In October, two important events happened related to Boulder’s municipal utility effort.

First, the city and Xcel finally reached an agreement required by the Public Utilities Commission for the muni to move forward. Putting this in perspective, the PUC originally required this in December 2017, so it was over nine months late. For those of you who have been following Boulder’s foolish muni quest over the last seven years, it was supposed to be operating over a year ago, in 2017. Instead, Boulder has incurred seven legal and regulatory losses, including three at the PUC, two at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and two at the Boulder District Court, with over $29 million spent, including lost under-grounding from Xcel while producing zero watts of renewable energy.

Second, in October 2018, Xcel’s Rush Creek wind farm went on-line and on-schedule, providing 600 megawatt of renewable energy for Colorado. Putting this in perspective, Rush Creek can provide enough wind-generated electricity to power all of Boulder, Longmont, Lafayette and Louisville. During my 18 years working as a scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in support of the U.S. Department of Energy Wind Program, my primary focus was on wind resource assessment. With the disproportionately high commuting into Boulder for jobs and the resulting increased electric load, in my calculations, Rush Creek could possibly also power Superior. At this time, with Rush Creek and its other wind farms, Xcel has exceeded Colorado’s 30 percent renewable energy standard.

In March 2010, when Gov. Bill Ritter signed legislation for Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard for 30 percent renewables at the National Wind Technology Center, where I worked, I was sitting about 30 feet away. Now with the election of Boulder’s own Jared Polis as governor of Colorado, and his plans for 100 percent renewables in Colorado, it is time for the state legislature to take two important steps. The first is to do away with Colorado’s archaic system of regulated electric utility monopolies and replace them with deregulated electric utilities, as 17 states have already done. The second is to upgrade Colorado’s high-voltage transmission to carry renewables-generated electricity across the state.

In November 2000, when Bill Clinton was president and George W. Bush was the president-elect, the DOE Wind Program manager asked our team at NREL to make a wind resource map of west Texas for the incoming president. This map showed that Texas’s entire electric load could be met by wind energy. I do not know if Bush actually saw our map, but this helped set in motion events where in 2002, Texas passed electric utility deregulation legislation for consumers. In 2005, Texas’s Competitive Renewable Energy Zones legislation was passed, resulting in almost 3,600 miles of new high-voltage 345 kilo-volt transmission lines across the state, putting red Republican Texas years ahead of any other state in renewables, including blue Democratic California.

In Texas’s deregulated electric market, most consumers can choose who they buy electricity from. Consumers who live within Texas munis cannot make this choice though. With Texas’s CREZ high-voltage grid, abundant wind energy from unpopulated areas of Texas can be transmitted to population centers across the state. These lines now transmit solar-generated electricity, too. The same can happen in Colorado. If Colorado deregulates, then consumers will be able to choose who they buy electricity from, but consumers who live within a muni, as planned by Boulder, will not be able to choose. If Colorado deregulates, there will be absolutely no need for Boulder to form a muni in order for city residents to meet their own renewable energy goals.

Xcel, which benefits under Colorado’s market of regulated monopolies, will undoubtedly resist deregulation, but as the nation’s leader in wind energy for over 14 years, with plans for over 10,000 MW of wind energy on their system, they will still dominate renewables in Colorado. As an Investor Owned Utility with utility-scale wind farms producing electricity at levels that solar farms cannot match, Xcel has not focused on solar. Unless Xcel changes this, in a deregulated market, opportunities will exist for smaller operators to provide consumers with electricity from solar. As a 100 percent Xcel Windsource customer from the start, in a deregulated market, I will stay with Xcel.

We now have the opportunity for Colorado to achieve 100 percent renewables with electric utility deregulation and transmission line upgrades. Governor-elect Polis, are you reading this?

Steven Haymes lives in Boulder.