An article published in the Boulder County Business Report explains how some residents and businesses in Boulder may soon have the option to be billed based on the time of day they use electricity. This concept is called time-of-use pricing which has been used in California and would allow Xcel to charge higher electrical rates during peak-use hours and lower rates during non-peak hours.

This is becoming an option due to the SmartGridCity program which will allow consumers to program their meters to consume electricity at times they specify. For example, the peak electricity hours might run between noon and 3pm, so a family could program their appliances to turn off or run on a lower setting during that time, saving them money. The downside to this smart technology is peak hours might coincide with times electricity must be consumed, resulting in higher electricity costs.

Installing solar electricity in your home or business is a good solution to this problem for two reasons. First, solar will protect you from rising peak electricity rates because electricity generated from the system would not be coming from Xcel. Second, these solar panels are most productive during the time when peak-use hours are most likely to occur, from noon to 3pm, so since a solar system in Colorado is net metered and feeds electricity back into the grid - the owner of the system is paid for the extra energy produced, and since these prices would reflect the peak-hour rates (which can be 4 to 5 times higher than normal rates), even the wholesale rate payback from Xcel could become a decent amount of money.

This program is voluntary at the moment, but will most likely become mandatory in the future.