Commissioners at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission technical conference pressed Public Service Company on specific gas bids, interconnection assumptions and storage valuation after the utility presented a recommended set of winning and backup bidders.

On gas bids, Commissioner Reagan Gilman cited figures in Appendix A showing the current median gas-bid price around $35.08 per kilowatt-month compared with about $10.65 in the earlier ERP/CEP rounds, and asked whether the company had engaged with bidders about redlined PPA language. John Landrum and the company's due-diligence witnesses said that the company did reach out on material contract redlines in some cases but did not have time for an extensive cure process for every bidder. Landrum explained that many of the higher-priced gas bids were "nonspecific" or immature offers (no turbine selected, limited engineering data), and that the higher market prices reflect a combination of supply-chain inflation and global demand for combustion turbines.

Commissioners asked how Public Service estimated interconnection and network-upgrade costs when bidders left those items blank. Anthony D'Agostino said the company added indicative network-upgrade allowances as a stress test: "We did include a cost for network upgrades... they did not give us, actual cost interconnect." He described deriving an indicative figure from the company's DC power-flow and transmission-team benchmarking work and warned such figures are preliminary until full interconnection studies are complete.

On storage, company witnesses described how the accredited capacity (ELCC) of four-hour batteries drops as cumulative procurement rises. Landrum reiterated that the company used accredited capacity rather than nameplate to normalize storage comparisons: that is a spreadsheet-level correction applied to make different-duration hybrids comparable.

Commissioners and intervenors also explored procedural options to preserve tax-credit value (for example, $3 million option payments per project or an INP-like shortlisting mechanism). Public Service said some developers already hold safe-harbored equipment, and that option payments might not be sufficient to cause developers to place very large equipment orders without additional assurances, but the company agreed to consider designs and discuss possible contractual protections with the commission.

Public Service said it will provide more detailed materials in the confidential follow-up session — including capacity-factor tables and further transmission-team work — and will bring finance and transmission experts back for deeper questioning. No final approvals were made at the conference; commissioners left the record open for further technical and confidential review.