Xcel Energy Co.
Denver, CO
Dear Mr. and/or Mrs. Xcel:
I am one of your semi-satisfied residential customers in Colorado.
Sure, I sometimes blanch when viewing your monthly bill, but by and large, your company provides us with a dependable supply of electricity and natural gas that isn’t priced off the charts.
But something disturbing is going on. It is so chilling that I may have to turn on our furnace in the middle of the summer.
I refer to media reports that your/our company is “in negotiations” with the City of Boulder. The question is whether the city stays with Xcel or forms its own municipal power company.
Do not negotiate with Boulder. You have enough problems with bureaucratic regulators. Stick to your guns.
As you know, our enviro friends to the north want to save the planet by having all of its residents supplied with only “renewable” energy. Seemingly, that would require only power generated by either those giant windmills or solar panels. Good luck with that, at least for now.
Jonathan Koehn, Boulder’s “regional sustainability director,” told the Daily Camera that the city would stay with Xcel “if we can find a way to work with the company that ultimately has a bigger benefit for more customers and citizens of Colorado in terms of addressing the social and environmental and health impacts of fossil units. This isn’t just about Boulder.”
No, this is just about Boulder. My very own “social impacts” are fine, thank you.
Boulder, of course, wants to shut down the Xcel’s Comanche 3 power plant which burns coal. Replace it with what? Who knows? It is slated to operate until 2070.
Here’s the deal: This customer only cares about having the most reliable sources of power and getting that power at the lowest possible cost — period. I don’t need to feel good about myself.
As long as your/our company meets that criteria, I don’t care if your product is derived from coal, solar, wind, hydro-electric dams, ocean waves, the earth’s heat, nuclear particles or thousands of trained gerbils running on little treadmills.
I don’t want power blackouts — rolling or otherwise. And I don’t want to be stuck with the tab for energy sources that are still in the development stage and may become obsolete.
If Xcel is bent on borrowing half the money on Wall Street to satisfy the dreams of Boulders, use it instead on something proven — nuclear power.
You would have to construct windmills on 1,400 square miles to produce as much electricity as one nuclear plant. Thatap a tract larger than Rhode Island.
Sure, Xcel would like to keep Boulder residents as customers. But the city is not in a position to negotiate. It has already spent $10 million formulating its municipal plan and is likely getting cold feet about finally sticking its citizens with higher utility rates.
Boulder now wants a way to save face — at our expense.
Yes, I know I’m just one customer.
But I don’t think most of the others want unnecessarily higher utility bills either.
Your friend,
D.H.
Dick Hilker (dhilker529@aol.com) is a retired Denver suburban newspaper editor and columnist.
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