The Colorado Public Utilities Commission has opened an investigation into Xcel Energy’s decision to shut down power in parts of the northern Front Range as a precaution during last weekend’s extreme winds.
The PUC voted Wednesday morning to look into how Xcel made the decision to cut power to minimize the risk of wildfires, how the company carried out and communicated its plan and the impacts on customers and communities. Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday directed the commission to investigate the utility’s actions and consequences.
In a Tuesday letter to Xcel Energy Colorado President Robert Kenney, Polis shared his “disappointment and frustration” with the company’s public safety power shutoff that affected 55,000 customers, along with its days-long service restoration and inadequate communication.
Xcel has explained its decision as an effort to prevent wildfires during the severe weather, although it received stiff pushback from affected residents and businesses.
“Shutting off power to customers is a serious and challenging decision that should only be done as a last resort,” Polis wrote to Kenney. “This incident has further harmed Xcel’s reputation and social license.”
Polis directed the PUC to investigate Xcel’s actions during the weekend shutdown and pursue improvements for future public safety power shutoffs, such as providing better outage maps and more timely information. Utilities in California and Oregon have increasingly cut power as a precaution when conditions are ripe for wildfires, but this is the first time Xcel has taken the step in Colorado.
Polis wants the PUC to put protections in place to ensure that future decisions around service shutdowns occur when they’re “consistent with the public interest and when absolutely necessary.” It will also examine several other aspects of Xcel’s upcoming wildfire mitigation plan, including the company’s emergency response coordination.
In a meeting on Wednesday with legislators and Boulder’s mayor pro tem, Kenney said cutting off power to customers is a tool of last resort and would be used sparingly in the future. But he acknowledged that Xcel needs to “communicate better and differently” with customers.
Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat, said she’d been told by the company that she would lose power, but she never did. Some businesses, she said, were correctly told they would lose power, while others a few blocks away weren’t told and had to scramble when the lights went off.
Sen. Steve Fenberg, another Boulder Democrat, said he didn’t receive a message until after his power was off.
“We’re imperfect, and I can’t address why any particular customer didn’t get contacted,” Kenney said, though he said the company called affected customers Friday evening and Saturday morning.
Xcel officials told lawmakers that more than 250,000 customers lost power during the wind storm and that roughly 55,000 of those were part of the company’s voluntary power cut.
Fenberg said he understood why Xcel shut off the power and said he was grateful there wasn’t a wildfire last week. But there were questions now, he said, about the “side effects” of the decision, like missed communications and the timeline for getting the power back on.
The PUC said Wednesday that it has received roughly 400 comments from the public so far about Xcel cutting power to areas that were deemed as high risk for wildfires. The agency is collecting comments on the page https://engagedora.org/share-your-feedback-with-the-puc and will make the statements publicly available in anonymous form on its website.
The PUC will hold a public comment hearing 4-6 p.m. April 17 and will meet with Xcel Energy and others to go through questions and responses from the utility.
Residents and at least one food bank were forced to toss unrefrigerated food, and several metro Denver schools were closed through Tuesday. Employees at a Boulder wastewater treatment plant had to scramble to make sure raw sewage didn’t flow into Boulder Creek when power was cut to the plant’s two electric substations.
“We recognize that being without this essential service brings challenges,” Kenney wrote in a statement. “We learned a lot from this storm.”
When asked for further comment in response to the governor’s letter, Xcel spokesperson Tyler Bryant largely echoed his company president’s statement.
“We stand by our decision to protect the public from wildfire risk in this recent weather event, and we firmly believe our actions contributed to preventing a wildfire this weekend,” he wrote in an email Wednesday morning. “We are committed to making changes and improvements as we work together as a state to respond to rapidly evolving weather events.”
Businesses, local governments and customers have complained that they didn’t have enough notice of the shutoffs, which happened at 3 p.m. Saturday, and weren’t adequately updated about when the electricity would be turned back on. Part of what the PUC will review is whether new rules are needed to address improving communications with the public.
“I think that the event really highlighted some of the things we need to make sure we can address to prepare for in the future. I’m particularly interested in trying to figure out what we can do to mitigate some of the impacts in the future,” said Tom Plant, a member of the PUC.
Plant added that while the preemptive shutdowns had impacts, “we also perhaps avoided a major fire.”
“We’ve seen what can happen with 100 mph winds combined with fire,” Plant added. “It’s sort of a no-good-options situation, but one in which I think we can be better prepared.”
A combination of winds of up to 100 mph and unusually dry conditions drove the Marshall fire Dec. 30, 2021, in Louisville, Superior and parts of unincorporated Boulder County. The fire killed two people, destroyed 1,084 homes and businesses and did more than $2 billion in total property damage.
Boulder County investigators concluded that a loose Xcel Energy power line ignited a fire that merged with one started in another area. Xcel, which faces hundreds of lawsuits over the fire, has disputed its equipment was responsible.
After the weekend’s heavy winds, Xcel has replaced or repaired the following equipment: 107 poles; 327 crossarms; 34 transformers; and 67,000 feet, a total of 12.6 miles, of wire and cables.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Nicole Speer, Boulder’s mayor pro tem, told Kenney that her understanding was that Xcel had never shut off power like this before.
“There is a sense of, this has never been done before,” she said. “We’re all learning together, but all the folks who went through that were sort of test subjects. We didn’t really get consent on whether we were going to be the test subjects — we just were.”
Rep. Junie Joseph, another Boulder Democrat, sent Xcel a letter expressing how she was “deeply disappointed” by the company’s communications. She reiterated her request for a fund or support for Coloradans who lost food because of the outage. Kenney said the company was “analyzing” the letter.
This story was updated at 5 p.m. Wednesday to add electrical equipment repaired or replaced after the weekend’s heavy winds, and later at 5:37 p.m. to add comments from Xcel’s meeting with Boulder lawmakers.
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