Power Reliability & Municipal Energy

The Problem

Xcel Energy Is Failing Denver

Denver’s electricity is provided by Xcel Energy under a franchise agreement - a government-sanctioned monopoly. Denver residents cannot choose another electricity provider. And Xcel is failing at its most basic obligation: keeping the lights on.

Outages doubled in 2024. The average Xcel customer experienced 352 minutes of outages in 2024, up from approximately 100 minutes in 2023 (Colorado Public Utilities Commission briefing, 2025). That is nearly six hours without power. 90,000 customers experienced six or more outages in a single year. One stretch of South Broadway - 178 businesses - suffered 13 outages in 2024, including one that lasted a day and a half.

Xcel cut its own workforce while raising your rates. Between 2022 and 2024, Xcel reduced staff by 10% and cut its customer service budget by 5% - while electric rates increased 30% over the same period (Colorado Sun, 2025). Rates are projected to climb another 50% over the next five years. You are paying more for worse service.

Customer service collapsed. Overall satisfaction dropped 17% from 2020 to 2024. Abandoned calls quadrupled - 200,000 customers hung up after being unable to reach anyone. 100,000 customers were auto-disconnected. A 240% increase in billing failures left customers receiving surprise bills averaging $3,000 (Colorado PUC, 2025).

Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) with inadequate warning. In April 2024, Xcel conducted its first-ever PSPS in Colorado, cutting power to 55,000 customers with minimal notice. Foothills Hospital in Boulder was told at 3 p.m. it would lose power - and was still running on generators the next day with no updates from Xcel. In December 2025, 120,000 customers lost power, some for more than three days. Boulder businesses lost an average of $25,000 per shutoff event (Boulder Chamber survey, 2025).

Colorado’s own regulators called it “a giant fail.” PUC Commissioner Tom Plant used those exact words. Commissioner Megan Gilman said: “We’re seeing a company before us requesting tens of billions of dollars to buy new things, to do new things when they appear to be falling short of their basic core commitments to the customers that they exist to serve” (Colorado PUC hearing, 2025).

For Medically Vulnerable Residents, Outages Are Life-Threatening

Power outages are not an inconvenience for everyone. For residents who depend on electrically powered life-sustaining medical equipment - ventilators, oxygen concentrators, home dialysis machines, feeding pumps, suction devices, powered wheelchairs, and refrigerated medications - a power outage is a medical emergency.

Denver has thousands of residents on life-support equipment at home. When the power goes out:

• Ventilator-dependent patients have minutes, not hours, before battery backup runs out
• Oxygen concentrator users lose their oxygen supply entirely - portable tanks provide limited backup
• Home dialysis patients must interrupt treatment, risking dangerous fluid and electrolyte imbalances
• Insulin-dependent diabetics risk spoiled medication in as little as 2-4 hours without refrigeration
• Families with medically fragile children face the impossible choice between sheltering in place with failing equipment or transporting a critically ill child to an overwhelmed emergency room

There is no Xcel program that guarantees priority restoration for medically vulnerable households. There is no city program that provides backup power to families who need it. These families are on their own - buying generators, battery systems, and portable oxygen out of pocket, often at enormous expense, because a monopoly utility cannot keep the lights on.

Hospitals Are Not Immune

Denver-area hospitals have repeatedly operated on generator power during Xcel outages and shutoffs. During the April 2024 PSPS, Foothills Hospital ran on generators for over 24 hours. In December 2025, outpatient surgeries and procedures at St. Anthony Hospital’s medical office building in Lakewood were rescheduled due to power loss. St. Anthony now maintains two generators because “Xcel Energy has made us aware these power shutdowns could become more frequent” (Denver Gazette, 2025).

When hospitals operate on backup power, capacity is limited. Elective procedures are canceled. Patient transfers may be restricted. Emergency rooms absorb the overflow - including medically vulnerable residents fleeing their own powerless homes.

What Denver Currently Does

Very little. Denver’s current franchise agreement with Xcel expires December 31, 2026. In August 2025, Denver City Council rejected a proposed 20-year renewal by a 7-6 vote, with Councilwoman Shontel Lewis noting that the agreement gave Xcel “a lot of leeway” with no obligations to share data, improve customer service, or use clean energy (Denverite, 2025). The agreement is being renegotiated.

Denver has no municipal power utility. Denver has no backup power program for medically vulnerable residents. Denver has no enforceable reliability standards beyond what the PUC imposes at the state level. Denver’s leverage is the franchise agreement - and that leverage is being exercised right now, in real time, as of this writing.

Colorado Cities That Did It Differently

Municipal power works in Colorado, right now, in cities near Denver.

• Longmont Power & Communications - city-owned electric utility serving Longmont (30 miles north of Denver). Longmont residents enjoy lower rates, higher reliability, and local democratic control over energy decisions. Longmont also built NextLight, the municipal broadband network (see: Municipal Broadband).
• Fort Collins Utilities - city-owned electric utility serving Fort Collins. Fort Collins residents pay lower rates than Xcel customers and the utility answers to City Council, not shareholders.
• Colorado Springs Utilities - the largest municipal utility in Colorado, serving 500,000+ residents. Provides electricity, natural gas, water, and wastewater services. Consistently rated higher in customer satisfaction than Xcel.

These are not experiments. These are established municipal utilities that have operated for decades, serving hundreds of thousands of Coloradans with better reliability, lower rates, and democratic accountability.

Our Solution

1. Use the Franchise Renewal to Demand Accountability - Or Walk Away

The current franchise agreement expires December 31, 2026. This is Denver’s strongest leverage point. Any renewed agreement must include:

• Enforceable reliability standards with financial penalties for outages exceeding defined thresholds (benchmarked to municipal utility performance in Longmont, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs)
• Mandatory data transparency - real-time outage data, infrastructure condition reports, staffing levels, and capital investment plans, all publicly accessible
• Rate increase caps tied to service quality metrics - no rate increases while reliability is declining
• Medically vulnerable household registry with guaranteed priority restoration and advance shutoff notification (minimum 72 hours for planned shutoffs)
• Undergrounding timeline - enforceable deadlines for burying overhead lines in high-risk areas, not vague commitments
• Local hiring and workforce requirements - reverse the staffing cuts that caused the reliability crisis
• Community benefit fund - Xcel pays into a fund for backup power systems for medically vulnerable residents and critical community facilities
• Exit clause - if Xcel fails to meet reliability benchmarks for two consecutive years, Denver may terminate the franchise and pursue municipal alternatives without penalty

If Xcel will not agree to these terms, Denver should not renew the franchise.

2. Commission a Municipal Power Feasibility Study

Denver should immediately commission an independent feasibility study for a Denver Municipal Power utility, examining:

• Full municipalization - Denver acquires Xcel’s distribution infrastructure within city limits and operates its own electric utility (the Boulder model, learning from Boulder’s challenges)
• Hybrid model - Denver builds and owns new generation and storage capacity while initially contracting with Xcel for distribution, transitioning to full ownership over time
• Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) - Denver aggregates purchasing power on behalf of residents to negotiate better rates and cleaner energy, while Xcel continues to manage the grid (requires state enabling legislation)

The study must include cost analysis, financing options (revenue bonds, as used for municipal broadband), timeline, legal requirements, and lessons learned from Boulder’s attempted municipalization (which spent $20M+ on legal battles before reaching a settlement with Xcel in 2020).

3. Life-Safety Power Program for Medically Vulnerable Residents

Create a Denver Life-Safety Power Program providing:

• Free battery backup systems for households with residents dependent on life-sustaining electrical medical equipment - funded by the community benefit fund from the franchise agreement and supplemented by city funds
• Backup power registry - voluntary registry of medically vulnerable households, coordinated with Denver Health, hospitals, and home health agencies, ensuring these addresses receive priority restoration and advance notification of any planned shutoff
• Portable generator lending program - city-maintained fleet of portable generators available for emergency deployment to registered households during extended outages
• Hospital and care facility coordination - during grid emergencies, Denver Emergency Management coordinates with hospitals and skilled nursing facilities to ensure medically fragile residents sheltering at home can access facility-based backup power if needed
• Automatic utility bill credits for medically vulnerable households that experience outages exceeding 4 hours - no application required

4. Critical Facility Microgrid Program

Build independent power resilience for Denver’s most critical facilities:

• Microgrids for hospitals, fire stations, emergency shelters, and water treatment plants - solar + battery storage systems that can operate independently of the Xcel grid during outages
• Community resilience hubs - designate and equip community centers, libraries, and schools in every council district as powered shelters during extended outages, with medical-grade power, heating/cooling, and communications
• Prioritize Environmental Justice Zones - Globeville, Elyria-Swansea, Montbello, Sun Valley, and other frontline communities get resilience hubs first (cross-reference: Climate & Environmental Justice)

5. Distributed Energy and Community Solar

Reduce dependence on the centralized grid by expanding distributed generation:

• Community solar for renters and low-income households - city-facilitated community solar gardens allowing residents who cannot install rooftop solar to buy into local solar generation at reduced rates
• Solar + storage incentives - rebates for residential and commercial battery storage systems that provide backup power and feed excess capacity back to the grid
• Virtual power plant pilot - aggregate distributed battery storage across Denver into a coordinated network that can stabilize the grid during peak demand and reduce outage impacts
• Net metering protections - any franchise agreement must guarantee fair compensation for distributed solar generation fed back to the grid

International Evidence: Public Power Works

The track record is consistent: municipal utilities deliver lower rates, higher reliability, better customer service, and stronger clean-energy commitments than investor-owned monopolies. The barrier is not feasibility - it is political will and industry opposition.

How We Pay For It

• Life-Safety Power Program: $3-5M/year. Funded by franchise community benefit fund (paid by Xcel as a condition of any renewed agreement) + city general fund allocation. Battery backup units cost $3,000-8,000 per household; serving 500 households/year = $1.5-4M
• Municipal Power Feasibility Study: $2-3M one-time. Funded by city general fund. This is due diligence before a potential multi-billion-dollar infrastructure decision - the cost is negligible relative to the stakes
• Critical Facility Microgrids: $15-25M over 5 years. Funded through FEMA Hazard Mitigation grants, DOE Grid Resilience grants, Denver Climate Protection Fund, and revenue bonds. Solar + storage systems generate long-term savings that offset capital costs
• Community Resilience Hubs: $5-8M over 3 years. Federal Community Development Block Grants + city capital improvement budget
• Community Solar and Distributed Energy: Revenue-neutral to the city. Structured as incentive programs that leverage private investment and federal Inflation Reduction Act tax credits
• Full Municipalization (if pursued): $1-3B depending on infrastructure acquisition costs. Financed through revenue bonds repaid by ratepayer revenue - the same model used by every successful municipal utility in the country. The feasibility study will provide precise cost estimates

Net cost to Denver taxpayers for immediate programs: $25-40M over 5 years, with significant federal grant recovery potential and long-term energy cost savings.

Frequently Asked Questions

“Can Denver actually build its own power utility?” Multiple Colorado cities already operate municipal electric utilities: Longmont, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Glenwood Springs, Aspen, and others. Nationally, over 2,000 municipal electric utilities serve 49 million Americans (American Public Power Association, 2024). Sacramento’s SMUD serves 1.5 million people at rates 30-40% below the neighboring investor-owned utility. Denver is larger than most of these cities, which means more ratepayers to share costs - municipalization gets easier at scale, not harder.

“Didn’t Boulder try this and fail?” Boulder spent over a decade and $20M+ attempting to municipalize before reaching a settlement with Xcel in 2020. The key lessons: (1) Boulder underestimated legal costs - Xcel fought aggressively to protect its monopoly; (2) Boulder attempted to build a new distribution system rather than acquiring Xcel’s existing infrastructure; (3) state law at the time was less favorable to municipalization. Denver is different: Denver is 10x Boulder’s size (more ratepayers, better economics), the franchise expiration provides natural leverage, and the political environment has shifted dramatically as Xcel’s failures have become undeniable. The feasibility study must incorporate Boulder’s lessons.

“What happens if the franchise expires with no agreement?” Xcel would continue operating in Denver under the existing terms while a new agreement is negotiated. Boulder operated without a franchise agreement for over 10 years. The sky does not fall. In fact, an expired franchise gives Denver more leverage, not less - Xcel would be operating without a guaranteed long-term agreement, creating uncertainty for its investors and regulators. Denver should not rush into a bad deal out of fear.

“Won’t a backup power program be too expensive?” A battery backup system for a medically vulnerable household costs $3,000-8,000. A single ambulance transport to the ER costs $2,000-5,000. A single ICU admission costs $10,000-30,000 per day. Keeping medically fragile residents safely powered at home is dramatically cheaper than the emergency medical costs of leaving them without power. This is not charity - it is the most cost-effective approach to protecting Denver’s most vulnerable residents.

“Xcel says outages are down 93% in early 2025.” Xcel made this claim about the first four months of 2025 after the PUC investigation. Four months of data after a regulatory crackdown does not erase a decade-long trend of declining reliability. The question is not whether Xcel can temporarily improve when regulators are watching - it is whether a for-profit monopoly with fiduciary duties to shareholders will sustainably prioritize infrastructure investment over profit extraction. The structural incentive problem remains. Enforceable standards with financial penalties are the only way to make improvement permanent.

“Isn’t this just about clean energy politics?” No. This is about whether your lights stay on. Whether a family with a child on a ventilator can sleep at night. Whether a hospital can keep operating during a windstorm. Clean energy is part of the solution - distributed solar and storage reduce dependence on a fragile centralized grid - but the core issue is reliability, accountability, and the failure of a monopoly model to serve the public interest. Municipal utilities in conservative Colorado Springs and liberal Boulder County both outperform Xcel. This is not a partisan issue.

References

• Colorado Public Utilities Commission. (2025). Xcel Energy outage and customer service performance briefing. (352 minutes average outage duration, 90,000 customers with 6+ outages in 2024.)
• Colorado Sun. (2025, May 1). “Xcel customers face increasing outages and are waiting longer for support.” (10% staff reduction, 5% customer service budget cut, 30% rate increase 2022-2024.)
• Denver Post. (2025, May 8). “Xcel Energy-Colorado power outages doubled in 2024.” (Outage trend data 2014-2024.)
• Westword. (2025). “Power Failure: Colorado PUC Not Happy With Xcel’s ‘Giant Fail’ at Customer Service in 2024.” (Commissioner Tom Plant quote.)
• Colorado Sun. (2025, May 15). “Xcel says it has moved to solve service problems. Colorado regulators want to verify the progress.” (PUC monitoring program.)
• CPR News. (2024, September 11). “Xcel Energy under investigation after numerous complaints of power outages statewide.”
• Denverite. (2025, August 27). “It’s too late to put Xcel on the Denver ballot this year. Now what?” (Franchise agreement history and timeline.)
• Denverite. (2025, August 12). “Xcel wants approval to keep operating in Denver. City Council just rejected the measure.” (7-6 vote, Councilwoman Lewis quote.)
• Denver Gazette. (2025, December 24). “Businesses face losses after Xcel power shutoffs.” (Boulder Chamber $25,000 average loss, St. Anthony Hospital generator quote.)
• Boulder Reporting Lab. (2024, April 7). “Xcel: Some Boulder County power may not return until after Monday.” (Foothills Hospital on generators for 24+ hours.)
• Denver7. (2025). “Colorado lawmakers bombard Xcel Energy President with questions, concerns about Public Safety Power Shutoffs.”
• American Public Power Association. (2024). Annual directory and statistical report. (2,000+ municipal utilities serving 49 million Americans.)
• Denver City Council. (2025). File #25-0922, Xcel Energy franchise agreement proceedings.
• City of Longmont. Longmont Power & Communications annual reports.
• Colorado Springs Utilities. Annual performance and customer satisfaction reports.
• Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). Rate comparison data and annual reports.