Recent mandatory power outage

As a result of the Marshall fire, Xcel and their insurance companies, accountants and attorneys decided to implement their "safety" mandatory power outage for the first time here in Colorado, which is one of the eight states that they service.

I've lived in Roxborough Village for 22 years. It's extremely windy here several times per month. I've replaced two storm doors in five years from them being torn almost off their hinges. When the wind gusts get really bad, I can feel my house shaking when I'm on the 2nd floor. That was not the case for this last wind event, and my house wasn't shaking.

CORE Electric Cooperative (formally known as IREA) provides electrical utilities service for a few dozen homes on the West side of my subdivision and other parts of Roxborough Park. During this past weekend's wind event, their power was not turned off, and they had electrical service the whole time.

So if CORE's power line infrastructure remained intact through this windstorm, why did Xcel assume that theirs would not?

I lost food and was very uncomfortable and but off from Internet and news sources in the cold and dark during the 26.5 hour outage, and a couple of my neighbors had to get hotels for medical reasons involving either supplemental oxygen systems or CPAP machines.

If Xcel Energy isn't confident in the abilities of their power line infrastructure down here, why don't they update it and improve it? It's ridiculous that many of us are considering spending thousands of dollars on generator backup systems to keep from being deprived of power on the what seems to be capricious whims of Xcel Energy?

Maybe we should petition for the power grid energy here to be supplied by CORE instead of Xcel's lines and equipment if they aren't up to the task?

What decides a severe wind event on Xcel's part - the National Weather Service - like last weekend? The NWS doesn't post weather warnings or advisories for the majority of our common localized high wind gust events. What if one of Xcel's lines goes down during one of these common high wind events? Couldn't that also easily start a wind-driven wildfire event that they didn't foresee?

My opinion is to either improve their infrastructure or let us choose an alternate electrical service provider or change their mandatory "safety" outage protocols.

Sincerely,

Norm Acker

Longtime Roxborough Village homeowner resident