Outside Xcel Energy’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday, protesters offered stark statements against the utility’s proposed electric rate hike.
“Please consider the customers who must choose between food and warmth. I am living the pain you are creating. Your product is not about profit, but instead, is a public service,” said a written statement from Julie Driscoll of Longmont.
The message was one of more than 3,800 customer complaints unfurled on a 35-foot red paper banner outside the meeting at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The complaints are part of a campaign organized by a coalition of local consumer groups using the website exposeXcel.com.
The rate increase served as a counterpoint to the meeting, at which Xcel Energy chairman and chief executive Richard Kelly touted the company’s financial performance, environmental record, commitment to wind- and solar- energy sources and pursuit of a clean-coal power- plant project.
Kelly acknowledged after the meeting that there are “lessons to be learned” from Xcel’s unprecedented wintertime power outage in Colorado on Feb. 18, when temperatures in Denver dipped to minus 13, the coldest day of the year. As plants failed, Xcel was forced to roll blackouts that left about 325,000 customers without heat, some for as long as four hours.
And he defended the rate hike as necessary.
“We didn’t ask for a rate case lightly,” Kelly said after the meeting. “We understand a rate increase is going to be hard for a number of people.”
The $210 million increase, if approved by the Public Utilities Commission, would boost the average residential electric bill 11.6 percent, or $6.52 a month, beginning next year.
The last Xcel electric rate case in Colorado was filed in 2002 and resulted in a slight decrease in electric base rates, which allow Xcel to recover the investment in its system and provide an authorized rate of return. But soaring costs of fuel, especially natural gas, used to generate power have caused customer electric and gas bills to spike drastically higher since then.
In an interview, Kelly said Xcel’s meteorologist failed to predict the February cold snap, a miscalculation that contributed to a shortage of natural gas at power plants. He said the company would be looking at whether it needs to increase the amount of gas it keeps in storage. Xcel has only one Front Range storage facility since it closed its Leyden storage site in 2001.
“The more gas storage you have, the better,” Kelly said.
Also at the meeting:
A shareholder proposal to separate the roles of chairman and chief executive and appoint an independent board director as chairman was rejected by a vote of 65 percent to 35 percent.
“Usually, you separate if there is a problem. There is no problem,” said Kelly.
Kelly told the roughly 200 shareholders in attendance that the company plans to boost its dividend in July and is coming off a strong first quarter, which saw a 25 percent increase in profit.
Kelly defended Xcel’s ongoing construction of the 750- megawatt Comanche 3 coal- fired power plant near Pueblo, which will begin operating in late 2009.
He said the plant will provide “some stability in price” because it uses coal instead of gas. Much of Colorado’s power is generated at gas-fired plants, he said, and gas is likely to remain vulnerable to price spikes.
Minneapolis-based Xcel serves 1.3 million electric customers and 1.2 million gas customers in the state through its subsidiary, Public Service Co. of Colorado.
Staff writer Steve McMillan can be reached at 303-820-1695 or smcmillan@denverpost.com.
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