I'm a utility consultant and an Xcel customer: The PUC needs a new approach

As a utility consultant who has been in the industry for a couple decades, I'm very familiar with the Power Safety Shutoffs implemented by PG&E in California and I'm well aware of utility caused wildfires and methods to prevent them. Those wildfire risks are real and a planned outage is worth preventing a wildfire that can cost people their lives and cost billions of dollars in damage. That said, utilities do not calculate the losses to their customers when they turn off the power. Xcel loses very little money when they turn off the power. But cumulatively, residential, commercial, and industrial customers can lose many millions of dollars for each outage. Xcel has no incentive to mitigate or compensate customers for their losses. If Xcel plans to continue using preventive outages, the PUC needs to ensure Xcel provides rebates or other incentives for customers to install back-up power supplies that equal the costs Xcel is imposing on their customers.

The Colorado PUC also needs to institute new guidelines for overhead distribution power lines. There have been several studies, including some I've written (e.g., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040619018303634#!), showing that it is more economical to place distribution lines underground in high wildfire risk areas to avoid damage and outages from wind, rain, ice, lightning, and other weather related events. If the PUC required electric utilities to place distribution power lines underground in these high risk areas, far fewer people would be affected by preventative outages and they would have much higher reliability as well. In many cases, this would reduce long-term costs for the utilities and they can pass that savings on to customers through lower rates.

It would be shortsighted of the PUC to only address how and when Xcel or other utilities notify their customers before a preventive outage. The PUC exists to protect customers and to be their advocate. Yes, Xcel could have done a better job notifying customers. But, preventive outages are band-aid solutions and should not be considered a long-term solution to the wildfire problem. Customers should not have to deal with low reliability in an age when electricity and internet are required for work and daily life. We need long-term solutions that eliminate the need for preventive outages.

Ephram Glass

Utility Consultant and resident of Roxborough Village