You cannot drive through Colorado Springs without catching a glimpse of the Martin Drake Power Plant. It’s been part of our downtown skyline since 1925: a true landmark of our community.
Electric service to Colorado Springs began on Oct. 9, 1925, in a brand new power plant on South Conejos Street through two, 2,500 Kilowatt generating units. Coal was delivered by the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway in cars from railroad companies such as the Colorado Springs and Interurban Railway.
August 2021 will become known as the end of an era for the Drake Power Plant. On Aug. 5, we received our last coal train delivery, and this Friday (Aug. 27) will be the last day we burn coal at Drake.
To put these milestones into historical context, Aug. 27 will be the last day in nearly a century that coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming will make its way up the conveyor belts, be pulverized and then burned in the furnaces to make electricity to heat and cool our homes and businesses. And while we will no longer be burning coal at Drake past Friday, we will continue to operate the plant on natural gas through 2022.
This is truly an exciting time for our community; there is so much urban growth and renewal happening in the downtown area. Earlier this year Colorado Springs was named the number two most desirable place to live in the country. The housing market is booming. New businesses pop up just about every day. The time for our new energy future begins now. The end of coal at Drake is just a stepping stone to get us where we need to be.(1)
While most in the community will be lauding this major milestone event, let us not forget the hundreds of employees - past and present - who have dedicated themselves to this plant for decades.
Many of our employees have a deep emotional attachment to a place where they’ve spent thousands of hours of their lives. Most Drake employees consider their co-workers as family members, not just colleagues. They celebrate birthdays together, go to each other’s weddings and spend holidays together.
I spoke with an employee who recently transitioned from his job as a Coal Systems Specialist at Drake to a Trades Specialist. He spent nine years at Drake and is now learning a whole new trade as a welder and machinist.
Drake wasn’t just a job for him, it was ingrained in his whole being. His dad also worked for Colorado Springs Utilities as a mechanic. In fact, both father and son worked with some of the same people. From as early on as he could remember, he saw the life a job with Colorado Springs Utilities was able to provide for him and his sisters and he knew it was a good place to work.
He said he enjoyed running the plant equipment at Drake and driving the locomotives full of coal. He was considered an “essential” employee: he literally helped produce the power that the city used daily.
As we honor and celebrate this momentous occasion for Colorado Springs and the great service Drake has provided us, let’s also keep in mind that change can be hard. As the brilliant inventor Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said, ‘Don’t change anything.’”
(1) Though some may argue the cost of renewables will trigger higher rates, the data does not support that. A recent Levelized Cost of Energy analysis shows U.S. renewable energy prices continued falling fast in 2019, with wind and solar hitting new lows, after renewables fell below the cost of coal in 2018.