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Update 7/24/2024

As a result of the follow up actions to the initial power shutoff in April, the PUC requested that Xcel submit to the Commission a description of what immediate improvements they will make to customer communication, preparedness and coordination with emergency responders. The PUC has received this information from Xcel which can be found here. We are seeking public input by August 13, 2024. We welcome your feedback.

Summary

Over the weekend of April 6-7, Colorado experienced a weather event that brought wind gusts in excess of 100 mph in some areas of the state and sustained high winds throughout the weekend. The outages and weather impacts were concentrated in the northern front range. Over 150,000 people across 9 counties were without power statewide during the event. 55,000 of these were the result of an intentional, precautionary outage conducted by Xcel to reduce the possibility of wildfire. The remaining outages were either due to damage to lines or use of another preventative measures..

While power outages are a frequent impact of Colorado weather events, the April storm was the first time that Xcel pro-actively deployed preventative safety outages. In addition, a significant portion of the distribution system that would normally be set to attempt to automatically re-energize was not re-powered until visual inspection by utility crews. This precautionary measure meant a longer down period than usual as field crews had to manually inspect lines that had been de-energized. These measures are used in other western states including California and Oregon.

Please share your input and personal experience so the PUC can determine whether new regulatory approaches are necessary for precautionary outages.