Residential customers of Xcel Energy will see their bills go up by an average of 36 cents per month, starting in March, to pay for rebates to people who install solar panels.
Commercial customers will pay about 68 cents more per month under an agreement approved by Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday.
Voters in 2004 decided that Colorado energy companies must buy 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2015. Of that amount, at least 4 percent must come from solar power.
Because solar energy is up to four times more expensive than fossil fuels, power companies asked the PUC for more money to pay for the mandate. The 2004 referendum allowed Xcel to recoup program costs from customers.
“We want to get the wind and solar necessary for what the state voted for,” said Mark Stutz, an Xcel Energy spokesman. “This (the bill increase) is an interim amount to help us begin to administer it.”
About 3,000 customers who install solar panels in the next nine years would get rebates, based on the projected collection amount. But because the collection is a percentage of customers’ electric bills, it’s hard to tell exactly how much will be collected and rebated, Stutz said.
It costs $24,000 to $30,000 for solar panels that provide 3 kilowatts of power, enough for the average house. An Xcel rebate based on that average would be about $13,500, Stutz said.
“It would be a significant number of homes for us to encourage solar installations, but at the same time it’s still a relatively small number of homes in Colorado,” Stutz said.
Xcel had originally asked for 1 percent of customer bills to fund the solar-power rebates and other renewable-energy projects. The PUC approved six-tenths of a percent.
In addition to the residential solar supply, Xcel also plans to buy 9 more megawatts of solar power to satisfy the 2004 referendum, Stutz said.
On the wind-power side, Xcel expects to generate 775 megawatts by 2007, mostly from two private wind farms in northeastern Colorado.
Staff writer Beth Potter can be reached at 303-820-1503 or bpotter@denverpost.com.
