Xcel Energy has threatened to drop plans for a controversial transmission line that it seeks to build in southern Colorado because of regulatory conditions that might be imposed on the project.
In a filing this week with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, Xcel took issue with an administrative law judge’s recommendation that Xcel face financial sanctions unless it keeps the $180 million line supplied with large amounts of power.
The judge’s decision also was the target of a complaint by a billionaire landowner on whose property the transmission line might be placed.
That leaves the power line’s future in doubt, with both the main proponent and opponent dissatisfied with different provisions in the judge’s ruling. The PUC will have the final say on the project’s requirements.
The line is intended to help carry power from solar-energy generating stations in the San Luis Valley to Colorado’s Front Range and other population centers.
Xcel said its main concern is a provision that would require it to refund 50 percent of the development costs it collects from ratepayers if the transmission line fails to carry at least 700 megawatts of power within 10 years of completion.
In its filing, Xcel said the power requirement “is clearly not in the public interest” and is “arbitrary and unreasonable.”
Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz said the utility isn’t ready to discuss alternatives if it walks away from the project.
Landowner Louis Bacon’s 172,000-acre Trinchera Ranch on La Veta Pass, where the line may be built, has complained to the PUC that the project would ruin a “pristine” section of southern Colorado and could be built more cheaply in an existing transmission corridor on Poncha Pass.
The PUC is expected to deliberate on the judge’s recommendations and the resulting complaints early next year.
Xcel’s partner in the project, Westminster-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, said it agrees with Xcel that the judge’s financial conditions are unwarranted.
A Tri-State spokesman said the utility would need to re-evaluate its participation in the project if the conditions are imposed.
In a related issue, the PUC said it will hold a hearing Monday to address a request by Trinchera Ranch to release documents on the transmission project.
A spokesman for the ranch said that conducting a hearing, rather than simply releasing the documents, “raises serious questions about what the (PUC) commissioners hope to accomplish and whether they plan to comply with the state law.”
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com
