During the storm, outages affected approximately 42,000 Xcel Energy customers, mainly caused by snow breaking off or bending whole trees and branches that wound up hitting power lines. Though most of those outages lasted just two hours, the headache might not be over for people who are still trying to extract vegetation from voltage.
“Overall, the cleanup and hauling away of weather-related fallen or broken trees and branches is the responsibility of the landowner,” says Xcel spokesperson Tyler Bryant, who shares a statement from the company. “Since these trees would have failed regardless of the presence of power lines, our involvement is related only to restoring electric service for customers.”
The company provides management services to mitigate the odds that trees will cause outages, and will remove fallen branches or trees that fall on power lines. However, disposing of the debris, much like paying the Xcel bill, is all the responsibility of the landowner — and for those affected, this is adding insult to injury.
At the end of our December 22 story detailing all the charges on Xcel bills, Westword asked readers to share their bills with us — and they delivered, with many people also sharing a sentence or two about their experiences with the energy company.
The theme: No need to watch a horror movie when an Xcel bill can cause the same reaction.
Residents reported that they took extra measures to save money, such as encouraging their family members to wear sweaters in the house. One person remarked that they expected a lower bill because their roommate was out of town for the holidays — only to discover that their bill had instead gone up.
Almost every bill nearly doubled from the previous month’s, largely in natural gas charges. However, a few people who are electric-only customers had bills that also went up significantly from the previous month.
Of the bills we received from readers and Westword employees, the average increase from the previous bill to the current bill was $140.76. The highest increase was $309.62, and the lowest was $12.38 for an electric-only customer. Not one person shared a bill that had gotten lower or stayed the same.
“The higher wholesale cost of natural gas is the primary cause of high energy bills this heating season,” Xcel explains. “We always take steps to insulate customers from the volatile wholesale natural gas costs, including storing natural gas for use during the heating season and contracting for natural gas in advance, and purchasing financial hedges, which act like insurance, to protect customers from significant price changes. For electric customers, we have a diverse energy mix, using different energy sources to minimize the impact of natural gas costs on bills.”
But the customers who shared their bills with us would disagree: They don’t feel insulated at all, and the cost increase has been quite the jump scare.
Some people have even been left deciding between heating their homes and buying groceries, including Diane Wright, who is retired and lives on a fixed income in her Westminster townhouse.
“I've been having to cut back on groceries,” she says. “I'm buying hardly any meat anymore. I watch where I drive so I don't have to use a lot of gas. This has impacted my life in numerous ways.”
She says she can’t lower her thermostat too much because of health problems she’s had in the last year, but still keeps it at 70 during the day and 66 at night to try to keep her bill as low as possible.
Temperatures are dropping, and so residents are trying to figure out ways to stay warm without incurring more costs.
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But although she saw improvements to her bill over the summer, the winter has been brutal.
Her bill due at the end of January is for $280.10. Her December bill increased 36 percent from 2021 to 2022, and she used slightly fewer kilowatt hours and therms. The average daily temperature was 11 degrees colder, but considering that her energy use didn’t go up thanks to her improvements, she doesn’t understand how her bill got that much higher.
McGraw paid an average of $6.32 each day for gas in 2022. In 2021, that amount was $3.77.
However, McGraw says that she’s seen people on Nextdoor posting bills that are much more extreme and almost feels lucky, adding that she’s only semi-retired, and so she has more income than other people who are also in their seventies.
Wright, like McGraw, has looked into alternative ways to help her home use less energy. A neighbor told her she could turn her hot water heater down to save on her gas bill, but she doesn’t want to give up hot showers. She’s also considered using electric space heaters instead of her furnace. However, that only warms her if she’s directly in front of a heater, and she's concerned that if she and her son both run space heaters, it might raise the electric bill significantly.
“It's a no-win situation,” Wright says.
According to Xcel, customers should feel comfortable in their homes throughout cold snaps and storms, noting that the grid has performed well this year. It says natural gas is the most cost-effective way to heat a home.
“If customers opt to use space heaters, it’s important to note the cost of electricity is also impacted by the wholesale cost of natural gas, because natural gas is used to generate electricity,” the statement elaborates. “Electricity may also be more expensive depending on the time of day if customers are subscribed to Time of Use, which is why we’re making strategic investments for greater electrification capacity from renewable energy sources.”
For those who choose to use them, the company encourages following space heater safety measures. More than 65,000 home fires are attributed to heating equipment each year, according to the Electrical Safety Foundation International.
“When using a space heater, make sure the heater has the label showing it is listed by a recognized testing laboratory, and read the manufacturer’s instructions and warning labels,” Xcel states. “Never leave a space heater unattended. Turn it off when leaving a room, and don’t go to sleep with a space heater on.”
Despite having a deep understanding that their bills are unaffordable, people shared that they don’t understand much of what goes into their bills — one resident calls Xcel’s billing “ ridiculous and confounding.”
“Most things that consumers get billed for, they try to make it to where it's easy for people to read and easy for people to understand,” McGraw says. “As people look at [Xcel bills], it's just so confusing.”
Xcel says that non-usage costs such as meters, service pipes and funding low-income programs account for 36 percent of the average residential customer’s bill, while costs based on usage make up the other 64 percent.
“We certainly understand high energy bills can be challenging for customers, and have programs in place to assist those in need,” Xcel shared in the statement. “We also encourage customers to reach out to our Customer Care team directly if they have any questions or concerns about their bills.”
Xcel works with Energy Outreach Colorado, the Colorado Energy Office and the Colorado Low-income Energy Assistance Program to help people who can’t pay their bills get help and to provide energy efficiency upgrades. To learn more about energy assistance options, customers can visit xcelenergy.com/EnergyAssistance or call 1-800-895-4999.
McGraw wonders what people who can’t do the things she’s done to upgrade her home for energy efficiency are supposed to do. “I don't think it's going to do any good for consumers to complain,” she says. “I don't think that's going to have much impact at all. I think it's going to be something that has to come from a legislative level.”
Wright adds that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, which is tasked with regulating Xcel, doesn’t seem to be protecting customers.
“They never tell them no, and it has to stop,” she says. “We are paying for a coal plant that isn’t even used. We are paying for problems in Texas last year, and it's an outrage, because people like me, older people who are on very fixed incomes, can't live like this.”
Xcel said in the emailed statement that it understands the impact high energy bills have on customers.
“We work with our regulator, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, to ensure a transparent and open process by which stakeholder groups and the general public can participate,” the email from Xcel reads. “We welcome and support our customers to make their voice heard in this transparent process.”
But customers have a hard time believing that, because they constantly ask for relief and it hasn’t come.
Wright plans to contact her state representative now that the legislature is back in session. She also plans to contact Governor Jared Polis, who is in charge of appointing members to the PUC. Commissioner John Gavan’s term expires in January 2023, and Polis has announced that he is nominating Tom Plant, a senior policy advisor for the Center for the New Energy Economy from Buena Vista, as Gavan's replacement. Plant is now unaffiliated, but when he was a state representative, from 1998 to 2006, he ran as a Democrat. He was also director of the Governor's Energy Office from 2007 to 2011, when Bill Ritter was governor.
Wright worked as a staffer in the Statehouse for twenty years before retiring, so she says she knows how reaching out might fall on deaf ears, but she can’t do nothing.
“I think it would take a combination,” she says. “The PUC has to put on their big-boy pants and stand up to them and say, ‘No, you can't keep raising rates. It's hurting our residents.’ And I don't know how, but if there's some way the legislature could pass a bill limiting the amount of profit they could take in.”
McGraw and Wright liked the idea of Initiative 93, a Jon Caldara-backed proposal that would have required utilities like Xcel to pay part of their profits back to customers — but it didn’t end up on the ballot this year because, as Caldara told Westword in December, “Unlike the rich motherfuckers at Xcel, we’re not made of other people's money.”
The cost of hiring canvassers was too high for the initiative to make it, Caldara says, but he plans to get something on the 2024 ballot. Wright says that isn’t soon enough: People need help now.
Regardless of how it happens, though, these residents, along with everyone who sent Westword their Xcel bills, know something needs to change.
“Those of us who are seniors and on tight budgets are suffering while Xcel enjoys their profits,” Wright concludes.
