Bad Xcel Communications Again May 6-7

On April 10^th, we responded to the PUC concerning the perhaps well-intentioned but disastrous implementation by Xcel of a deliberate electricity outage that affected us and tens of thousands of others in the metro Denver area. We now wish to report horribly incompetent messaging by Xcel during the 5/06 – 5/07 Xcel outage in the foothills region of Boulder County.

We presume that the outage this time was not done purposefully by Xcel but was due to something resulting from another high-wind event, but Xcel won’t say. Possibly it was another intentional shut-down. But Xcel’s messaging was even worse this time, at least as we experienced it. We unexpectedly lost power about 5:55 pm, May 6^th. During the next hour-and-a-half, I received 3 emails from Xcel, but could read only the first one since I access my email from a laptop in my home and tried to save the modest remaining battery power. However my wife received messages during the early evening (phone, text, or email) suggesting power would be restored by 10:15 a.m. the next morning. Looking at Xcel’s outage map on our smartphone was confusing. The closest “dot” to our home was 8 miles away in Boulder Canyon, showing about 1,600 customers; perhaps that included us.

Then we heard nothing more from Xcel later in the evening, overnight, or the following morning. As our home temperature dropped to about 50 deg. and a snowstorm started (we live at 8,200 ft. elevation), we decided to get warm in our car and drive down to Boulder (40 min. drive) to have breakfast and do some errands. By 1 p.m., we had heard nothing more from Xcel. We tried to phone to their -4999 number. There was an option to get info on the outage in “Colorado”. It reported that “some customers” in the Boulder area would not have electricity restored until 10 p.m. that night. But there was no way to tell whether we (or our neighborhood) was part of the “some”. We could see that there was a major snowstorm happening in the direction of our neighborhood. We now had groceries in the car, but considered whether we should check into a hotel for the night, as we had to do a month ago during the disastrous outage.

So we called again and had to go through an almost endless tree of options before we could get to talk with an Xcel agent. An automated voice told us that our wait time would be “longer than 10 minutes.” We listened to muzak for about 8 minutes and then were disconnected. We called again. During our >10 min. wait, we got online to the outage map. It was totally changed. There was a new “dot” practically on top of our property, with the one 8 miles away gone. It reported 666 customers without power and “no estimate of restoration time.” When an agent finally answered, she reported that our power had been restored. When we asked about the 666 customers around our location with no known restoration estimate, she replied that the outage map was probably “not yet updated.” She could not find info on when our power had been restored (it later turned out that our power had been restored at 10 a.m., three hours earlier). What was wrong with the outage map???

Anyway, we asked her why we had received no notices since early the previous evening. She checked and said that we were indeed signed up for telephone notices. She then reported that neither of our email addresses were listed, but some third address. (Our email addresses have not changed for two decades and we have received Xcel notifications throughout that time.) She then said she had “updated” our email addresses. What the hell???

When we got back home through the snow, our power was indeed back on. But our internet was out. Hours later it came back on for a while and I discovered that I had been sent an email from Xcel around 10 a.m. on the 7th saying power was restored. But I discovered a later email, sent around 1 pm, with wording identical to one the previous evening, saying that there was an electrical outage in our area and that Xcel would keep us informed and when a restoration time could be estimated. What was this about??? There has been no subsequent notification from Xcel as of mid-morning on May 8^th, only a questionnaire. Our internet is out again, almost certainly a lingering after-effect of the outage.

In summary, as we reported last month, Xcel’s outage maps use technology that is *50 years obsolete* and are useless for identifying affected neighborhoods (or elderly neighbors who might need assistance), the generic messages provided on the phone and the website are useless and often inaccurate, and something is clearly messed up on Xcel’s understanding of their customers’ addresses/numbers for phone, email, or text messages.

Clark R. Chapman and Y (lmc) Chapman

2083 Lazy Z Rd., Nederland CO

cchapman@boulder.swri.edu, 303-642-1913