switching scheme to move its Colorado customers away from baseload, reliable hydrocarbons in favor of intermittent renewables.
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the Minneapolis-based monopoly utility will force captive ratepayers to cough up at least another $287 million. That’s on top of the modeling errors we already found in their accounting, and Xcel acknowledged.
In other words, ratepayers will pay higher prices for the next three decades
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Just 15 years ago, Xcel required that its customers “invest” $190 million to drastically improve the environmental performance of Comanche I & II. As a result of these “investments,” over the past five years, Comanche I & II emission rates have been significantly lower than those of their peers. And to cap things off, Xcel recently congratulated Comanche Power Station for being named 2018 Plant of the Year by the Powder River Basin Coal Users Group.
That begs the question: how are customers supposed to believe that spending $2.5 billion (of our money, not shareholders’) is now in our best interest in order to close two well-performing, environmentally superior units when 15 years ago Xcel told us spending $190 million to upgrade them was in our best interest to keep the units running through 2035?
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Xcel has essentially no competition across the enormous swath of Colorado
(Excerpt) Read more at coloradopolitics.com ...
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
NYS is a preview of coming attractions. Folks in CO should take a look at NYS to see how this kind of stupidity works out...
Environmentalists come up with the most expensive energy solution.
Monopoly site regulated utilities have a statutory right to a return on assets. The amount and mechanism for determine the amount varies but essentially the more a utility invest the greater the absolute return.
In ohio there was a fiasco called Zimmer. The utility blew a billion on nuclear and could not recapture the investment so they spent another billion converting the nuke plant to coal. The state then let them recapture the 2 billion. Ratepayers essentially paid 2 billion for what should have been a $800 million coal plant.
“Geen energy” has the same payback.
Am item on the Nevada ballot for November wants to break up N V Energy. I saw what happened in Calif when the energy system got tampered with.
I say-—it ain’t broke....don’t ‘fix’ it.
I despise Xcel and the “green energy” horse hillary. Have you seen the really cool /s/ wind mills on I25 by Pueblo?
Those ugly wind mills kill endangered birds and we still need normal energy sources to offset the intermittent no wind periods.
The power and water rates are paying for the gov’t pensions.
I suppose the people who own these utilities think they are doing the consumer a big favor & the consumer probably never got a chance to vote on it anyway. It doesn’t take a college education to see through these deals where there are a couple winners & a whole long list of losers.
Not one was turning when I went by there last week.
Care to explain your blanket statement? I call BS, and yes I am qualified.
The states slip in all kinds of tax hikes and fees for everything and will be soon charging $600 fines for giving away plastic straws (CA) etc to pay the pensions. The utilities goes along as the ceo gets $20 million salary. Example in Calif the DWP utility illegally sends excess money to the city of Los Angeles.
DWP settlement lets the ratepayer robbery continue
https://www.dailynews.com/2017/06/13/dwp-settlement-lets-the-ratepayer-robbery-continue-susan-shelley/
Meanwhile they raise their rates.
The reason that the gov’t types want illegals is to shore up social security as they steal all the money since the 1960’s and use it for everything else. The ponzi scheme is collapsing so they need more people paying in.
Coming Tax Hikes For Government Pensions, How Much Will You Pay?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2016/07/22/coming-tax-hikes-for-government-pensions-how-much-will-you-pay/#66253e07b429
It is pensions pensions pensions.
MB,
Domestic water providers in Colorado are not State owned or operated, thus not participants to the State pension system.
I don’t know how plastic straw fees and fines have anything to do with your first statement, “The power and water rates are paying for the gov’t pensions”.
Regards,
TFI
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