Xcel Tries To Trick Customers Into Thinking They’re Being Treated

I’d say Happy Halloween, but the increasing cost of electricity is downright frightening.

Minnesota’s electricity prices have been skyrocketing, largely because our state has squandered $15 billion on wind turbines and the additional transmission lines needed to transport the electricity generated by far-away wind turbines to the metro area.

While one could argue utility companies are simply responding to the mandates imposed upon them by legislators and regulators, I would vehemently disagree because  Xcel actively lobbies to skew the regulatory apparatus in their favor. In fact, in 2016 Xcel spent more money lobbying than every organization other than the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, which represented 2,300 businesses. 

Xcel Energy also lobbied the Public Utilities Commission for the highest Social Cost of Carbon for use in utility planning. I’ve talked about this before, but in short, it means they wanted to cook the books so they could add more expensive wind turbines to their resource base, and increase the profits for their shareholders.

This is why I changed Xcel’s Halloween promotion to more accurately reflect how their customers feel.