Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Eight rate hikes. Since September 2023. That is the number Angel Merlos of The LIBRE Initiative wants you to sit with, and honestly, once you do the math on it, you kind of cannot un-see it.
On August 19, 2026, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission gave a verbal decision approving most of a settlement in Xcel's electric rate case. Xcel here is really Public Service Company of Colorado, the subsidiary, but you know them as the company on your bill. And the thing about that bill is you cannot do anything about it. There is no competitor to call. No switching providers. If you have electricity on the Front Range, you have Xcel, and starting this month you pay more.
Most people do not realize how big the original ask was.
Xcel filed this case back on November 21, 2025. The opening number was a $356 million revenue increase, which is about 9.9%. And when you roll in the riders, it climbs to $526 million. They built that request on a 9.8% return on equity, a 55% equity ratio, and a projected
The state's own utility consumer advocate called it what it was. The largest rate increase in Colorado history.
So the fight became about getting that number down. A non-unanimous settlement on June 2, 2026 cut it to
Here is where it lands for you. The approved increase adds about $5 a month to the average residential bill and about $7 for commercial customers. That is roughly half of what Xcel came in asking for. And for context on how much that fight mattered, the earlier
This is the part people miss. Rate cases are not the company versus everybody. They are coalitions.
Backing the settlement: Xcel itself, PUC Staff, Colorado Energy Consumers, Climax Molybdenum, IBEW Local Union 111, and Walmart. Notice a pattern there. Big industrial users. Big commercial players.
Opposing it: AARP Colorado, the Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate, the City of Boulder, and Energy Outreach Colorado. Notice that pattern too. The groups that speak for regular households and people who are already stretched thin.
Pereira put it flat. The settlement, he said, "was a compromise between large users and the company" that "left all the other customers out."
I mean, that is the whole story in one sentence if you ask me.
What makes this one worth your attention is not just the $5. It is what one of the regulators said while approving it.
PUC Commissioner Eric Blank warned that if capital spending and rates keep growing faster than inflation, "electricity may simply become unaffordable for many customers." And then he dropped the detail that should stop you cold. Xcel's actual sales have declined since 2021. But over that same stretch the company tripled its spending.
Sales down. Spending tripled. Bills up eight times in three years. Look, you do not need an economics degree to feel where that math is going.
Xcel estimates as many as 385,000 of its customers may already be paying at or above the 2.5% target for the share of household income that should go to electricity. That is not a rounding error. That is a couple of Boulders worth of people.
So the $5 electric bump is not the only thing moving. There is a separate natural gas settlement filed on July 13. That one would raise the average residential gas bill about 8.6%, or $5.16 a month, with rates taking effect in October if it gets approved.
Add it up and you are looking at real money on top of real money. Xcel serves about 1.6 million electric customers and about 1.5 million gas customers in Colorado. Most people have both.
And this is all happening in a state wrestling with the nation's second-worst inflation. Every dollar Xcel adds to the bill is a dollar you are already fighting to keep. Hayley and I talk about this at home like everybody else does. You watch the grocery total, you watch the gas pump, and now you watch the utility bill climbing eight straight times with nowhere else to shop.
Xcel, for the record, is not thrilled either. A company spokesperson said they were "disappointed" by the reduced increase, and pointed to grid upgrades, reliability, and growing demand as the reason costs are up.
Meanwhile Merlos and The LIBRE Initiative are launching a letter-writing campaign pushing regulators to put consumers first the next time one of these cases comes around. And if the pattern holds, there will be a next time. There always is.
Real estate angle, because it matters more than people think. When you are running the numbers on a monthly payment out here, folks obsess over the mortgage rate and the property tax line. Utilities are the quiet third number. And with eight hikes in three years and gas climbing in October, that quiet number is not staying quiet.
The rates are set. You cannot switch. So the only move left is knowing exactly what is happening and saying something before hike number nine.