When does a price cut look like a price increase? When it's on an Xcel Energy bill.

Xcel has sent letters to 20,376 Minnesota customers who signed up for its Windsource program, trying to explain changes in bills that went out in February and this month that have provoked confusion and anger.

"It seems like people have been asking a lot of simple questions and not really getting any satisfactory answers," said Elizabeth Dickenson, a St. Paul resident and Windsource participant for more than two years. . . .

. . . . The changes may amount to only pennies, but some neighborhood groups that have promoted the Windsource program say they've had to make an outsized investment of time simply to figure out whether the cost of participating in the wind plan is going up or down.

"It seems like a poor business practice on the part of Xcel," said Justin Eibenholzl, environmental coordinator for the Southeast Como Improvement Association. "They didn't have answers to our questions at the outset."