Last week, after Boulder voters approved two measures that could lead to municipalization of the utility, which will be the creation of a municipally owned electric utility, the relationship between utility service provider Xcel Energy and one of the USA’s greenest cities, Boulder, has come under fire.

Followed by a series of incidents over the past year, the city has launched a ballot initiative to check the possibilities of developing municipal utility and severing ties with Xcel Energy, a company that invested nearly $100 million to turn the city of Boulder into one of the USA’s smartest cities.

In summer 2010, Boulder's city council voted against renewing a 20-year franchise agreement with Xcel Energy. In August 2010, the CEO of Xcel, David Eves said that the Boulder-based smart grid experiment, SmartGridCity, would not be continued or expanded.

Xcel invested nearly $45 million in SmartGridCity project –  an amount roughly triple the project's estimated cost at its outset. Xcel attempted to work with the Colorado Public Utility Commission on a proposed rate increase to recover these cost, but the city of Boulder withdrew its initial support for this bid

According to a press release, both ballot initiatives passed rather closely. Boulder Question 2C passed with about 51 percent of the vote. The companion measure, Issue 2B, passed with a margin of about 141 votes.

“This is the first time a city has said ‘we reject what the utility is offering. It’s significant nationally because it sets a precedent,” former mayor and renewable energy advocate Shaun McGrath noted in a statement. McGrath campaigned for the change as a member of the Boulder Clean Energy (News - Alert) Business Coalition.

The city has carbon reduction goals that far exceed the 30 percent renewable energy portfolio standard the state requires Xcel to meet by 2020. And Xcel is not showing any significant progress to suggest that it will be able to help the city meet those goals. So according to the campaigners, a municipality owned utility would be better option for the city of boulder.

On the other hand, Boulder's city manager, Jane Brautigam maintained that the vote does not automatically mean municipalization and added that a final decision is still as far off as a half decade into the future.

“We remain skeptical that Boulder will be able to meet the terms of the initiative and match our rates, let alone match the level of renewables we provide,” Xcel stated in a press release.

Xcel spent about $1 million in a campaign against the ballot measures, saying that the company does not wish to liquidate the assets it has constructed in Boulder.

Both the parties now plan to take their cases before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to find out a solution to the dispute. Boulder and Xcel have already submitted their findings to FERC, according to reports.

Few months back, Xcel Energy launched its first-ever iPhone application called “Bulb Blasters,” a game with a mission to conquer energy inefficiency. According to an earlier release, players fire a compact fluorescent light bulb cannon to blast energy-sucking incandescent light bulbs out of the sky.

As players progress to more difficult levels, they receive an efficiency message about saving energy, money and the universe. They can also post their scores and challenge friends.