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Colorado is wildfire country.

When this article was first drafted, six major fires were burning across the state, together scorching more than 129,000 acres. Now, a week or so later, the season’s major fires have now burned well over 200,000 acres combined. The largest, the Aspen Acres Fire southwest of Pueblo, has torn through more than 101,000 acres on its own — making it the seventh-largest wildfire in Colorado history — and has damaged or destroyed more than 850 structures. Fires this season have forced evacuations in communities from the Front Range to the Western Slope. For many Coloradans, the question is not whether a wildfire will affect them, but whether they will be ready.

When fire risk climbs, utility companies may temporarily shut off power to high-risk areas in a practice called a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS). This means that residents who are already weighing whether to evacuate or wait out the danger often make that decision in the dark. It is an exhausting and frightening position to be in.

Add a ventilator, a CPAP, power wheelchair, a communication device, or dialysis equipment to that picture, and an already worrying situation becomes an urgent medical emergency.

Research suggests that roughly 1% of Americans use electricity-dependent medical equipment like oxygen concentrators and medication refrigerators. Xcel Energy serves 1.6 million customers in Colorado, making it the state's largest utility company by far. Statistically, tens of thousands of Xcel customers could find themselves in a position where their life-sustaining device stops working the moment the power does.

With all of this in mind, Xcel has developed a program built on a central idea: a home battery can buy time. Time to charge devices, make a plan, and get to safety.

What the PSPS Backup Battery Rebate Program Offers

Xcel Energy will rebate up to $10,000 toward the cost of a Battery Energy Storage System for eligible residential customers. That's a significant offset against the cost of a whole-home battery system, which can otherwise run well out of reach for many families.

Phase 1 of the program — available now — covers whole-home connected battery systems. By August 2026, the program will expand to include portable backup batteries as well.

Who Qualifies

This rebate program is specifically designed for Colorado Xcel Energy residential customers who are enrolled in Xcel's medical certification program and live in Tier 2 or Tier 3 wildfire risk zones.

Why This Matters for the Disability Community

Emergency preparedness for people with disabilities has historically been an afterthought in public planning. The 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California is just one tragic example. Of the 85 people who died in what became the deadliest wildfire in California history, the vast majority were elderly or disabled — people who couldn't evacuate quickly enough, whose medical equipment kept them tethered to a power source, or who weren't reached by the emergency alert system in time. Butte County social services spent that morning working down a list of 1,500 people enrolled in in-home support services. Cal Fire called it "catch as catch can." A headline following the tragedy asked the question disability advocates have been trying to answer ever since: Could They Have Been Saved?

Initiatives like the battery rebate program reflect a meaningful shift in how utility companies are thinking about their role. Planned power shutoffs are a necessary safety measure, but they create real hardship for people who depend on electricity to manage serious health conditions. Colorado's fire seasons have grown longer and more severe, and the systems and social contracts we built weren't designed with that reality in mind. The fact that Xcel is moving to address that gap by putting resources behind the people most affected by outage events signals a shift in what utilities can and should offer the communities they serve.

At the Center for Innovative Design and Engineering (CIDE) at the University of Colorado, Denver | Anschutz, researchers have spent years working on this exact problem. The Surviving in Place program distributed over 1,700 batteries across the state and helped thousands of people with disabilities plan for power outages and emergencies nationwide. The Xcel PSPS battery rebate program extends that work by putting financial support behind what we've long known to be true: backup power is not optional for many people with disabilities.

How to Apply

If you work in disability services, home health, or assistive technology, please share this program with your clients and communities. We want to make sure as many people who could benefit from this know about it.