Colorado PUC approves Xcel Vitality’s $2 billion wildfire mitigation plan

DENVER — The Colorado Public Utilities Fee (PUC) on Thursday accepted Xcel Vitality’s 2025-2027 Wildfire Mitigation Plan.

As a part of the plan, Xcel will make investments roughly $1.9 billion over three years to “develop the scope, tempo and scale of our wildfire mitigation work.” In a launch, the corporate highlighted the next proposed investments:

• Better Situational Consciousness: Implementing superior hearth modeling and evaluation instruments in addition to including climate stations and tripling AI cameras for early smoke detection.
• Expertise-Enabled Inspections: Accelerating inspections in wildfire threat areas utilizing aerial and drone strategies.
• Infrastructure Enhancements: Multi-year program to improve tools, underground energy strains, and rebuild transmission strains.
• Vegetation Administration: Increasing efforts in high-risk areas with new requirements for inspections and pruning.
• Enhanced Powerline Security Settings: Growing distant security settings, sectionalizing strains, and including new expertise.
• Public Security Energy Shutoff (PSPS) Program: Offering interactive outage maps, proposing a backup vitality rebate, and bettering buyer help and communication.
• Organizational Progress: Increasing the Wildfire Danger workforce by bettering capabilities in meteorology, hearth science, threat administration and analytics.

“The Fee’s approval of our Wildfire Mitigation Plan is critical because it permits us to rapidly implement vital tasks to guard our clients and communities from wildfire threat. We labored carefully with a big coalition of stakeholders representing clients, companies, authorities and businesses to place forth a plan designed to maintain our clients and communities secure, whereas preserving payments low,” mentioned Robert Kenney, president of Xcel Vitality-Colorado, in an announcement.

In April 2024, Xcel Vitality shut off energy for hundreds of individuals alongside the foothills forward of a windstorm. It was the primary time the corporate had preemptively switched off energy in Colorado.

The PUC investigated the choice and regarded suggestions to enhance Xcel’s communication and notification practices when implementing public security energy shutoffs (PSPS). In keeping with the PUC, as a part of the 2025-2027 plan, Xcel agreed to:

• “Commitments” relating to outreach and engagement
• Combine an incident command construction and file a “PSPS Playbook”
• Prioritize “vital” clients and services and supply them enhanced communication, engagement and energy restoration work within the occasion of a PSPS

In its launch, Xcel mentioned the plan was “designed to maintain buyer payments low by in the end securitizing eligible firm investments.” In its personal launch, the PUC mentioned the month-to-month invoice influence will “range over time.” The fee mentioned Xcel clients could possibly be charged an additional $9 monthly “in the direction of the top of the plan interval.” That quantity would drop “after securitization,” in accordance with the PUC.

The unique plan was submitted to the PUC in June 2024. In April, Xcel reached a unanimous settlement with stakeholders on the proposal, one in all which was the Metropolis of Boulder. Denver7 visited with Boulder leaders shortly after to listen to their reactions.

“We’re very passionate about this,” mentioned Carolyn Elam, a sustainability senior supervisor for the Metropolis of Boulder. “Xcel put collectively a very sturdy plan, we felt, once they filed it over the summer time, so a big portion of our testimony that we filed was in help of it.”

In keeping with Elam, the plan just isn’t explicitly associated to the 2021 Marshall Fireplace, which broken or destroyed greater than 1,000 properties and companies in Superior, Louisville and Boulder County amid hurricane-force winds and excessive drought circumstances.

Greater than a 12 months after the Marshall Fireplace, in June 2023, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Workplace introduced the outcomes of its investigation into the blaze. Investigators claimed the Marshall Fireplace began as two distinct fires, which merged into one. The sheriff’s workplace mentioned the investigation revealed that one of many fires was the results of a disconnected Xcel Vitality energy line.

Xcel disagreed with that evaluation, and in an announcement, mentioned the second ignition “began 80 to 110 ft away from Xcel Vitality’s powerlines in an space with underground coal hearth exercise.”

Denver7’s Colette Bordelon contributed to this report.