Xcel Energy Inc.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Xcel's Energy's year-end 2020 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. Questions will be taken from institutional investors. Reporters can contact media relations with inquiries, and individual investors and others can reach out to Investor Relations. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Paul Johnson, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Xcel Energy's 2020 year-end conference call. Joining me today are Ben Folk, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bob Frenzel, President and Chief Operating Officer, Brian Van Abel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Amanda Rome, Executive Vice President and General Counsel. This morning we review our 2020 results and share recent business and regulatory developments. Slides that accompany today's call are available on our website. As a reminder, some of the comments during today's call may contain forward-looking information. Significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our earnings release and our SEC filings. Today, we will discuss certain metrics that are non-GAAP measures, including ongoing earnings and electric and natural gas margins. Information on the comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations are included in the earnings release. I'm going to go off script for a section which sounds a little bit dangerous, but in December, The utility that I've recognized Ben Folk as utility executive of the year for his environmental leadership. You know, Ben was the architect of our steel-for-fuel strategy at Excel. He's also the one that drove us to be the first utility to declare that we have an objective 100% carbon-free by 2050. This is a well-deserved and overdue award. With that, I'll turn it over to Ben. Oh, well, Paul, I'm blushing, man. You know, like that old saying, never get off the billiard ball, never get off script. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I'll just take it. That's from a podcast now. Anyway. Okay. All right. So I'm not going to go off script, and I'm going to thank everybody and welcome you to our call. You know, last year was certainly a challenging year, but our employees came through delivering on our financial and operational objectives while mitigating the impacts of COVID and helping our communities. Overall, 2020 was truly a stellar year. We executed on our business continuity plans as we kept employees and customers safe while providing reliable customer service. We're helping to jumpstart the economy through our capital investment programs, which create jobs and investment in our communities. And we stepped up our commitment to charitable giving to support those in need, including donating a gain of almost $20 million from our sale of the Mankato facility. We had a long and impressive list of accomplishments in 2020. Let me share a few of them. We delivered EPS of $279 in 2020, which is the 16th consecutive year of meeting or exceeding our earnings guidance. We raised our annual dividend by $0.10 per share, which is the 17th straight year we've increased our dividend. And we achieved a total shareholder return of just over 7.8%, which was the second highest TSR for our peer group. Our O&M declined almost 1% as we took actions to mitigate the impacts of COVID. The Minnesota Commission approved our wind-repowering proposal, and I request to acquire the Maurer Windfly. And finally, we resolved multiple rate cases during the pandemic. Now turning to our investment plans, the Minnesota Commission recently approved our 650-megawatt wind-repowering proposal with $750 million of rate-based investments. The wind portfolio is projected to provide customer savings of more than $160 million over the life of the assets. It'll create jobs, jumpstart the economy, and reduce carbon. In addition, we're also proposing to acquire a repowered 120 megawatt wind farm PPA buyout for about $210 million. Now, this project was initially submitted as part of the Minnesota Relief and Recovery RFP but the repowering didn't result in customer savings. However, we worked with the party on the terms, and the project is now expected to provide customer savings over the life of the asset, so we'll move forward with it. We also plan to file our Minnesota solar proposal later in the quarter. This project consists of 460 megawatts of solar facilities near our retiring Sherco coal plant, which takes advantage of existing transmission. We've fine-tuned our projections, and now expect an estimated investment of $550 million. This lower cost provides more benefit to our customers. We have requested a commission decision on both projects in the third quarter and are confident the commission will see the consumer benefit. As part of our strategy to lead the clean energy transition, we're also working to electrify the transport sector. In 2020, we announced the goal to enable 1.5 million electric vehicles in our service territory by 2030. We have programs and filings underway in various states and our transportation electrification plan in Colorado was just recently approved. And we continue to achieve important milestones in our nation leading wind expansion program with the completion of six projects in 2020. These projects represent nearly 1500 megawatts of capacity and were completed under budget. In addition, we have approximately 800 megawatts of wind projects under construction, which are expected to be completed in 2021. We're excited to continue the clean energy transition, which will result in significant customer savings and carbon reductions. We also have a strong year operationally. For example, our nuclear routine continues to make great strides in transforming performance while reducing costs. the fleet achieved a capacity factor of over 96% in 2020, even with a refueling outage during COVID. We have one of the top-performing nuclear fleets in the country, as rated by both the NRC and INCO. And in addition to strong performance, we have continued to lower our cost structure, with O&M costs declining by more than 5% in 2020. And this is the sixth straight year of declining O&M costs in our nuclear operations. I'm extremely proud of the effort and the results of our nuclear employees and their leadership in our industry. Beyond our strong financial and operational performance, I'm also very proud of our ESG leadership. In 2020, we estimate that we reduced carbon emissions by about 50% from 2005 levels, and we remain on track to achieve an 80% carbon reduction by 2030. We announced our plans to convert the Harrington coal plant in Texas to natural gas by the end of 2024. Working with our co-owners, we announced the proposed early retirement of the Craig and Hayden coal plants in Colorado. We will address the remaining coal plants in Colorado in our resource plan filing at the end of March. We're also making significant strides to improve ESG compliance, transparency, and disclosure as we issued our TCFD risk assessment, our natural gas report on our plans to reduce greenhouse gases in our LDC, and our green bond impact report. We earned another perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index and remain among the best places to work for LGBTQ equality. All of this adds up to an outstanding ESG record, which is integrated into our strategy and increasingly important to investors. I'm really pleased with our accomplishments and looking forward, I'm excited about the opportunities we have in 2021 and beyond. With that, I'll turn it over to Brian.

Thanks, Ben, and good morning, everyone. We had another strong year, booking $2.79 per share for 2020 compared with $2.64 per share last year. The most significant earnings drivers for the year include the following. Higher electric margins increased earnings by $0.32 per share, primarily driven by riders and rate outcomes. Higher AAPVC increased earnings by $0.08 per share due to large projects under construction, including our wind generation. Lower O&M expenses increased earnings by $0.02 per share, driven by our cost management efforts. And finally, a lower effective tax rate increased earnings by $0.22 per share. As a reminder, production tax credits lower the ETR. However, PQCs are flowed back to customers through lower electric margin are largely earnings neutral. Offsetting these positive drivers were increased depreciation and interest expense, which reduced earnings by $0.36 per share, reflecting our capital investment program. Other taxes, primarily property taxes, reduced earnings by $0.06 per share. And finally, other items combined reduced earnings by $0.07 per share. Turning to sales, as expected, COVID had an adverse impact as weather and leap year adjusted electric sales declined by about 3%. For 2021, we don't anticipate a full shutdown of the economy like we experienced last spring. Instead, we expect a slow recovery of lingering impacts throughout the year. As a result, we anticipate modest weather-adjusted sales growth of approximately 1% off of depressed 2020 sales levels. As a reminder, we have a sales growth mechanism for all electric classes in Minnesota and decoupling for the electric residential and non-demand small C&I classes in Colorado. This covers about 45% of our total retail electric sales. Shifting to expenses, we showed strong cost management by reducing O&M nearly 1% to mitigate the adverse COVID impacts. We expect O&M expenses to be relatively flat in 2021, reflecting incremental costs for our new wind farms offset by a decline in base O&M. Next, let me provide a quick regulatory update. In December, the Minnesota Commission approved our 2021 stale proposal as an alternative to our filed rate case. We view this as a constructive outcome that will allow us to focus on the Minnesota Resource Plan and other policy initiatives in 2021. In January, we filed a New Mexico rate case seeking a rate increase of approximately $88 million or a net rate increase of $48 million after reflecting the fuel savings and PTCs from Sagamore Wind Farm. The net increase is driven by investment, transmission, and distribution due to the significant growth in New Mexico since the last case. The request is based on an ROE of 10.35%, an equity ratio of 54.7%, a retail rate base of $1.9 billion, and a historic test year. It also includes changes in depreciation to reflect the early retirement of our coal plant. The decision and implementation of final rates is anticipated in the fourth quarter of this year. We also plan to file a Texas rate case later in the quarter. Both cases were required as a part of the approval of our wind projects at SPS. In November 2020, we filed a request in North Dakota seeking an electric rate increase of approximately $22 million. This is our first rate case in North Dakota in eight years. The request is based on an ROE of 10.2%, an equity ratio of 52.5%, a rate base of $677 million, and a forecast test year. Interim rates were implemented in January, and the decision is expected later this year. And in February, we will file a transmission expansion plan in Colorado to increase capacity to enable the addition of renewables to the system. We will also file a resource plan in Colorado at the end of March. It will include proposed plans for remaining coal plants in the state, as well as additional renewable resources as we work to reduce carbon emissions at least 80% by 2030. The transmission expansion and resource plan will provide transparency into our long-term opportunities and will likely lead to robust capital investment in the second half of the decade. We expect the decisions on both the transmission expansion and the resource plan by early 2022. As Ben mentioned, the Minnesota Commission approved our wind repowering proposal. As a result, we're moving these wind projects into our base capital forecasts, which now reflects rate-based growth of 6.6%. We also have potential incremental capex of approximately $210 million for the PPA buyout and $550 million for the Sherco Solar Facility. If approved, rate-based growth would be 6.9%. Accordingly, we have updated our capital tables and our financing plans are detailed in our earnings release. We anticipate that the incremental capital, if approved by the Minnesota Commission, would be financed with approximately 50% equity and 50% debt. This incremental equity will allow us to fund accretive capital investments, which will benefit our customers while maintaining our solid credit metrics and favorable access to the capital markets. And with that, I'll wrap up with a quick summary. We continue to provide reliable service to our customers while ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees and communities. We effectively mitigated COVID impacts and delivered earnings within our original guidance range for the 16th consecutive year. We increased our dividend for the 17th consecutive year. We continue to execute on our steel-for-fuel strategy by adding nearly 1,500 megawatts of owned wind in 2020. The Minnesota Commission approved our wind repowering proposal and the acquisition of the Maurer Wind Farm, both of which will provide significant benefits to our customers. The Colorado Commission approved our transportation electrification plan. We enhanced our ESU disclosures and made further progress through this coal exposure in delivering our carbon reduction goals. We resolved multiple regulatory proceedings, We've reaffirmed our 2021 earnings guidance of $2.90 per share to $3 per share. And finally, we remain confident we can deliver long-term earnings and dividend growth within our 5% to 7% objective range. With that, that concludes our remarks, and operator will now take questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure the mute function on your phone is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll take our first question from Jeremy Tonant with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Morning, Jeremy. Just wanted to start off with what you could say about what type of capital opportunities are you seeing associated with the Colorado IRP and I was just wondering if you could frame the magnitude of what incremental spend might look like versus your current plan.

Hey, Jeremy, good morning. So two parts to that is really the Colorado Transmission Expansion Plan. And if you've heard about us talk before about transmission, we see a lot of opportunities there. to really this is needed to enable our energy transition, right? We need to enable several gigawatts of renewables. And if you think about that, it's enabling low cost universal scale solar and wind to bring it to our load centers in Denver. So what you'll see out of that, and now I can't give you specifics in terms of the overall capital investment. We'll file that in the next month or so, but significant investment opportunity on the transmissions Transmission side is really a transmission backbone to deliver that for our customers as part of the ERP. On the Colorado resource plan, I think, you know, more detail to come on that. But look at our Minnesota resource plan as a good proxy. where we have several gigawatts of renewables in our preferred plan through 2030. So it'll look and feel a lot like that. We're looking at what we're doing with our coal plants and adding a lot of renewables to help us achieve that data extent plan. So we're excited about it, excited to provide that transparency into the back half of this decade and more details to come.

That's helpful. Thank you. I was just wondering if you might be able to comment on how the PPA buyout opportunity set has evolved over the past year or so during the pandemic. And do you expect any market changes going forward here?

No, I think, you know, it has evolved a little bit. And you see we just announced one here. Generic will provide more details and officially announce that in the next month or so as we file it. You know, we're excited to continue to execute on it. We delivered the Maurer PPA buyout this year with the commission and this one. I know we continue to have conversations with our counterparties. I think there's another opportunity if you see potential tax credit extensions in Washington that you get some further repowering opportunities. But it's something that we continually look at and work on with our counterparties. There's another good data point to watch is that our IRPs often drive RFPs where we can have PPAs get into us, you know, PPA buyout opportunities. So that's a really good opportunity longer term. So we're excited about it. We've delivered, if you look, we've delivered on our PPA buyout opportunity. We're counting this one that we just announced. It's over $500 million of PPA buyouts, and that's excluding Mankato. So we've delivered Mauer, Long Road, this new one, Kefco, and Nancy from Belmont. So you know, a good long-term opportunity as you continue to look at harvesting.

Yeah, and I think just, you know, whether it's PPAs, whether it's transmission spend, whether it's renewables, you should feel very confident that we've got a long runway of capital investment, and that's what we're really excited about. And, of course, you know, we've been focused on renewables that actually save customers money, too, so that this clean energy transition can be driven by economics, which, of course, then sets up the electrification of other sectors like transport. So I think we've got great organic growth in front of us, Jeremy.

Got it. That's very helpful. Thanks. And one last one, if I could sneak in here. Just wondering, what do you guys see as the risks and opportunities with the potential acceleration of Minnesota's carbon-free electricity goal to 2040 here in And also thinking about on a national level, you know, Biden has set up plans for 2035 there and just wondering if you had any thoughts you could share. Thanks.

Well, I mean, first of all, I'm pretty pleased that, you know, Excel and our whole industry now is really on board, you know, achieving a net zero goal. And, you know, for us, we think we can do zero carbon, not net zero, but zero carbon by 2050. with an important interim goal of 80% by 2030. But, you know, if you heard me talk before, I will tell you that that last 20% is going to take technologies to become commercially viable because, Jeremy, I think it's incredibly important that this transition is based on economics so that you do have the opportunities to electrify other sectors with economics in mind. You get a lot of bipartisan support when economics can drive the decisions. So, Could we go faster than our goal of 2050? Well, it's possible. I mean, but I think that would mean that those technologies that we refer to, whether it's the next generation nuclear, whether it's the development of hydrogen, whether it's carbon capture working economically, whether it's, you know, long-term storage, they have to come into the mind much sooner than I think they will. But you've heard me say before, I never bet against technology. So more to come on that.

Got it. Appreciate the thoughts there. That's it for me. Thanks.

We'll take our next question from Julian Julian Smith with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning team. Thanks for the time. So just wanted to follow up on Colorado and latest thought process on timing for a rate case there.

In conjunction with the question, I'm just curious about the shift in your 21 guide on O&M.

Is that driven in part by a thought process on Colorado rate case timing? Or I also noticed that there's a little bit of a shift in the rider revenues there as well. So if you could speak to the 21 shift on O&M as well as the latest on Colorado and timing there as well, if you don't mind. Hey, Julian, it's Bob. Good morning, and thanks for the question. With regard to the case, I'll cover that, and I'll turn it back over to Brian to talk a little bit about your question on the O&M. So in Colorado, obviously, we've been talking about a case there. We filed two riders in the summer of last year. Obviously, we watched what happened with the Aegis rider. We're still prosecuting the Wildfire rider. But there's a number of other factors that go into evaluation of our case in Colorado, and we're continuing to watch those. Obviously, the pace of economic recovery in Colorado is very important. We're seeing very strong growth there. But as Brian indicated, our sales forecast still expects a slow recovery with some lingering impacts. So sales is a key driver, and obviously our efforts around O&M and efficiency that we can gain in that business will probably dictate when and how we file a case in Colorado. You know, it's likely a second-half outcome at the earliest, and it's largely associated with capital investment in the distribution business and in enabling technologies for us to continue to deliver a great customer experience out there. So more to come from us, but it's probably at least a second half decision for us. And good morning, Julian. On your O&M question, first just want to say really proud of the employees and the work that was done in 2020. Just a great effort in terms of the mitigation work that everyone did in this company. About 2021, it's a combination of things. One is we're continuing to drive sustainable cost transformation. And two, our 2020 actuals came in a little bit higher than we thought in Q3 due to a couple of discrete items. But expect us to continue to drive O&M transformation. Now, what you don't see in our flat guidance is we're adding about $50 million of wind O&M in 2021. So we're offsetting that to keep our overall O&M flat with our cost transformation efforts. So excited about what we accomplished in 2020 and what we exactly accomplished in 2021 and beyond. Excellent. Thanks, Dean. Hey, Bob, coming back to you real quickly if I can. In terms of when you said that there are, to quote you, a number of other factors here that go into it, I think if I'm hearing you right, perhaps the most decisive one is obviously the sales and economic growth.

Are there other material drivers that will come into it?

It sounds like you're just waiting to see the trajectory of this post-COVID year on sales, but I don't want to sort of mischaracterize that. You know, we still have our wildfire rider proposal in front of the ALJ right now. We went through hearings a week or two ago and felt like we made a really good showing there. I mean, this is a significant investment to mitigate a big state policy desire in terms of mitigating wildfires. So we'd asked for a rider. The interveners came back proposing deferrals, and we're differing on deferrals. you know, links and return profiles of those. So obviously arguing a decent outcome in the wildfire rider is one of the factors that would go into our decision making, but certainly not exclusive.

Julian, probably the thought that it's sales, it's O&M, and then it would be regulatory decisions. All of that would factor into a kind of reveal and determine whether or not we need to file or not. Right. Yeah, understood.

If you got the deferral, would that be adequate? It sounds like there's more than just a binary decision on the wildfire here.

I think you'd have to just look at how, you know, the devil's always in the details on those things. So that, along with the other drivers that I mentioned, sales and L&M, would be all the factors that we look at.

Totally appreciate it.

All right, guys.

Thank you very much. All the best.

Speak to you soon.

Thanks.

See you later.

We'll take our next question from N2 Kim with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you. Good morning.

Brian, on the Pfizer campus plan, can you just, I guess, go through which of the items are in the base plan versus the incremental?

I know the, you know, the proposed retiring and the one PPA buyout is with the incremental, not in the base, but are Investments in the Harrington coal plant conversion and, you know, the investments with our wildfire protection, all of those, is that embedded in the base plan or is that the incremental?

Yeah, no, those are the ones that you mentioned are basically in the base plan. It's a relatively small investment in the Harrington and the conversion of Harrington from coal to natural gas. we have our wildfire investments in our base plan. You're right, you know, clearly that we have the solar opportunity and the PPA cloud opportunity in the incremental plan and expect to get visibility into those by the end of this year so we can, you know, provide color and hopefully have a rate-based growth trajectory of nearly 7% if we execute on those.

Got it. And then just going back to Jeremy's question on, you know, President Biden's plans to, you know, achieve the carbon-based pollution-free power sector in the U.S. by 2035? And setting aside for a moment the probability of passing your federal or state policies such as that, do you think when you look at your fleet, the undepreciated value of your remaining coal plants or other fossil fuel units How do you see that?

Do you see that as potentially achievable given, you know, the current regulatory and, you know, price framework for renewables? Or what items do you think you would need on both ends to achieve that?

Well, you know, the accelerated depreciation is certainly a factor. But as I said with the prior question, it's far more a question of are the technologies ready and economically viable. Because, you know, getting to 80% is not easy, but we know we can do it with existing technology, and I know I can do it in a way that preserves affordability and reliability. But, you know, just to move completely away from fossil would require – an incredible emergence and acceleration of technologies that I think are still a ways away. So, you know, I mean, again, it's technology can emerge, but, you know, 2035 is like tomorrow in utility land as far as technologies go. So, you know, I think there's going to be, I mean, I think there's going to be an element of pragmatism that gets taken into those goals. And I've always said, you know, we'll move as fast as the speed of technology and that's what we'll do. But honestly, I think it's a very much of a stretch goal based upon the way I see the horizon in front of us. So that said, I mean, that said, I mean, but there's a lot of good things that come with that goal. We support 100% carbon free. So we're aligned with that. I think Under the Biden administration, you'll see an acceleration of EVs and an acceleration of transmission build. I think you'll see an acceleration of the R&D and the technologies that we need to achieve those goals, whether it's 2035, 2040, or 2050. And I think that is the key to me. And if we can all pull together on that and develop the right frameworks, invest in R&D, have the right tax policies, I think we're going to do amazing things. And You know, nobody would have thought that we'd be where we are today as an industry and certainly not at Xcel Energy just five years ago. So I'm excited about what the future possibilities hold.

Got it. Thank you so much for the call.

Got it. We'll take our next question from Stephen Baird with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Hope you all are doing well.

I hope you are.

Great. Just following up on, you can sense a theme in the questions here on federal policy, but I wanted to maybe get a little more specific. You know, we may see further legislation that would both extend tax credits for wind and solar, potentially create a new tax credit for storage. And I'm just curious, if you saw that kind of, let's say that there is a longer-term extension, could that be material enough for you all to want to both kind of re-look at your Minnesota resource plans could that have a pretty big impact on how you think about your resource mix in Colorado? Like, how impactful could, you know, longer-term extensions for women's solar and kind of a new tax credit for storage be as you think about your resource mix in the future?

Well, first of all, I think overall it would be a positive. So, and, you know, and I think, you know, there's also discussion about, you know, tax credits for women. nuclear as well, which I am fully supportive of, and transmission, all of those things are going to enable us to go, I think, even faster because of the affordability equation to it. Obviously, at some point, you do saturate the big grid with renewables, regardless of cost. But if renewables continue to fall in price, even what that would allow you to do is put more renewables on your system, even if you have an increase in curtailments. because the economics would pencil out better. So that's probably a long-winded answer to your question, but hopefully that gives you some insights to it.

And, Stephen, I'll just add that, you know, depending on how – see more repowering opportunities come up as the wind farms exit their original 10-year PPC life. And so that's what you saw with the couple of wind farms that we got approved just recently in Minnesota Commission. So I think that could present itself some more opportunity to see a longer-term extension.

That's a good point. Maybe just following up a little bit on this. So let's dream here and let's say that there is going to be a longer-term extension of these tax credits and new storage tax credits. maybe transmission, nuclear, is that enough to sort of trigger a kind of a formal review on your part in terms of the mix that you've sort of established, or is it less formal and it was just you continue to evolve your thinking over time, but it wouldn't necessarily sort of trigger a reassessment of your broader plans?

Well, I mean, I think it would – I think it just puts – our IRP processes and our proposals that much more deeply in the money for our customers. And it makes the economics that much more compelling. Again, I think we can do more, accelerate some of the renewables that we put into our system within operational limitations. But, boy, Stephen, I mean, if you've got – if our electricity, because of those things, becomes even more affordable, think about the opportunities to accelerate EVs. and electrification of other sectors. I mean, that would be a tremendous benefit.

That's a fair point. Maybe just on EV's last question for me, I promise, just if we could.

Even if you can't hear yet. No, I don't think he heard. He's still there, I think. Even did you go on mute by accident? That's one of the most popular terms in 2020, by the way. The other one is, could you go on mute? And the other one is, I forgot my mask.

We'll go to the next question. Okay. We'll take our next question from Sophie Karp with KeyBank. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Hope you can hear me. Hey, Sophie.

Hey, Sophie.

Thank you. Well, congrats on a good year in this challenging environment, for sure. Maybe to continue with the EU topics, right, what are the opportunities in the EU advancements, I guess, for you, aside from participating in the charging infrastructure? Have you done some modeling maybe along the lines of if, you know, a recent operation in households or just certain levels, which may be some upgrades you need to do to the distribution system. Do you know which areas or which states maybe have more need for that? Like how should we think about that? Because that's a really topic that's been on my mind a lot. Thank you.

Hey, Sophie. It's Bob. Maybe I'll start this and then I'll kick it over to Brian potentially. You're a little bit muffled, but I think you're asking about what's the investment opportunity if we have a significant penetration of electric vehicles. I think our forecast right now for the next five years has a half a billion dollars in electric vehicle, and that includes charging stations and the distribution infrastructure, as you mentioned, to enable that. And over the decade, that number is closer to $1.5 to $2 billion. Similarly, that's all encapsulating into the distribution system. I think the one area that we could probably still sharpen our pencil on a little bit is the impacts of fleet and heavy-duty vehicles and how that would impact us. Those are very discreet and high loads in certain feeders on our system. We probably aren't as sophisticated as we'd like to be right now on exactly when and where that would happen, because it's largely in the hands of the owners of those vehicles. So it's possible there's some incremental upside there, you know, our distribution feeders are, I wouldn't say wildly underutilized at this point. And so potential capital expansion opportunities on fleet and heavy-duty vehicles is probably where any of the upside might come.

I think, too, Sophie, there's a virtuous circle here. The more EV penetration we get, particularly if we encourage customers to charge off-peak, the more all customers benefit. And so that tends to give us, you know, that tailwind to keeping our product affordable, which makes more electrification, more EV, everything else more possible. So it's that element of it is uber exciting. You look way down the road and, you know, there's a lot of folks that think, you know, EV penetrations could be an extension of the grid, if you will, and the use of those batteries. And I was kind of encouraged by the CEO of Ford when he spoke to us at an industry event that, You know, he saw that future, too, because in the past I've been told that the car manufacturers were a little worried about using batteries in that matter. Now, we're a ways away from that. But, I mean, when you look down the road, you can certainly see a future that incorporates EVs into the grid.

Got it, guys. This is very helpful. Thank you. And then just on the power supply side, as the renewable targeting goals become more aggressive and possibly we will see more build-out, like you mentioned, we will have additional ITC or other fiscal incentives. Is there a scenario where maybe you see, you know, kind of throwing in there potential coal retirements in Colorado, is there a scenario where in some of the jurisdictions, Colorado specifically or maybe Minnesota, you would see a shortage of base load power or like some dispatchable capacity, if you will, like what they see maybe in some other regions in that area right now? Or do you feel like you have adequate supplies to tie you over to the point where you can have dispatchable renewable resource?

I mean, Sophie, let me just make sure I heard your question because it is a little bit muffled. Did you ask if Do you see a situation where because of EV penetration and other things that we might have a shortage of potential generation, actual generation? Is that your question?

Yeah, not as much because of EVs, but due to higher maybe wind penetration and coal requirements in the region.

Well, I mean, that's what the IRP processes are all about. I mean, we do take a long-term view. That's why I do think the vertically integrated regulated model really works because we can plan for those kinds of contingencies and make sure that we do have adequate reserves and adequate backup. You know, the point that we have to get across is to hit important interim goals. We do need in the upper Midwest to preserve our nuclear fleet. That's going very well, by the way. And we're going to need a little more gas backup, not necessarily using more gas, but having it ready when some of the renewable resources might not be there. All in all, it still pencils out to be cost beneficial for our customers. But those are the kinds of things we have to discuss in those resource planning processes so that we have a plan, to your point, that provides the economic benefits, the environmental benefits, and, of course, maintains reliability.

Okay. Thank you so much. I'll jump back into the queue.

Thank you, Sophie.

We will take our final question from Paul Patterson with Glenrock Associates. Please go ahead.

Hey, can you hear me? Hey, Paul, we can hear you loud and clear.

We can always hear you. Okay, awesome. So I wanted to just really quickly, I noticed that microgrids – Yes, you guys have a microgrid project, I think, and you filed for something, I think, in December in Wisconsin. I was just wondering, what are you seeing or are you seeing any trend in that in the other service territories? I mean, I realize it's a pilot, and I think it's only around 170-something million, but I'm just sort of wondering if there's anything more you're seeing on that end in your service territories.

Take it, Bob.

Hey, Paul. It's Bob. Look, we filed for some, we call them community resiliency initiatives in Colorado, and worked those through the process with the commission, and we've now got approval, and we're going to start to build out those initiatives. Haven't seen a lot of pull in microgrids in the rest of the service territories, but obviously something that we're willing to explore with our customers through the process, but it's been pretty quiet other than Colorado.

I think microgrids have a role in utilities' future. They don't come without a price tag. So the resiliency element of it, those become important things. And what we're always willing to do is figure out how we can incorporate that into our total distribution planning process. And I think you'll see more of that in the future. But It is not – it's not without a cost, obviously.

So just to sort of follow up on that, because I guess it varies from territory to territory, I guess within your service territories, I guess the economics just simply aren't there in terms of arbitrage and stuff, in terms of offsetting those costs. Is that how you sort of see it in terms of it being widespread?

Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that they work primarily, again, with extra resiliency and extra reliability is in order.

Right.

Okay. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Paul. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's question and answer session. For closing remarks, I'd like to turn the conference over to Brian Van Abel.

Yeah, thank you all for participating in our earnings call this morning. For any questions, just please contact our investor relations team and have a great day. Thank you all.

Ladies and gentlemen this concludes today's conference. We appreciate your participation. You may now disconnect.