BIG PIVOTS: And a Hot One It Was!

What a hot weekend it was!

July can get hot, of course. I remember a July night in 1989 just below timberline in the Elk Range, sleeping outside the bag because it was just that warm. It was during one of my five failed attempts to climb Capitol Peak.

Now we are redefining hot. This chart tells the big picture story of warming in Colorado.

But what if Colorado’s biggest and newest coal plant were to be offline when it gets really, really hot — as hot as it was last weekend, or even hotter and longer?

With the threat of rolling blackouts in Texas and elsewhere, these are not idle questions.

Of course, in the future, we may have different peaks of electrical demand. Jack Ihle, director of regulatory and strategic analysis for Xcel Energy’s Colorado Division, which owns 66% of Comanche 3, submitted testimony to state regulators last week that points out that the peaks in electric demand will likely shift because of the growth of electric vehicles and beneficial electrification.

“Winter peaks will be an increasing occurrence, and the interaction with renewable generation in different seasons further changes and complicates when peaks will occur,” he said.

More renewable generation is today’s story. A ribbon is to be snipped in early afternoon at a new wind project called Panorama just south of the Wyoming border and north of Pawnee Buttes. (Rattlesnake Buttes, if you read Michener’s “Centennial.”)

Leeward Renewable Energy developed the 145-megawatt project, and Guzman Energy is buying the electricity for distribution to its growing number of customers in Colorado and New Mexico.

For Guzman, a company founded in 2013 with a vision for opportunities in this energy transition, it’s a milestone. It has power generation, including through a consignment of the 8% of output from Comanche 3 owned by Holy Cross Energy. This represents new generation and, of course, renewable energy.

Incidentally, this wind farm is about 30 miles west of where my grandfather was born in a sodhouse. Maybe they had a wagon of coal for the winter heat, although I doubt it. Now, we’re hurrying to get past that era. There’s more to be said, but not in this message.