Monday June 19, 2006 Stop the Colorado Xcel Energy Windsource Price Increase
In Colorado most people get their electric power for Xcel Energy. Xcel is like any other big Electric Utility in the US, they are more against change to the current way of doing business than about any business out there. It's understandable, they have a captive customer base that has no other option, and thay customer base only thinks about electricty when it is NOT available. So they want to just keep things running, and they know their way of doing that. Well Xcel has been experiementing with Wind Power for awhile, but really hasn't wanted to commit to wind as much more than 3-5% of their energy load. As part of this experimentation Xcel started a program for its customers called Windsource. It is a voluntary program where I can purchase energy from Wind power in $5 blocks. When I started this it meant that my bill was $10 more per month (I bought 2 blocks).
Well recently what has happened is that the cost of Coal and Natural Gas has skyrocketed causing the price of that energy to go way up for consumers. However, the cost of Wind Power stays constant, we don't have to pay more to get the wind to blow and all the infrastructure expenses are pretty well set for a Wind Farm. So what has been happening recently, is those of us who purchased WindSource have had that percentage of our energy remain constant which has meant that our bills have been lower than they would be if we would be just buying the ordinary power from Xcel. So Xcel has decided that in order to offset the cost of Coal and Natural Gas, they would raise the rates of WindSource. I guess in their minds it's not fair that those of us that think about the econimics of WindPower should get a discount. There was a recent article in the Denver Post about this.
This is all very bogus. Windsource should only be premium priced to the extent that wind energy costs more than Xcel's other resources. This is not the case right now and unfortunately Xcel feels the need to punish environmentally concious consumers. If Xcel would put more of an emphasis on alternative energy generation they would be able to keep a larger portion of their energy load at a lower cost. Most utilities in the country are decreasing their prices for green power programs. Xcel representative Bill Grant was quoted in North American Windpower magazine stating that wind power purchases helped Xcel Energy save its Colorado customers $4.21 million in fuel costs in 2004 and a whopping $9.75 million in 2005 and "The wind we've added has been very economically beneficial to us". So why are they trying to turn this around now?
If you're on this progam and or were thinking of joining but are wondering if you should now, but you want to support wind energy, you do have other options see www.cogreenpower.org.
If you want to do something about this make a phone call to Xcel (800-824-1688) and to the Public Utilities Commission (303-894-2070) and write letters to the editor about Xcel's proposal to increase the price of Windsource.
Posted by mikedav ( Jun 19 2006, 08:28:18 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]