Overcoming Xcel Energy’s ‘hostile’ approach to renewable energy in Colorado

“I … find that the company has not complied with the statutory requirement, and in other areas, it seems like the company has similarly decided not to follow prior settlement agreements and commission orders,” said Blank. “It just seems like they ignored the statute.”

“Xcel takes pretty much the most extreme position of any utility that’s been required to or has voluntarily published a hosting capacity map,” added Sky C Stanfield, partner at San Francisco-based law firm Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP, who spoke to our colleagues at Energy-Storage.news on the CPUC ruling last month.

Stanfield also represented the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), an independent non-profit organisation working to improve energy security and access to clean energy in the US, in the Xcel hearings. This week, she tells PV Tech Premium that some of Xcel’s arguments have pertained to grid security, that making their information more widely available would compromise its ability to provide power to its customers, but that this argument is flawed.

“IREC takes the grid security thing very seriously,” Stanfield says. “It’s not that the idea that grid security is an issue that needs to be thought through carefully is one we disagree with.

“But what [Xcel] has done is instead of say ‘we’re going to take an approach to manage that grid security well, while still enabling distributed energy resources (DERs) to have the information they need to benefit the grid’, they took an approach that wasn’t constructive around what the needs were, and what the benefits are.”

Providing essential information

This misalignment between the information Xcel is providing, and the information needed by DER developers, such as those in the solar and battery storage sectors, is best epitomised by Xcel’s reluctance to disclose hosting capacity analysis (HCA). This is a tool used to show existing conditions on an electricity grid, which Stanfield describes as “really foundational” to providing the kind of information renewable energy developers need to make informed decisions regarding connecting to the grid.

“IREC believes that publishing detailed grid data, through a high-quality HCA—that’s a big caveat, meaning that it has to be good to be useful—is really foundational to advancing the better utilisation of the grid, and the ability for DERs, and solar in particular, to be able to interact in a more sophisticated manner with the grid,” Stanfield explains.

She goes on to explain that Xcel has access to a significant breadth of data, that developers seeking to connect to its transmission infrastructure do not.

“What we got in this decision was not only that they would publish HCA results, but that they publish all of the technical criteria,” Stanfield explains. “We always say that hosting capacity is not actually analysis producing one value, it’s actually many values.

“There are two layers to that: one is the more time-sensitive part [and] the other is that there are lots of different types of constraints. There are voltage constraints, thermal constraints, protection constraints and the HCA that Xcel does models lots of different constraints, and each one of those has a different value.”

This kind of information would be of particular benefit to the small-scale solar PV sectors, where profit margins can be smaller and eliminating unnecessary spending can often be the difference between a project succeeding or failing. In 2024, distributed solar accounted for just over one-third of Colorado’s total operating solar capacity, and Stanfield notes that HCA information could be vital to this sector.

“If I have a 1MW project on my roof, it may be that there’s a thermal constraint but not a voltage constraint, or vice versa, and that information is really valuable or a developer, because a thermal constraint is going to be very expensive to remedy, because you’re gong to have to upgrade a transformer or the line itself and reconductoring a whole line can be cost-prohibitive for the project,” Stanfield says.

“Whereas mitigating a protection constraint or a voltage constraint—depending on what it is—might be a much lower-cost upgrade.”

Facilitating solar project commissioning

In addition to providing the HCA information, the CPUC has called on Xcel to introduce flexible tariffs for developers looking to connect renewable energy projects to the grid, introducing an element of administrative and financial flexibility that mirrors the flexibility of variable electricity generation technologies. Stanfield says that both would help overcome the “basic day-to-day challenges” faced by solar developers.

“There’s the basic day-to-day challenges that PV systems face, regardless of whether we’re talking about more sophisticated use cases, which is the basic interconnection process, and the information we’re asking for at this point should help on that level,” says Stanfield. “It’s going to help people better identify sites where there is existing capacity; that’s the simple and most basic use-case for HCA.”

“By requiring the HCA to contain, for example, the actual nodal information, rather than general feeder information that is basically useless, developers should be able to better predict whether there’s capacity or not.”

Making these changes would be significant, as they would help overcome what Stanfield calls a “hostile” opinion of DERs held by Xcel. While Colorado has ample renewable energy projects—in 2024 renewables accounted for 43% of the state’s electricity generation—around two-thirds of renewable electricity generation comes from the wind sector. With Colorado also ranking in the top ten for oil and natural gas production among US states, there is a concern that solar power could simply be left behind by a grid connection process that does not favour the connection of new solar projects.

“Xcel, for whatever reason, has positioned itself in a way where they view DERs as hostile players to themselves, as opposed to viewing them as a necessary part of the system that they may need to manage, from a grid security standpoint,” explains Stanfield.

During the verbal hearing, CPUC commissioner Tom Plant said that the most optimistic interpretation of Xcel’s work is that the utility is looking to integrate renewables through distributed energy resources management systems (DERMS), and that integrating these technologies onto the grid in a manner with which the utility is comfortable is simply a time-intensive process.

“If I’m going to be charitable about it, I think that, looking at [the] big picture, Xcel has, in their minds their plan to do their aggregator DERMS, then slowly integrate testing the grid DERMS, then they’re going to do the grid DERMS, then at that point we’re going to be able to integrate flexible connection,” said Plant.

However, she noted that this line of thinking “fails to acknowledge the urgency” in the need to connect renewable power projects, either from a broader energy transition angle or the fact that for many projects, securing a grid connection is an integral part of securing finance to build the project in the first place.

“Flexible interconnection is really an urgent thing to get done, and you don’t wait until you’ve gone through all these various different multi-year components of your plan before you implement it,” she added.

Stanfield tells PV Tech Premium that ultimately, distributed energy resources should not be interpreted as a technology that pose an existential threat to the traditional grid system, but one that, if properly integrated, can be a powerful addition to a grid.

“We don’t deploy DERs [where there’s capacity] if we don’t have information about the grid, and that’s what this comes back to. DERs can be even better on the grid, if we enable them to, and the first step of that is providing sufficient information to enable them to understand where there are constraints and where there are not, and ideally when those constraints occur.”

Sticks and carrots

Both Stanfield and the Colorado commissioners expressed doubts about Xcel’s willingness to change its conduct, with Stanfield highlighting the “direct” way in which the commissioners talked about the utility’s work during the verbal hearing.

“I’m really struggling with the company’s inability or unwillingness to comply with, in certain instances, the statute, our orders and prior settlements, particularly as I don’t really see a regulatory stick or consequence that can meaningfully deal with situations like this,” explained Blank in October.

A lack of available carrots and sticks to encourage Xcel to follow the commission’s recommendations was a key talking point during the hearing. One suggestion floated was the idea of offering financial incentives for Xcel to release the HCA data, and integrate flexible connections into its work, one that drew criticism from Plant.

“Giving a financial incentive for following the law seems like we’re hitting the bottom of the barrel at that point,” said the commissioner. “Rather than having a performance incentive, I think there could be a penalty to not achieving certain timeframes.

Fines have some precedent in the sector; earlier this year, the California Solar and Storage Association (CALSSA) called for US$10 million in fines to be levied on local utilities Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE) for failing to approve residential solar and storage deployments within a designated timeframe.

At least, Stanfield says, there is a clear line drawn between what Xcel is doing, and what the CPUC considers acceptable in terms of managing its grid.

“The commission—at least orally and through some of what they approved and didn’t approve—made it clear to Xcel that they expect really different behaviour going forward,” says Syanfield.

“But the commissioners themselves, during the oral deliberations, expressed some doubt as to whether Xcel would even comply with their orders, which is really remarkable and problematic,” she continues. “It’s going to be very interesting to see how Xcel responds to that, and this is where I’m looking forward to seeing the written order and all of the decisions put together.”