The new varying timeof-day rates for Colorado Springs Utilities customers will begin rolling out across Colorado Springs in October. Residents who use home solar panels could see a new fee to mirror the impacts in 2027.

Utilities staff proposed the new “demand charge” for net metering customers as part of the rate package at the Utilities Board meetings last week. If approved by the City Council, the charge could increase electricity bills by around $50 per month for more than 9,000 customers who use the renewable solar program.

CSU Chief Financial Officer Tristan Gearhart said the charge was meant to balance out the discounts offered by net metering with the effort to encourage residents to change when they use the most power.

“What makes sense on our side is it encourages behavior during that peak period

that we are asking of the rest of our customers through the time-of-day rates,” Gearhart said.

Solar customers and installers said they felt surprised and singled out when they found out about the proposal. Art Wickberg, who installed solar panels at his home around 2012, said he felt the charge went against the benefits of home solar that Utilities had advertised for years.

“I do not understand for the life of me why I am being charged more when I am providing power for the grid and not just using it,” Wickberg said.

Through the net metering program, Utilities receives the excess power generated by home solar panels in a given month. Customers are paid for the power through annual credits that knock down the cost of their monthly electrical bill. Over several years, the amount saved on power bills can offset the major initial cost of having the panels installed.

Solar customer Nancy Stillwagon said that her home panels produced around 730 kilowatt-hours of electricity, according to her Utilities bill. Her home used less than a third of the power and she received credit for more than 500 kilowatts.

“I’m paying less than $17 a month during the summer and they want to increase it by that much. That is ridiculous,” Stillwagon said.

The utility reimburses residents around 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, which Gearhart said was several times more than Utilities would pay for other power sources. Residents pay Utilities an access fee for the connection.

At the Utilities Board meeting on Aug. 20, staff said the growing use of the net metering program was leading to “major underbilling” for solar customers. Pricing and rates manager Scott Shirola estimated that the net metering customers pay a combined $5 million less than other customers.

Solar panels tend to be the most effective at generating power in the morning and early afternoon. During the peak use hours of 5-9 p.m., the time the Energy Wise rates will be highest for other customers, the solar panels often produce little or no electricity, adding to the demand of the city’s overall power grid during its most expensive time.

“When the panels stop producing and the costs are still high for generating power, we are paying a high price to replace it,” Gearhart said.

The new demand charge would be issued based on the highest 15-minute stretch of power demand during those peak evening hours. The setup means that net metering customers can save money in the same way as other Colorado Springs residents could through Energy Wise: doing less during the peak hours.

The Utilities Board of Directors, who are also the City Council members, were divided on changing the net metering program. Brandy Williams and Nancy Henjum voted against advancing the overall rate case because of concerns about the new charge.

Williams said Utilities had promoted and marketed the net metering program for years to residents. Williams said enacting the new charge now left a limited time to talk to residents before Sept. 9, when the city would begin limiting ex parte conversations before the October City Council meetings.

“I don’t think 20 days of notice is sufficient for the public when we have spent 15 years putting that in place,” Williams said.

Utilities announced last year that it would begin switching customers to rates that varied the cost depending on the time of day.

The Energy Wise rates, which will begin taking effect in October, would reduce electricity rates in some hours and dramatically increase them during the peak evening hours.

Gearhart said the rate change was not about increasing revenue but to encourage people to spread out their electricity use throughout the day. The net metering charge was meant to achieve the same thing.

Gearhart and Shirola said there would be extensive public comment at the October meeting. Utilities has already begun messaging the new charge, sending emails to net metering customers about the charge last week and adding a page to the facility website.

The rate package and the 2026 Utilities budget were approved by the board 7-2. The Utilities funding will receive a public hearing at the Oct. 14 City Council meeting.

Triton Roofing and Solar is a Colorado Springs business that has been installing solar panels since 2012. Owner Todd Dorpinghaus said the proposal would affect the company’s business and his home, where he’s added solar panels.

“It makes it much harder to justify why I switched to solar if I’m still going to pay $80 per month in my electricity bill,” Dorpinghaus said.

Solar technician Courtney Grant said the company had already received a surge in calls from customers trying to have panels installed before the federal tax credit went away at the end of the year. The proposed demand charge had driven a new series of angry calls and emails.

Grant said one option to reduce the charge is for homeowners to connect the solar panels to batteries. The batteries would store excess power instead of sending it to Utilities and could be used to power the home during peak hours.

The catch is the price. Large home batteries can cost well over $20,000 to install, which Grant said delays the return on investment that solar customers are often looking for.

“There are better ways to get that conservation that benefits the city and the customers. They can make this so it doesn’t penalize renewable customers so much,” Grant said.

Gearhart said the credits Utilities provided for solar generation would not be affected. Utilities’ website about net metering said the new charge is “continuing to support solar adoption.”

For the past two years, a battle has been raging for control over the character and livability of older neighborhoods in cities throughout the Front Range of Colorado.

The older neighborhoods, most of them clustered around the downtown area of Front Range cities, have been illequipped to fight this battle. Some of them have organized volunteer homeowners’ associations that have been able to work to protect current zoning laws, yet many of the other neighborhoods are disorganized and barely perceive the dangers they face.

The dangers come from a national movement, increasingly present in Colorado, to densify the population in existing neighborhoods through such techniques as allowing additional housing units to be built in backyards and side yards.

Another densifying technique is to smooth the way for single-family housing to be torn down along major bus routes and replaced with high-density apartment buildings — filled with potential bus riders.

Yet another reform would remove parking requirements for new apartment buildings, thereby forcing the additional cars into the surrounding single-family neighborhoods and making parking more difficult.

In short, the so-called reforms would take what are now livable single-family and two-family neighborhoods, infuse them with more people, automobiles and apartment houses, and make them less desirable places to live.

Initially, the support for densifying older neighborhoods surrounding downtowns came from reformers in city planning departments and, in some cases, elected members of city councils.

Their goal was to create more affordable housing for poorer and younger citizens, even if at the expense of the present livability and desirability of existing neighborhoods.

In the past two years, however, the major support for densifying and “apartment-izing” of existing city neighborhoods has come from the governor and pro-density members of the General Assembly in Denver.

In its 2024 and 2025 legislative sessions, the legislature passed and the governor signed laws requiring additional dwelling units, apartments along bus routes and no parking requirements for apartment developments.

The nation does have a severe housing shortage, perhaps short of 4 million homes. As a result, housing, as we well know in Colorado, is more expensive. And it is tougher for young families and low-income people to find housing that they might be able to afford near where they work.

Journalists have coined the word YIMBY to refer to density advocates who say, “Yes in my back yard.” They also call for tiny homes to be built in other people’s backyards.

Elected leaders in several states have weakened environmental codes and tried to come up with programs to make it easier to take out loans to build ADUs (accessory dwelling units). There are national bills along these lines as well.

This is not just a Colorado conflict. Similar tensions are taking place in California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Arizona, Oregon and Hawaii. There are reports of an ADU boom in California. This does not appear to be a Midwest struggle; at least, not at this time.

Volunteer neighborhood associations in Colorado feel state efforts here were done by the legislature and governor with little or no regard for the effects these so-called reforms will have on existing low-density neighborhoods and the pleasure and comfort that present residents derive from living in them.

YIMBYists accuse concerned neighborhood associations of elitism and insensitivity to the critical housing affordability crisis. Proud residents of established single-home neighborhoods are understandably concerned about serious issues of traffic, parking, waste management, noise, school crowding and more. They are doubtless concerned about their home’s value, as well.

This is a tension that is likely to persist for years to come.

Some cities along the Front Range are complying with the legislature’s new laws, but other cities, including Colorado Springs, are refusing to obey the legislature and carry out all of its densifying reforms.

Gov. Jared Polis has responded by threatening to cut off state support and programs for those cities that refuse to obey the laws.

The governor has said he will decide on Oct. 15 which cities will get the state monetary grants and which ones will not.

This struggle between the legislature/governor and some important Front Range cities is an example of a struggle over home rule.

This is the idea that anything so basic to a community as the planning and zoning of its neighborhoods should be determined by the city council and not by the state government.

The legislature and governor respond that the affordable-housing issue is significant enough to be of state rather than local concern, and therefore, the state laws should prevail and not home rule.

Everyone in Colorado should be paying attention to this contentious struggle, which pits the character and livability of our most desirable downtown-area city neighborhoods versus the serious need for affordable housing, as it plays out over the coming weeks.

Moreover, we will need planners and leaders who can help invent appropriate approaches to this inevitably increasing tension.