A consumer advocacy organization is sounding the alarm over the possibility that Xcel Energy customers across Southern Colorado and beyond could be on the hook for costs tied to a prolonged outage at a Pueblo-area coal plant.
A turbine failure knocked Comanche 3 offline on Aug. 12 of the previous year. Xcel must now bring a cost-recovery proposal before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, and that proposal could involve asking for higher customer rates.
The nonprofit Colorado Public Interest Research Group, or CoPIRG, is challenging that prospect, citing the plant's long record of reliability failures — including more than 700 days of unplanned outages logged between 2010 and 2021. The group's executive director argued that record disqualifies ratepayers from bearing the burden. "There's enough track record to demonstrate that this is a problematic source of power, and we should not have to pay for the repair costs or the consequences of having it down for so long," he said.
The executive director noted that no determination on cost responsibility has been reached yet, but that the tab is growing in the meantime. He outlined several paths available to the company — among them tapping insurance or absorbing the losses internally — while expressing worry that Xcel might instead pursue a ratepayer-funded solution. "We want to make sure that the PUC denies any efforts to try to charge customers for this reliably unreliable power plant," he said.
CoPIRG identified the Public Utilities Commission as the body with final authority over the matter, and its director noted that the commission takes public input, adding that customers still have time to make their voices heard before a ruling is issued.
Xcel offered a different framing in its official response. The company said the date it expects to bring the plant back into service has shifted because of supply-chain constraints, and it plans to brief the PUC on Aug. 22. Xcel also stated that under the current rate case settlement before the commission, the capital expenses associated with repairs have been kept out of customer bills, and that any proposals to recover costs in the future would require commission review and approval.
No firm deadline governs when Xcel must appear before the PUC, but the commission must render a decision on cost allocation before any party — the company or its customers — is formally charged.
The Aug. 22 commission update from Xcel, and any subsequent PUC ruling on how repair and replacement-power costs are assigned, will determine whether Southern Colorado ratepayers ultimately share in the price of the outage.