Will Xcel's Pawnee to Daniels Park Proposal be Quickly Obsolete?

Hundreds came out in Denver to protest Xcel's plan
to decrease payments to rooftop solar customers.

The energy business is changing—dramatically and rapidly--and changes are already impacting Xcel. For proof, just look at Mark Jaffe's recent Denver Post article on the conflict solar panel customers and installers are having with the Minnesota-based Utility company in Colorado because Xcel wants to lower its payments to solar customers for energy they contribute to the grid.

Current and coming changes raise a core question: Is the Pawnee to Daniels Park extra high voltage long-distance transmission line necessary, or is Xcel's proposal just a head-in-the-sand, monopole-in-the-air wish to keep us in the 1890's?

If the PUC approves the transmission line as currently proposed and it's not needed, Coloradoans will be stuck with unnecessary power transmission? If so, the poles and wires will stay uselessly in place and rate payers will be paying for them for decades. (Even under the best circumstances, this proposal raises Xcel customer rates.) Are Xcel managers and investors the real beneficiaries here?

In a blog on the website www.yourenergyblog.com, Jessica Kennedy writes:

Developed nations all over the world take pride in the technological advancements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as they should, but, the United States is functioning in 2014 with essentially the same power delivery system developed in the 1890’s. The electricity we depend on every day travels along a transmission system based on nineteenth century technology. ...Historically, energy infrastructure has been maintained to preserve the status quo instead of improved to keep pace with technology. ...there is no excuse for the system to have stagnated and decayed for over a century.

...We can’t expect electric utilities in 2050 to operate in the same fashion they do today. Energy industry practices are already outdated, and there is a big shift in energy distribution and generation on the way.

In order for utilities to remain profitable as our grid transforms they need to adapt, and fast. ...The biggest change for utilities by 2050 will be the emergence of distributed energy resources (DERs)...[,] a competitive threat to the traditional utility model because consumers will soon have a choice between buying power through the grid, or investing in onsite generation and producing their own power. ...As consumers gain diverse and low cost choices in renewable and distributed generation resources, utilities will need to integrate DERs, and carefully blend the needs of customers with their own, in order to stay relevant.

...David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy . . . said, “[i]n the future I see an at-home, disaggregated system, with the home like a brain, with supply and demand of electricity being generated in that home.”

Morgan Stanley published a report in early March 2014 that predicts a realization of Crane’s vision of homes powering themselves with solar panels and batteries. The financial firm points to the already enormous distributed solar market, and electric car company Tesla’s innovative battery production concept as indicators that consumers may soon choose to abandon the electric grid altogether. Tesla’s “gigafactory” will drive down costs of energy storage exponentially once it is built and in operation. Morgan Stanley states in the report that Tesla’s proposed battery production can not only make off-grid energy cost-competitive with utilities, but it will likely evolve to be more inexpensive over time. ...It seems to be a matter of when, not if, renewable and battery configurations are the power systems of choice for homes and businesses across the country.

Energy development, production and transmission are entering a new era. Is Xcel's Pawnee to Daniels Park project, even if it were solely based on leveraging wind power, just a way to hold on to Xcel's monopoly in many parts of Colorado, even as energy production shifts closer to your home? If so, who will be the losers? Rate payers, who will see their bills increase if this proposal goes through--even if the line never performs as promised--and residents of Parker and Aurora who will see additional power lines and poles installed even if they are quickly obsolete.

Xcel needs to look to the future, innovate and develop projects that integrate with the independence we will increasingly have in our energy production. Nineteenth Century transmission technology has no place in our 21st Century neighborhoods.