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Update 7/24/2024
As a result of the follow up actions to the initial power shutoff in April, the PUC requested that Xcel submit to the Commission a description of what immediate improvements they will make to customer communication, preparedness and coordination with emergency responders. The PUC has received this information from Xcel which can be found here. We are seeking public input by August 13, 2024. We welcome your feedback.
Summary
Over the weekend of April 6-7, Colorado experienced a weather event that brought wind gusts in excess of 100 mph in some areas of the state and sustained high winds throughout the weekend. The outages and weather impacts were concentrated in the northern front range. Over 150,000 people across 9 counties were without power statewide during the event. 55,000 of these were the result of an intentional, precautionary outage conducted by Xcel to reduce the possibility of wildfire. The remaining outages were either due to damage to lines or use of another preventative measures..
While power outages are a frequent impact of Colorado weather events, the April storm was the first time that Xcel pro-actively deployed preventative safety outages. In addition, a significant portion of the distribution system that would normally be set to attempt to automatically re-energize was not re-powered until visual inspection by utility crews. This precautionary measure meant a longer down period than usual as field crews had to manually inspect lines that had been de-energized. These measures are used in other western states including California and Oregon.
Please share your input and personal experience so the PUC can determine whether new regulatory approaches are necessary for precautionary outages.
Update 7/24/2024
As a result of the follow up actions to the initial power shutoff in April, the PUC requested that Xcel submit to the Commission a description of what immediate improvements they will make to customer communication, preparedness and coordination with emergency responders. The PUC has received this information from Xcel which can be found here. We are seeking public input by August 13, 2024. We welcome your feedback.
Summary
Over the weekend of April 6-7, Colorado experienced a weather event that brought wind gusts in excess of 100 mph in some areas of the state and sustained high winds throughout the weekend. The outages and weather impacts were concentrated in the northern front range. Over 150,000 people across 9 counties were without power statewide during the event. 55,000 of these were the result of an intentional, precautionary outage conducted by Xcel to reduce the possibility of wildfire. The remaining outages were either due to damage to lines or use of another preventative measures..
While power outages are a frequent impact of Colorado weather events, the April storm was the first time that Xcel pro-actively deployed preventative safety outages. In addition, a significant portion of the distribution system that would normally be set to attempt to automatically re-energize was not re-powered until visual inspection by utility crews. This precautionary measure meant a longer down period than usual as field crews had to manually inspect lines that had been de-energized. These measures are used in other western states including California and Oregon.
Please share your input and personal experience so the PUC can determine whether new regulatory approaches are necessary for precautionary outages.
Share Outage From 4/6, 7:29PM to 4/9, 2:04PM on FacebookShare Outage From 4/6, 7:29PM to 4/9, 2:04PM on TwitterShare Outage From 4/6, 7:29PM to 4/9, 2:04PM on LinkedinEmail Outage From 4/6, 7:29PM to 4/9, 2:04PM link
We sat by and watched as everyone else around us still had power. It was only our block. The neighbors across the street had power, the neighbors behind and across had power. A few other blocks scattered in our area were without power. One by one over the three day period, each of them reported power restoration. Many of them only experiencing short outages or outages long after we did. We reported a downed power pole the first night but no one came. 61 houses were without power so apparently we were low priority. However, we saw other outages with... Continue reading
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How quickly we forget the Marshall Fire devastation. It is entirely unreasonable of folks to want to live in the foothills and eat their cake too. Expect more of the same. Do you think Xcel is going to willfully expose itself to the certain litigation that would result from another massive wildfire? Sorry about the contents of your chest freezer but if you kept it closed you're probably fine anyway. No amount of proactive grid maintenance is going to reasonably mitigate against 100 mph winds. Maybe it's time for some of you Front Range cowboys to come on down to... Continue reading
Share Shutdown in Littleton for 2 Full Days! on FacebookShare Shutdown in Littleton for 2 Full Days! on TwitterShare Shutdown in Littleton for 2 Full Days! on LinkedinEmail Shutdown in Littleton for 2 Full Days! link
We were shut down pre-emptively although we have no overhead power lines in our neighborhood. Due to the length of the outage, most of the food in our refrigerator and freezer had to be thrown out. I received an email about the power shutdown a few hours in advance, although that is not enough time to assemble their suggested outage kit. I received no email notification regarding when the power would be turned back on. The outage status function on the Xcel website did not work. It originally said the power would be back on by 4:45 pm on Sunday... Continue reading
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Hello, I lost 3 tv's the day after the wind storm. How.can this be? One tv started swirling colors on the screen and then went to a black screen of which I can't recover. The other screen went to a black screen as well. After purchasing a brand new tv, it only work remporarily and then believe it or not -- died.
This all happened after Xcel Energy shut.off off power to other places. My tvs went black on Saturday, April 6th. On Sunday, April 7th we purchased a tv, had it on for about 1 bb game, then it... Continue reading
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Instead of maintaining the grid so that it is resilient to storms and other weather disturbances, Xcel simply cuts off the power on which people depend to live. The corporation is externalizing the costs of maintenance on its customers, treating customers as disposable humans while paying its executive millions. The company's behavior is unethical and borderline illegal.
Share No communication from Xcel on FacebookShare No communication from Xcel on TwitterShare No communication from Xcel on LinkedinEmail No communication from Xcel link
We received one email 3 hours before they turned our power off. They said it would be off until about noon on Sunday. I never received another message from Xcel, but our power was not restored on Sunday. Their website, where they told everyone to go, had zero information. At one point it even stated there was no outage at my address. On Monday morning, after 40+ hours without power, I called Xcel and they said they had no information and no idea when our power would be turned on. It came on 10 minutes after I called. Nobody had... Continue reading
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Our neighborhood's power in the Gunbarrel area northeast of Boulder was preemptively shutdown from 3:15pm Saturday 4/6 until 5:56pm Sunday 4/7.
I have misgivings that the preemptive shutdowns were necessary or worth the attendant costs. There were several major snowfalls; and there was rain the morning of Xcel’s preemptive power shutdowns on Saturday. According to the Boulder County Sheriff Department’s Fire Management Officer, Seth McKinney, moisture levels this spring are much higher than they were leading up to the Marshall fire on December 30, 2021, when there had been many weeks of virtually no rainfall. Quoting from the Boulder Reporting... Continue reading
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We were impacted by the recent proactive de-energization. And while Xcel did get notifications out, they chose poor channels to do so. The email I received was from the same email used to manage billing, so it is filtered to a billing folder I check when paying bills. I receive multiple other emails from Xcel to my inbox. I didn't expect that emergency notifications would happen from the billing address, so I am partially responsible for not seeing this one. That said, their choice to use a phone number that registered as a spam caller on most networks was irresponsible... Continue reading
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I would be interested in finding out how much of the proactive shutoff areas had damages from the winds that would have caused outages. How did Xcel assess which areas were more necessary to shut off, and was that anywhere near correct. This should be analyzed by an independent organization - I would not trust Xcel to give an unbiased analysis. Future decisions to proactively shut off power needs to be based on how well they anticipated the areas that had damages, and how Xcel will better respond to restoring power to areas not affected but were proactively shut off... Continue reading
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I manage a drinking water treatment plant serving over 100,000 people in Northern Colorado that lost power for 24 hours. We had to go on to our backup diesel generators with very little notice. Running for that long on generators introduces a huge amount of risk to the public water supply, and we are lucky that a disaster was averted through our own emergency planning efforts, not through Xcel's poor management and poor communication. If Xcel had made a policy decision to shut down power in high wind events months earlier why weren't all critical facilities like water, wastewater, medical... Continue reading
