Why Your Colorado Springs Utility Bill Went Up: A Plain Language Guide

If your August utility bill made you do a double take, you are not alone, and you are not imagining it. This is a plain language walkthrough of what changed, what has been changing for years, and why. No spin, just the numbers and the reasons behind them.

What just happened to your bill

Two things hit Colorado Springs bills in 2026, and they stack.

1. Base rates went up. Colorado Springs Utilities raised electric base rates 6.5% this year. Across all four services (electric, gas, water, wastewater), Utilities estimates the typical residential bill rose about $14.87 per month in 2026. This was not a one-time decision. It is part of a five-year rate plan covering 2025 through 2029 that was approved in advance, which means further increases are already scheduled for each of the next three years.

2. Summer pricing changed shape. Starting June 1, Colorado Springs Utilities moved summer electricity (June through September) to time-of-use pricing. The price now depends on when you use it:

• On-peak, weekdays 5 to 9 PM: about 29 cents per kilowatt-hour, up from roughly 15 cents under the old flat rate
• All other hours: about 7 cents per kilowatt-hour

That on-peak window is exactly when most households get home, turn down the AC, cook dinner, and run the dryer. If your habits did not change in June, the same behavior that produced last summer's bill now gets billed at nearly double the rate for those four hours each weekday evening. Utilities' own estimate is that the new structure makes summer bills about 10% higher and winter bills about 5% lower than the old flat rate for the average customer. July was the first full month under the new structure, and August bills are arriving now. That is why your feed is full of posts.

There is also a pending proposal that would raise bills for solar customers with net metering by roughly $30 per month, which is generating its own wave of posts.

The longer story: this has been building since 2020

The summer rate change is the headline, but it landed on top of a six-year climb. The federal government tracks average residential energy prices every month. Here is the national arc:

And it is accelerating, not settling down. Electricity is up about 7% in the last year alone; natural gas is up about 10%. For comparison, overall inflation has been running near 3%.

Locally, the government tracked average electricity prices for the Denver metro area (historically the closest yardstick for our region) until May 2024, when the series was discontinued. It showed Colorado prices below the national average and rising more slowly: about 15% from 2020 to mid-2024, versus 29% nationally over the same window. The catch is that the discontinued data ends right before the steepest local changes arrived. The 2025-2029 rate plan and the new summer pricing all came after the official measuring stopped.

Why this is happening

There is no single villain. Four forces are pushing the same direction at once.

1. The fuel itself costs more. Natural gas matters twice in Colorado Springs: it heats most of our homes directly, and it generates a large share of our electricity. When wholesale gas prices climb, both lines of the bill feel it. Residential gas is up about 60% nationally since 2020, and that cost passes through to customers.

2. The local power plant transition. Colorado Springs closed the Martin Drake coal plant downtown in 2022 and plans to retire the Ray Nixon coal plant by 2030, as part of a plan to cut carbon emissions 80% by 2030. Replacing that generation with natural gas units, wind, solar, and storage requires building new capacity while still paying for the system you already have. Whatever you think of the policy, the transition has a construction bill, and ratepayers are paying it.

3. Old infrastructure, new spending. Poles, wires, pipes, substations, and wildfire mitigation all cost more to build and maintain than they did five years ago, for the same reasons everything in construction costs more: labor, steel, copper, and equipment. The five-year rate plan exists largely to fund this kind of work on a predictable schedule.

4. Demand is rising for the first time in decades. Nationally, electricity demand was essentially flat for twenty years. That era ended. Data centers, electrification of heating and vehicles, and population growth in places like the Front Range mean utilities everywhere are building again, and building shows up on bills. Time-of-use pricing is partly a response to this: if the utility can talk everyone out of using power at the same four hours, it can delay building expensive new capacity that would sit idle the other twenty hours a day.

What is already scheduled

The part most people have not internalized: the 2026 increase was year two of a five-year plan. Rate adjustments are already approved in concept for 2027, 2028, and 2029. The exact amounts get finalized year by year, but the direction is set. Budgeting as if this year's bill is the new normal is safer than budgeting as if it is a spike that will pass.

What you can actually do about it

• Move the big loads out of the 5 to 9 PM weekday window. This is the single highest-leverage change under the new structure. Dishwasher after 9, laundry on weekends, pre-cool the house in the afternoon at 7 cents instead of fighting the heat at 5:30 at 29 cents. The off-peak rate is genuinely cheap; the structure rewards anyone willing to shift.
• Treat the thermostat schedule as a money setting, not a comfort setting. A few degrees of pre-cooling before 5 PM changes which rate you buy your comfort at.
• Check the usage view in your Utilities account. The bill now depends on when, not just how much. Seeing your own on-peak share is the fastest way to find your savings.
• If you are considering solar, watch the pending net-metering proposal before running your payback math. The rules that applied to your neighbor's 2022 installation may not be the rules you get.

One note for homeowners and buyers

A fixed-rate mortgage payment never goes up. Nearly everything around it (taxes, insurance, and as this article shows, utilities) does. That gap between the fixed part and the floating part of housing costs is one of the most underrated forces in household budgets right now, and it is worth keeping in mind whether you own or are deciding to buy. We track the full monthly cost of every home on the market, and you can search by total monthly payment here.

Sources: Colorado Springs Utilities published rates, 2025-2029 rate case, and Energy Wise summer rate announcement; US Bureau of Labor Statistics average energy price series via FRED (electricity per kWh and utility gas per therm, US city average; Denver metro series through May 2024). National price figures are US city averages; local rates are set by Colorado Springs Utilities and approved by City Council. Compiled August 2026 by Rob Thompson, Realtor, Iconic Colorado Properties.