DENVER — The Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on Thursday approved Xcel Energy's 2025-2027 Wildfire Mitigation Plan.
As part of the plan, Xcel will invest roughly $1.9 billion over three years to "expand the scope, pace and scale of our wildfire mitigation work." In a release, the company highlighted the following proposed investments:
- Greater Situational Awareness: Implementing advanced fire modeling and analysis tools as well as adding weather stations and tripling AI cameras for early smoke detection.
- Technology-Enabled Inspections: Accelerating inspections in wildfire risk areas using aerial and drone methods.
- Infrastructure Improvements: Multi-year program to upgrade equipment, underground power lines, and rebuild transmission lines.
- Vegetation Management: Expanding efforts in high-risk areas with new standards for inspections and pruning.
- Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings: Increasing remote safety settings, sectionalizing lines, and adding new technology.
- Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) Program: Providing interactive outage maps, proposing a backup energy rebate, and improving customer support and communication.
- Organizational Growth: Expanding the Wildfire Risk team by improving capabilities in meteorology, fire science, risk management and analytics.
“The Commission’s approval of our Wildfire Mitigation Plan is significant as it allows us to quickly implement important projects to protect our customers and communities from wildfire risk. We worked closely with a large coalition of stakeholders representing customers, businesses, government and agencies to put forth a plan designed to keep our customers and communities safe, while keeping bills low,” said Robert Kenney, president of Xcel Energy-Colorado, in a statement.
In April 2024, Xcel Energy shut off power for thousands of people along the foothills ahead of a windstorm. It was the first time the company had preemptively switched off power in Colorado.
The PUC investigated the decision and considered recommendations to improve Xcel's communication and notification practices when implementing public safety power shutoffs (PSPS). According to the PUC, as part of the 2025-2027 plan, Xcel agreed to:
- "Commitments" regarding outreach and engagement
- Integrate an incident command structure and file a "PSPS Playbook"
- Prioritize "critical" customers and facilities and provide them enhanced communication, engagement and power restoration work in the event of a PSPS
In its release, Xcel said the plan was "designed to keep customer bills low by ultimately securitizing eligible company investments." In its own release, the PUC said the monthly bill impact will "vary over time." The commission said Xcel customers could be charged an extra $9 per month "towards the end of the plan period." That amount would drop "after securitization," according to the PUC.
The original plan was submitted to the PUC in June 2024. In April, Xcel reached a unanimous agreement with stakeholders on the proposal, one of which was the City of Boulder. Denver7 visited with Boulder leaders shortly after to hear their reactions.
"We are very enthusiastic about this," said Carolyn Elam, a sustainability senior manager for the City of Boulder. "Xcel put together a really robust plan, we felt, when they filed it over the summer, so a large portion of our testimony that we filed was in support of it."
According to Elam, the plan is not explicitly related to the 2021 Marshall Fire, which damaged or destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses in Superior, Louisville and Boulder County amid hurricane-force winds and extreme drought conditions.
More than a year after the Marshall Fire, in June 2023, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office announced the results of its investigation into the blaze. Investigators claimed the Marshall Fire started as two distinct fires, which merged into one. The sheriff's office said the investigation revealed that one of the fires was the result of a disconnected Xcel Energy power line.
Xcel disagreed with that assessment, and in a statement, said the second ignition "started 80 to 110 feet away from Xcel Energy’s powerlines in an area with underground coal fire activity."
Denver7's Colette Bordelon contributed to this report.
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