BobFrenzel: Hi, Julien. I’ll agree with everything Brian said and add, if you look at the long arc of history and look-forward over the last 10 years and into the next 10 years. I think that comment around bills at or below the inflation level is consistent on the electric and gas side, this has been a tough year on the gas side, we’re empathetic and we’ve worked hard with the federal government to enable significant amount of — record amounts of why heap and then actively getting that into people’s hands that needed the most. Longer-term, clean-energy transition, I think we can do this as we said, because we are strategically advantage in our position, we can do this very cost-effectively across the country and we have a good starting point in total bills and what our customers feel 20% below the national average or more in our residential electric areas.
And our gas business, I think you highlighted this in one of your reports is one of the top two or three lowest gas businesses in the country. So good starting point, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do and obviously we’re always empathetic to our customers who are feeling bill increases at the grocery store, at the fuel pump, at rents and mortgage payments and everything else. So, but thanks for the opportunity to talk about it.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Yes, absolutely. You bet, hi listen, just going back to one of the questions from earlier. On the settlement conversations versus fully litigated cases obviously with curve backdrop is an ideal for having rate increases altogether. Can you talk a little bit about expectations we will settle cases broadly speaking here, to what extent could Minnesota be an isolated data point in the current instance given the current fact pattern or are you seeing challenges more broadly, here again without pointing fingers at specific statements necessarily?
BobFrenzel: Well, I’ll start Julien and Brian can add-on if he’s got anything to add. I think generally, we look for settlements. I think we’re encouraged to look for settlements. I even think as you look at some of the recent data points in Minnesota, the commission is looking for settlement. So with that as backdrop, maybe this case is isolated, maybe we saw the path to reach a settlement with the parties and I think we’re being encouraged to do so. I think broadly speaking, that’s the case for most of our jurisdictions, and most of our staff, we need to make sure that we are delivering for our customers operationally, we’re delivering for our customers and reliability, but we also need to make sure that we keep a financially healthy utility, credit metrics are really important preserving credit metrics and our operating companies is critical as we seek to raise capital cost advantageously and to deliver on the capital investment profile that we know we need to do.
So, I think there is where the debate happens and again I think we’ve got a long track record of settling and so I would take your comment as encouraging to think that we’re going to continue to settle cases going-forward.
Operator: Thank you very much, sir. We’ll now take questions from Travis Miller calling from Morningstar. Please go ahead, sir.
Travis Miller: Obviously you had a good year with the C&I demand, wondering what’s your outlook in that 1% total sales for C&I we see another big year or does that moderate a bit?
Brian Van Abel: Hi, Travis. Yes, I can take that one. No, I think we continue to see similar to what we saw in 2022 where strong growth in the C&I, if I parse it out, we have — what we’re expecting is about 2% up in C&I for 2023 and about a 1% decline in residential rate, continued decline from the COVID levels that we saw the increase in residential. C&I particularly good growth in SPS and I think just under the 2022 sales, when you look at the C&I numbers, you see that Colorado C&I is negative, but if you actually make an adjustment, we helped a large customer installed 240 megawatts solar farm to ensure that the state in Colorado, ensure those jobs saving in Colorado. And so if you made that adjustment Colorado C&I would actually have been a plus 2% for the year. So strong economic activity in C&I growth across all of our service territories, we expect that albeit a little bit of slowing in 2023 but to remain there.
Travis Miller: Okay, great. And then a follow up to the hydrogen hub discussion, I think if I heard you correctly, April was the next point in which you file some more information, at what point is it there or is it later on where you get start getting a sense for given your proposal of non-approval that a proposal for CapEx potential spending?
Brian Van Abel: Yes, Travis, I think it’s early innings with the departments. April is the next filing date for, I’ll call it, full plans, I think the Department of Energy is looking at probably around two dozen. So it’s going to take them a while to parse through that in award grants for the — I’m going to guess four to six that move forward from that perspective. We think both of our projects are incredibly interesting, provide lots of regional benefits from multiple sources and multiple users, which I think is a criteria that the department is going to look at. But if you’re going to ask me to guess, I’d say it’s at least end of next year before we get any clarity on those April applications potentially longer.
BobFrenzel: Yes, but expect us that’s the hydrogen hub concept, which we’re very interested in and I think we have a great opportunity to be significant participants, but also expect us to move forward with hydrogen pilots and opportunities both on the electric side and the gas side as we think about working through our Clean Heat Plan in Colorado, our Natural Gas Innovation Act in Minnesota and then also on the electric side as we think about how do we decarbonize the last 15% to 20% in our stack.
Travis Miller: Sure, okay. End of next year being 2024?
BobFrenzel: Correct.
