DENVER — Xcel Energy has put out a tick tock describing its actions earlier this month when it purposefully shut off power to 52,000 customers.
Not the social media Tik Tok, but rather a “tick tock” – a timeline of events.
Xcel provided the timeline ahead of a hearing in front of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) next Monday.
The PSPS – “public safety power shutoff” mainly impacted Boulder County, but power was shutoff in six counties (Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Jefferson, Gilpin and Larimer).
The timeline Xcel provided the PUC revealed that one Boulder resident got a heads up about what Xcel was doing: the governor.
On April 6, Xcel did a PSPS for the first time in Colorado. It purposefully shutoff power to 52,000 customers during high winds.
The power went off at 3 p.m. on April 6.
According to the timeline of events, the first internal discussion at Xcel about a PSPS was at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, April 5.
“DCC [Distribution Control Center] management and directors met to discuss a possible PSPS event and preparations were started.”
At 12:30 p.m. on April 5, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ chief of staff was told about the “potential need for proactive de-energization.”
Between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on April 5, Xcel CEO Robert Kenney “spoke to Gov. Jared Polis to inform the governor of the potential and likelihood of a proactive de-energization.”
And then at 8:30 a.m. on April 6, Xcel “informed Polis’ chief of staff that the Company was moving forward with PSPS and shared a list of impacted areas and estimated counts of impacted customers.”
The shutoff happened at 3 p.m.
Xcel writes in the timeline that at 8:30 p.m. on April 6, “The Company released an interactive public map showing approximate proactive outage areas, which was shared via the public webpage, social media, and provided to news media.”
At a news event in his office on Monday, Polis was asked if he had a responsibility to tell the public what he knew, since Xcel was not alerting the public with specifics when he was notified.
“We were not provided with exact maps or indications of who would lose it. We were told about 50,000 homes. That was the level that was notified to me,” Polis said.
In a statement provided after the news event, a spokesperson for Polis added, “The governor’s office is not a utility provider nor utility regulator and does not have a list of Xcel customers – it is clear the company must do more to notify and improve communication with its customers.”
As part of the Xcel hearing in front of the PUC next week, the Boulder business community provided a survey from 94 businesses about the impact business owners and employees faced.
“Many of the private insurance company policies didn't kick in within the time that the power was out. Business interruption insurance generally doesn't kick in until 48 hours, or in some cases 72 hours,” Bettina Swigger, Downtown Boulder Partnership CEO, said.
The survey was put together by the Downtown Boulder Partnership and the Boulder Chamber.
The 94 businesses claim $1.3 million in losses from the power outage and $240,000 in unpaid employee wages because the businesses were closed.
“It's our job to stand up for the business community and make sure that the economic impact and the losses they're affecting also affect the households in Colorado and Boulder County for our residents,” Swigger said. “We would love to see some kind of business interruption mitigation impact fund that might be set up for future outages.”
The overwhelming complaint from the business survey was lack of communication from Xcel.
“It would have been helpful to have at least 48 hours of notice. It would have been nice to have more communication directly from Xcel. And it certainly would have been helpful just to have more communication in general and more accurate communication, including maps that showed directly which blocks were going to be impacted.”
The PUC hearing is on May 6 at 10 a.m.
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