Xcel Energy Boost Five-Year Capex Plan by $15B
The new rolling five-year capital spending from leaders of Xcel Energy Inc. is $15 billion, or 33%, larger than the company’s previous one, with renewables investments accounting for more than half of the projected increase.
The leaders of Minneapolis-based Xcel, which runs Public Service Co. of Colorado as well as Southwestern Public Service Co. in Texas and several utilities in the Upper Midwest, are counting on annual rate base growth of 11% on average through the end of 2030 to help fuel their $60 billion capex plan. A highlight of the planned spending is the addition of 2,000 MW of storage assets.
Work on transmission—the plan foresees the addition of 1,500 miles of lines—and distribution infrastructure accounts for $15.4 billion and $13.7 billion, respectively, of the plan. That’s not a big jump from the 2025-2029 forecast that Chairman, President and CEO Bob Frenzel introduced last year: Then, transmission work was slated to receive nearly $12.6 billion and distribution $15.8 billion. (The distribution figure has shrunk a bit because of the expected securitization of some of Xcel’s wildfire mitigation spending in Colorado.)
On a conference call with analysts, Frenzel and CFO Brian Van Abel said the capex plan through 2030—which drops off substantially in its last two years—excludes several generation projects that will be finalized in the coming years and also isn’t yet factoring in a number of large transmission projects.
“We have ITP and MISO 2.1 embedded in there, although they are longer-dated capital plans and longer-dated in service spends that will result in stuff drifting through this time period and […] later into the early 2030s,” Frenzel said. “And then there are subsequent ITPs and MISO LRTPs that are coming that are not also embedded in this plan.”
That 5% sales growth will be a step up from the 3% weather-normalized electric sales growth the Xcel team is expecting for all of 2025. Through the third quarter, weather-adjusted electric sales growth was 2.5%, led by nearly 7% growth at SPS.
In the three months that ended Sept. 30, Xcel produced $524 million in net profits on total operating revenues of $3.9 billion. A year ago, net income was $682 million while revenues were a little more than $3.6 billion. By far the biggest difference-maker in this year’s lower profit number was the $287 million one-time charge executives booked last month to account for a settlement of claims related to the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado.
Shares of Xcel (Ticker: XEL) closed last week’s trading at $81.17, up slightly from the Friday before. Over the past six months, they have risen about 15%, which has grown the company’s market capitalization to $48 billion.
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Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications T&D World, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner and Oil & Gas Journal. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.