Xcel Energy has 6.2 gigawatts of generating capacity in Colorado, but the company already has pending applications from data centers seeking 5.8 GW of electricity — enough to power more than 3 million homes.
By 2040, the power company expects a data center load to be 8.5 GW.
In the face of this booming demand — particularly in an area of Denver and Aurora being called Data Center Row — Xcel Energy is seeking to add 12 to 14 GW of new generation and transmission. The price tag is $22 billion.
The question, however, is how much of that is real, for the risk is that Xcel Energy will build it and nobody — or at least not so many — will come.
“Without caution, ratepayers face significant risk of bearing the costs of stranded assets,” Colorado Energy Consumers, or CEC, which represents Xcel Energy’s industrial and large commercial customers, said in a filing to state regulators.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission is already expressing skepticism about the forecast of Xcel Energy’s subsidiary Public Service of Colorado, or PSCo. The company expects to have a total demand of 8.5 GW by 2031.
“This is a really massive load forecast far in excess of what we’ve seen on the system, not to say it can’t happen,” PUC Commissioner Megan Gilman said at a meeting Aug. 6, adding “the vast majority of that forecast is far from certain.”
PUC Chairman Eric Blank said Xcel Energy in its pending electric resource plan — which calculates the utility’s electricity demand and the resources needed to meet — should have a load of about 5 GW or no more than the company’s low-end forecast of 7.6 GW.
You can read the entire article at coloradosun.com