Xcel whines that rooftop solar could be 'fatally disruptive'

Utilities are not your friends. 

Xcel knows it helped to burn down over a thousand houses and cause over two billion dollars damage in Colorado's Marshall Fire.

“Our goal is to be sure any homeowner who’s interested in going solar in the county has an easy on-ramp to achieving that,” said Tanner Simeon-Cox, a program director with Solar United Neighbors. Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility that uses fossil fuels to generate 58% of its Colorado electricity, has, along with many utilities, viewed distributed energy as potentially fatally disruptive to its business model. [Interested in rooftop solar? New co-op kicks off in Boulder County to get residents cheaper rates]

In Colorado Xcel charges homeowners 17 cents a kilowatt hour in base rates but only pays 8 cents per kWh to subscribers with rooftop solar who sell their home grown power. So, don't tie your system to the grid but if you use it as a backup keep your own electricity completely separate from the utility that reads your meter. 

In light of findings in the causes of the Marshall Fire seven lawsuits have been combined as a class action and filed against Earth hater Xcel in Colorado courts but experts expect many more. It could be the end of an horrendous history.

Rooftop solar is booming. Monopoly utilities don’t like it.https://t.co/jpFB9wwmeD

— Derek Cressman (@DerekCressman) September 13, 2023