Poor communication from Xcel

Although we applaud Xcel for taking preventative measures to prevent downed power lines from sparking wildfires during the recent windstorm, the way in which Xcel handled the shutdown was simply abysmal.

We received a vaguely worded email from Xcel five hours prior to the shutdown. The email stated that "Communities that may be affected by proactive de-energization of lines include areas primarily in Boulder County". At that point in time, Xcel must surely have known which areas would be affected. Xcel should have been able to provide its customers with a detailed map, with boundaries clearly delineated, of the areas that would be shutdown.

We watched a news conference held by an Xcel official at 2:30pm on Saturday (thirty minutes before the shutdowns were to begin). The official said that residences in the affected areas received telephone calls alerting them to the planned outages. We received no such call.

Furthermore, Xcel's text messaging system was a joke. At Xcel's recommendation, we sent text messages to them during the outage to check on the status of the outage. Their response: "We are assessing damage...text STAT for updates". We texted STAT to them, and repeatedly received the same response until the next day when their response was. "There isn't an outage reported for your address" - at which time we were still without power and would be for another 17 hours.

In total, we were without power for 42 hours. Why did it take so long to restore power? Clearly, Xcel's priorities were not with the customers whose power was turned off proactively. Like many of our fellow Xcel customers, the power was out for so long that despite filling our freezer and refrigerator with ice, we had to throw out all the food stored there. It cost us several hundred dollars to replace everything. Will Xcel be reimbursing us for our expense from its record profits?

We implore the PUC to ensure that the next time this happens, Xcel will be much more transparent, communicate on a more accurate and timely basis, and do a better job of setting its priorities.