Beginning next summer, Xcel Energy’s typical residential customers will see an 8 percent hike in their electricity bill, or $5.13 a month, if regulators approve a rate-increase proposal filed today by the state’s largest utility.
A typical small-business customer also would pay an additional 8 percent, or $7.84 a month.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission will hold public hearings in the coming months before ruling on the rate case.
The proposal would generate an additional $174.7 million annually for Xcel from its 1.3 million electric customers in Colorado.
The rate hike is different from periodic increases or decreases that customers see on their bills as a result of Xcel passing through changes in commodity costs.
Xcel said it is proposing to raise rates to recover the cost of adding new power generation and related infrastructure. The Minneapolis-based company specifically highlighted the cost of building a 750-megawatt expansion at the Comanche Generating Station in Pueblo and two natural gas-fired generating units with 300 megawatts of capacity at the Fort St. Vrain plant in Platteville.
“We would not ask for an increase unless it was truly needed,” Xcel’s Colorado president Tim Taylor said in a news release.
Xcel last filed a rate case in April 2006. Since then, Taylor said, the company has invested or will invest nearly $1.7 billion in major new electricity infrastructure through 2009.
Andy Vuong: 303-954-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com
