But former chair of directors says Fort Collins-based utility shoiuld be thinking more bottoms up, below the substation level
by Allen Best
Looking into the future, Platte River Power Authority sees need for a natural gas plant to buttress the robust investment in renewables that it plans as it prepares to leave coal behind.
It has plenty of company among Colorado utilities as they similarly exit coal. Xcel Energy, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, and Colorado Springs Utilities have already or plan to invest in new natural gas plants.
For that matter, a study commissioned by the Colorado Energy Office in 2023 concluded that the most effective way for Colorado to achieve at least 94% renewables while maintaining reliability and without adding burdensome costs will be to embrace natural gas to meet occasional peak demands.
Wade Troxell, a former mayor of Fort Collins and also former chair of the board of directors for Platte River, thinks it’s a choice that looks to the past, not the future, of energy.
”I don’t agree with the direction they are taking,” he told Big Pivots on Thursday after Platte River directors earlier in the day had approved an integrated resource plan that includes the gas plant. See news release here.
Troxell has long maintained that utilities need to move past large, centralized generation and meet electrical consumers with new innovative programs that maximize very local energy sources and choices.
To be clear, Platte River plans a giant investment in new renewable production, 760 megawatts altogether, as it prepares for the day when it loses power from its lone coal plant, Rawhide, and its share of a coal-burning unit at Craig.
Platte River sees some of the lost power coming from virtual power plants within its owner communities of Fort Collins, Longmont, Loveland, and Estes Park. The strategy also requires both short- and long-term energy storage when commercially viable.
The integrated resource plan approved on Thursday morning by directors representing the four member municipalities also calls for the “lowest carbon-emitting combustion turbine technology that is hydrogen capable.” In other words, a gas plant.
Platte River Power Authority plans to ramp up renewables coupled with natural gas and localized virtual power plant work as it prepares to retire Rawhide, its power plant north of Fort Collins.
Xcel Energy famously announced in November 2018 that it had adopted a goal of getting out of coal and dramatically reducing emissions by 2030.
A month later, directors of Platte River Power adopted an even more ambitious goal of 100% renewables by 2030, although that plan was premised on eight or nine conditions.
Troxell was on the board, but not the chair, at that time. He had grown up in Fort Collins and was a lineman for the football team of the Colorado State University Rams. He became a professor of mechanical engineering at his alma matter.
In his spare time, Troxell had been engaged in work for some years of pushing along the idea of distributed energy and also load management at the very local level.
Jason Frisbie, the chief executive of Platte River, had started work in the utility sector not in an office but at Rawhide, the coal plant north of Fort Collins, and worked his way to become chief executive during this time of energy transition.
“This plan gets us the majority of the way there, and we will continue our pursuit of a non-carbon energy future,” he said in a press release.
“While some community members question the need for new gas turbines, every portfolio we’ve modeled that meets the requirements of our three foundational pillars adds renewable resource and aeroderivative units.”
Troxell sees a bottoms-up approach that is opposite of the reigning utility paradigm of the 20th century, which was entirely top down. He sees the gas plant, even if used only part time, as a continuation of that approach. He estimates the cost at $500 million. But he also sees big solar plants and battery arrays as being similar.
The action, he says, needs to be at below the level of an electrical substation. The four city utilities should be the center of action.
Platte River has something similar in mind with its virtual power plants among its four member cities. But Platte River needs to think bottom up first, says Troxell.
“It goes to the consultants you pick and the requirements you give to the consultants how that comes back and is presented to the board,” he said.
What is needed, he added is a ”whole different model and new agreements.”
This story was amended to reflect that Wade Troxell was on the board but not the board chair in 2018 when Platte River adopted its 100% goal.
- A tale of two legislative bills in Colorado - April 17, 2025
- Solar panels have more than proven themselves - April 14, 2025
- Tons of questions about data center bill - April 14, 2025
