Xcel Energy asks for two rate hikes in Colorado; some customers say they're fed up

Xcel Energy is asking the Public Utility Commission to raise electric rates by nearly 10% per month and gas rates by 11% per month this year primarily to cover the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure, but some people say enough is enough. That's why a small group of protestors showed up to Xcel's downtown Denver offices to voice their frustration with the utility company.

"They're not really here to give us a public service, even though that's their legal name in Colorado, their real reason for being is to make money for their shareholders," said Heidi Leathwood.

Xcel Energy recorded $2.24 billion in profits in 2025, according to the company's annual earnings report. Frustrated customers said Thursday that they think that's plenty of money to cover the cost of infrastructure improvements Xcel Energy says they need without overburdening Coloradans with more rate increases.

"That's just egregious that profits are going up and up. Ratepayers can't afford these rates, and yet they have two rate increase requests on the docket right now with the Public Utilities Commission," said Leathwood. "The way they make their money is by making customers pay for everything new that they build."

Xcel Energy says in a statement:

"We continue to invest in Colorado's electric and gas system to ensure that we can deliver our customers with the clean, reliable, safe and low-cost energy they need to power their homes and businesses. Just last year, we invested a record $5 billion to build new clean energy power plants as we work on replacing our legacy coal plants; we built new, large scale transmission lines capable of bringing the new renewable generation to where the electricity is needed; and we built and maintained a distribution infrastructure to make our communities safer from the risk of wildfire. Over the next five years, we will invest approximately $60 billion in our electric and gas systems, including an estimated $17 billion in Colorado.
Maintaining the balance between system reliability, sustainability and affordability is our main goal, and we've proven we can maintain this balance, while providing our customers some of the lowest energy bills in the county. Our average Colorado residential customer's electric bills are 39% below the national average. Over the past decade, our monthly residential electric bill has increased by less than the rate of inflation. Our Colorado electric customers spend 1.2% of their household income on electricity, the lowest "share of wallet" rate in the country.
The majority of the money Xcel Energy takes in goes to our gas and electric operations to support our customers in their everyday lives. We maintain, repair and improve the grid every day, futureproofing our infrastructure to ensure a brighter today and tomorrow. As a regulated utility, every part of our operations is impacted by public policy. Part of your dollar goes toward public initiatives, like reducing energy use, clean energy generation, and supporting those who need help with their energy bill. Like every business, we pay taxes on our operations - on our sales and on the property we own. We also pay towns and cities a fee for the right to serve their residents. The remainder are the company's earnings, and that level of earnings is set by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. The majority of those earnings are reinvested into the company, into maintaining our natural gas and electric systems. What's left over is our profit, a portion of which goes to employees and the rest to investors.
We understand people will have questions regarding the rates and bills they pay and the investments we make, and we encourage them to read our proposals and filings to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. These investments are rigorously reviewed by the Commission, with input from consumer and community advocates. In short, the process we use to describe and justify these investments and to determine electric and gas rates is fully open for public comment and engagement and ultimately approved by the Commission.
If your viewers are interested in learning more about the full value we provide to Colorado, we encourage them to read our Colorado Impact Report."

These current rate hikes are just proposals for now and would need to be approved by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Protestors think lawmakers need to step in as well.

"We also want to encourage legislators to make sure that laws are in place to control them," said Leathwood.

If the increases are approved, the electric increase would begin in August of 2026 while the gas increase wouldn't begin until October of 2026.