Colorado Springs Utilities CEO speaks of the future of Drake power plant

Colorado Springs Utilities will buy power from other sources to make up for the loss at the Drake Power Plant. The company is looking at what’s next for the plant.

The plant has been powerless since Monday, when a fire broke out. Jerry Forte, the CEO of the utilities company, spoke about the damage at the plant.

“Today I was more optimistic about the work that we have ahead of us,” he said.

Forte said one of the units at the plant has extensive damage, and that two others look good but need more assessment. The company is making plans to keep up with customers’ services.

“We absolutely are going to need to purchase power off the grid moving forward, and it’s too early really to tell how it will affect the ECA portion of a customer’s bill,” he said.

CSU is already thinking about the summer months when power use is high.

“We’re planning out over that period of time to look at what we need in terms of purchase power,” Forte said. “We’re looking at the possibility of some agreements that we might enter into to purchase power for that period of time.”

Forte said the fire shouldn’t impact the conversation about whether to decommission the plant. He calls it an asset that’s been serving the community for 90 years.

“It appears that the majority of that asset has been relatively unscathed as a result of this fire,” he said. “So it just seems prudent to us to continue to move forward and leverage this asset for our customers.”

He said for customers, this situation should be seamless.