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Tag: Grid Reliability

Federal Order Keeps Craig Coal Plant Ready As Power Demand Tests Grid
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Federal Order Keeps Craig Coal Plant Ready As Power Demand Tests Grid

By Michael Booth | The Colorado Sun Tri-State still doesn’t want to burn fuel at the northwestern Colorado plant, but is under emergency federal orders. A reluctant Tri-State Generation and Transmission is now burning coal and sending electricity out onto the grid from its Craig Unit 1, after the Western power grid authority said potential for outages at other plants meant the northwestern Colorado power is needed to balance regional resources.  Tri-State had long planned to shutter Craig 1 for good at the end of 2025, but federal emergency orders from the Trump administration required the co-op to instead to keep the generating unit in good repair and available to operate. Craig 1 had been available but idle in the first months of 2026, while Tri-State, the Col...
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Planned Outages And Policy Goals Fuel Concerns About Colorado Energy Future
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Planned Outages And Policy Goals Fuel Concerns About Colorado Energy Future

By Jon Caldara | Commentary, Complete Colorado I’ve lived in Colorado since 1970. And you know what Colorado had back in 1970? High winds blowing down the Front Range. I moved to Boulder in 1984 and have been there ever since. And you know what Boulder has had all that time? A freakin’ lot of high winds. I remember as a college kid walking around the CU campus after windstorms, stepping around uprooted trees and massive broken branches that made the sidewalks impassable. I’ve seen rooftop shingles go flying off Boulder buildings, signs ripped down, and semi-trucks overturned. All of which is to say that for the last 55 years I have personally witnessed a crap-ton of high winds in our mountain state. But only in the last few months have I witnessed our ...
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Colorado Energy Mandates Drive Rising Costs And Reliability Concerns
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Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Colorado Energy Mandates Drive Rising Costs And Reliability Concerns

By Complete Colorado Staff | Complete Colorado In a recent episode of Independence Institute’s* energy podcast, PowerGab, hosts Jake Fogelman and Amy Cooke argue that ‘green’ energy mandates are driving up Colorado energy prices and threatening grid reliability, while environmental groups and progressive media outlets try to obscure the role renewables play in rising utility costs. A major topic of the show is a proposal allowing, among other things, Colorado Springs Utilities to delay retirement of the Ray Nixon coal plant if shutting it down on schedule would harm reliability or impose unreasonable costs. As the hosts note, the plant remains essential, supplying about 25% of Colorado Springs’ electricity, while replacement generation has proven far more expensive than ...
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GriftoPolis’s Green Mandate Mirage: Sacrificing Jobs and Reliability for a Fraction of a Degree
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

GriftoPolis’s Green Mandate Mirage: Sacrificing Jobs and Reliability for a Fraction of a Degree

By Rep. Ken DeGraaf | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Coloradans, let's cut through the fog of feel-good policies and face the harsh reality of our state's energy "transition." We're being sold a bill of goods on decarbonization, where the costs pile up on families and communities while the benefits are so minuscule they're practically imaginary.  Take HB26-1081, the so-called "Colorado Grid Optimization Act." It sounds innocuous—optimizing transmission with fancy tech to squeeze more out of our existing lines. But dig deeper, and it's just another layer of mandates that funnels your hard-earned money into utility coffers and Wall Street pockets, all under the guise of climate heroism. Xcel Energy, our investor-owned behemoth, loves this stuff. Why? Because...
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EPA Says Colorado Overstepped Law By Using Haze Rules To Close Coal Plants
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

EPA Says Colorado Overstepped Law By Using Haze Rules To Close Coal Plants

By Michael Booth | The Colorado Sun The federal government said the coal plants were needed for “grid reliability” and a regional haze-fighting plan violated the Clean Air Act. The Trump administration Friday further eroded Colorado’s longstanding mandate to close coal-fired power plants by 2031, saying the state’s required regional haze-fighting plan goes too far and violates the Clean Air Act. But the regional haze plan covers everything from emissions at the Suncor refinery and Colorado’s three major cement kilns to natural gas power and other pollution sources. In rejecting the entire plan, the EPA may throw many of Colorado’s pollution fighting plans into regulatory purgatory for years. Colorado’s coal plants are needed for “grid reliability,” the federal g...
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When outages become policy: Colorado’s energy accountability gap
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

When outages become policy: Colorado’s energy accountability gap

By RMV Editorial Board The mid-December power shutoffs weren’t a weather anomaly or a one-off emergency. They were planned. And for tens of thousands of Coloradans, that fact changed everything. Families scrambled for generators. Hospitals shifted to contingency plans. Small businesses began calculating losses they may never recover. What followed stripped away the abstractions surrounding Colorado’s energy agenda. Policy decisions once discussed in targets, timelines and rulemakings showed up in daily life.  For readers who missed it, that concern was put on the record on Dec. 23, when Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Gov. Jared Polis, calling on him to reverse his electrification agenda and rein in the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). And th...
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Colorado Blackouts Offer a Stark Warning About the State’s Energy Future
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado Blackouts Offer a Stark Warning About the State’s Energy Future

By: Jon Caldara | Commentary, Complete Colorado For those of you who shared this magical experience, congratulations — you’ve now had a sneak preview of Colorado’s 100% renewable energy lifestyle. No waiting. No reservation required. For us fortunate 110,000, the reality of “unreliable energy” arrived quickly: The house goes dark; people get cold; refrigerated food and medicines quietly die; folks on home oxygen machines fumble around in the dark for backup tanks; no cooked meals; garage doors refuse to open; Teslas sit silently, judging their owners, and worst of all — no electronic entertainment. Nirvana. Absolute green, renewable Nirvana. There’s a certain poetry in chasing a wind-powered energy future only to be plunged into darkness by a little wind. It’s l...
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What Xcel promised regulators and what customers were told before Dec. 17 shutoff warnings
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

What Xcel promised regulators and what customers were told before Dec. 17 shutoff warnings

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Coloradans are being asked to prepare for the chance of a planned outage on Dec. 17. The company’s public alerts tell people to watch the map. The filings tell a fuller story about thresholds, timelines and who is supposed to be in the loop when a shutoff is on the table. That framework was not created overnight. It was built through years of filings with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and formally approved in 2025. As of Dec. 16, the documents already on record allow for a clearer picture of what Xcel committed to regulators and what customers were actually told as the wind event approached. Dec. 17 was not an improvisation Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) are not ad hoc emergency decisions. They are a s...
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Study Shows Electricity Costs Rising Fastest in States Pushing Green Mandates
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Just The News, Approved, National

Study Shows Electricity Costs Rising Fastest in States Pushing Green Mandates

By Kevin Killough | Just The News As Trump kicks off his affordability tour, new analyses show that states with renewable energy mandates have higher electricity rates than states without. President Donald Trump kicked off an affordability tour in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, and among the concerns he’s discussing at the events is the cost of energy.  It’s a big concern for Americans. A recent poll conducted by Ipsos, a marketing research and consulting firm, found that 73% of U.S. residents were concerned about increases in their electricity and gas bills this year.  A new analysis by Always On Energy Research and the Institute for Energy Research shows that residents of blue states see higher electricit...
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Regulators Keep Pueblo Comanche Coal Unit Running While Xcel Repairs Newer Plant
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, Local

Regulators Keep Pueblo Comanche Coal Unit Running While Xcel Repairs Newer Plant

By Alexander Edwards | The Denver Gazette The Comanche Power Plant in Pueblo will continue to operate a coal-powered electrical generating unit that was slated for retirement this month for one more year. The move comes after Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility company, petitioned in November to keep one generator operating after an outage at the coal-fired power plant. Gov. Jared Polis backed the petition. On Wednesday, the Public Utilities Commission approved a variance submitted by the utility. This allows Comanche 2, which was slated to be retired on Dec. 31, to continue operating as Xcel fixes the Comanche 3. “The Commission found that the outage at Comanche 3 was the sole justification for the extension of Comanche 2,” a fact sheet released by th...
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