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By Liz Enbysk

SGN Managing Editor

 

A citizens' group last week kicked off a campaign to create a municipal electric utility in Boulder, Colorado, home of Xcel Energy's landmark SmartGridCity project. The utility's 20-year franchise agreement with the city expired at the end of 2010. According to local news reports, negotiations to ink another 20-year agreement broke off in July. Then in August the Boulder City Council approved language for a November ballot that will ask voters to weigh in on creating a municipal-run electric utility.

 

So how did it come to this?

 

From the outside looking in, Boulder's progressive reputation would seem the perfect backdrop for Xcel's grand SmartGridCity experiment. And that may be part of the problem. The Daily Camera, Boulder's newspaper, reports that the fallout between Boulder and Xcel was largely related to the city's goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Xcel committed to a 30% renewable energy portfolio by 2020 but apparently that's not soon enough for Boulder.

 

A rocky union

Not that the relationship has been a perfect match anyway. There have been plenty of signs of discord.  Last year we chronicled a SmartGridCity meltdown involving cost overruns and allegations about unfulfilled promises on the part of Xcel. Earlier this year, the Daily Camera reported that Boulder residents were outraged by a mandatory pricing pilot that Xcel heavily promoted.

 

Still, for a while there was a chance that the upcoming November ballot would include a proposal to renew an agreement with Xcel. The Minneapolis-MN-based utility had suggested it could build the city a wind farm in return for another 20-year franchise. The city council wanted a vote on a franchise agreement that included the wind farm deal; Xcel reportedly wanted the franchise agreement on the ballot sans the wind farm. And that's where talks broke off.

 

Yet the discord continues in Boulder, where at least two citizens groups have formed. One is RenewablesYes, which is backing "municipalization." Another, called Smart Energy Coalition, says it supports the city's energy goals but is raising concerns about the risks and costs involved in having the city try to run a utility business.

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SmartGridCity

Hello Liz I appreciate your fair reporting on the various issues about my company's relationship with Boulder. Reading the above, I wondered whether you had had the opportunity to read the following report, prepared by IBM following its study of the SmartGridCity project this spring. If not, I do think you will find it enlightening regarding the benefits already being delivered by the system. IBM's conclusion, while recognizing opportunities in some aspects of the project, includes: "Current SGC infrastructure provides significant value to Boulder. The deployment of a high-bandwidth communication medium, thousands of sensors, smart transformers, and smarter meters has transformed Boulder’s electrical grid." http://www.bouldercolorado.gov/files/Energy/SGC_IBM/IBM_SmrtCity_SGC_Report.pdf Thank you very much, Craig Eicher Area manager, Boulder Region Xcel Energy 303-245-2254

Craig Eicher - 09/06/2011 - 16:11

Smart Grid City ---Boulder

The paragraph below is from the executive summary of the IBM report. This is the missing component as Jesse has pointed out in the past utility companies are not very good at marketing and are either unwilling or do not know how to deploy the software/hardware for home owners to take control of their energy usage. My guess is that allowing the user to have access and control was/is an low on the list of priorities. However, the SGC project has yet to provide direct, visible customer value. When the project was initiated, SGC was advertised as providing customers with significant benefits including in-home real-time information access. This is now being piloted on a limited basis. This mismatch in expectations has been a source of friction between the utility, the City and its citizens.

John Hemenway - 09/07/2011 - 10:34

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