Good for Xcel to be pro-active, but it was done incompetently

We live in the wind corridor between Nederland and Marshall, where hurricane-force winds in late December 2021 were ignored by Xcel, contributing to the disastrous fire. So we favor pro-active cutting power to lines in a very serious wind event like April 6-7. But such shut-downs have very serious consequences and Xcel's messaging was poorly done.

We received several phone and email notices Friday evening and Saturday morning that there might be a shutdown beginning about 3 pm Saturday. We had not finished preparing for the possible shutdown when we lost electricity at 2:15 pm, 45 minutes early. We never received a notice that there definitely would be a shutdown, and an accurate time, when Xcel clearly knew that they were doing it and when. And they didn't show our neighborhood on their outage map within the first 30 minutes after shutdown (while we still had internet connection via a UPS).

The outage map is incompetent and unhelpful. People need to know if a vulnerable neighbor is affected or not, whether a gas station is probably operating or not, if a hotel one is thinking of evacuating to is likely operating, etc. Our neighborhood was probably included in one of two dots (each with thousands of customers) located nearly 10 miles away from us. That is ridiculous in the 21st century. Xcel knows their customers addresses and should show outage boundaries to at least 1000 ft. accuracy.

People in the flatlands (e.g. reporters on Channels 7 and 9) didn't realize how serious the outage was for foothills residents. Our temperature outside dropped to the lower teens Saturday night, resulting in 40s in our house. My wife's oxygen machine wouldn't work. Our well pump wouldn't work so we had no running water and toilets wouldn't flush. We evacuated to a hotel in Longmont on Sunday. Most traffic lights in Boulder and toward Niwot were out.

Messaging about when electricity would be restored was inadequate. Emails from our neighbors suggested that Sunday evening messaging from Xcel was inadequate as the electricity came on for a while, then went out for another hour, and then finally came on...but with no assurance it would stay on.

We hope that Xcel will coordinate with the Weather Bureau and develop appropriate protocols for deciding whether or not to implement pro-active shutdowns, balancing the fire risks from their flimsy infrastructure against the potentially life-threatening consequences of a lengthy shutdown. The PUC should invite the public to participate in drafting such protocols.