DENVER — About 16,000 Xcel customers in Colorado were still without power Monday evening, two days after extremely high winds damaged power lines and caused the utility to purposefully turn off power to prevent wildfires.
Xcel preemptively turned off 600 miles of power lines to reduce wildfire risk in six counties: Boulder, Broomfield, Douglas, Gilpin, Jefferson and Larimer. The proactive shutoffs affected about 55,000 customers, the utility said.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission wants to hear from Xcel customers about the utility's communication ahead of the storm. You can provide your feedback here.
On Monday, 9NEWS talked with Xcel Colorado CEO Robert Kenney and PUC Director Rebecca White about the company's response and customer communication during the storm.
Answers have been condensed for clarity.
You can watch the unedited raw interview here:
9NEWS reporter Marshall Zelinger: For people who had their power turned off proactively, how is it that we're here Monday, two days later, and they still do not have power?
Kenney: We saw the windstorms start, 3:00 on Saturday, and those extraordinarily high winds ended and were forecasted to end at noon on Sunday. We cannot reenergize those power lines until our personnel, our coworkers, are out in the field visually inspecting those lines. We had about 600 miles of power lines that have to be inspected. If a de-energized line was damaged during the windstorm and fell to the ground, if we were to reenergize that without putting our eyes on it, it would cause a wildfire.
What we're seeing are incidents where trees did blow into lines, where lines did fall to the ground, where one can logically infer that had we not de-energized that line would have led to a wildfire.
Zelinger: 600 miles of lines. Is there another way to do that math, like neighborhoods or cities? Can you quantify it in a different way that might be more relatable?
Kenney: About six counties that were impacted. And I can't tell you how many miles per county. We do have that data, I just don't have it right in front of me. But the main county that was predominantly impacted was Boulder. That's where we saw the highest winds.
These are winds that we would say are in the 97th percentile, or the top 3% of wind speeds. So, this exceeds wind speeds that we typically see. And then you add on to that low fuel moisture, meaning dry grass, dry vegetation, that is fuel for a wildfire. And so, looking at both of those together, that's how you get an extraordinarily high danger of a wildfire happening.
Zelinger: Of the lines that you de-energized, are these neighborhood distribution lines that are power lines? Or are they the tall, metal transmission lines? Or both.
Kenney: No. these were distribution lines that were proactively de-energized.
Zelinger: In our last interview, I pointed out that you like to say, "safe and reliable." By turning off power proactively, de-energizing lines, does that mean you do not believe your lines are safe and reliable?
Kenney: No, it doesn't mean that at all. What it does mean is that we see wind speeds that are beyond what is the norm and what equipment would be designed to withstand, coupled with very low fuel moisture. And so, it's the confluence of multiple events, or multiple pieces of criteria that lead us to the conclusion that out of an abundance of caution and for the protection and safety of the public, we want to prevent a wildfire from igniting, and then wind driving it to spread very rapidly. And so, no, our equipment is safe and reliable. This is an additional measure to ensure and mitigate the risk of an ignition starting and then spreading.
Zelinger: This question comes from people in Sterling Ranch, and I think, Indian Hills. If I'm remembering that neighborhood correctly, they are neighborhoods with underground power lines. Why are neighborhoods with infrastructure underground, why are they dark, or were dark with the power out?
Kenney: So without knowing specific addresses or specific locations, I can say that even where there might have been infrastructure that is underground, it could be served by a feeder that has overhead elements.
Zelinger: Is there an order to how power gets turned back on? You have schools that are out today. People that need oxygen. Is it a complaint-based system or biggest need? How do you determine the order of getting power back on?
Kenney: We're applying multiple criteria. We do want to make sure that critical infrastructure is turned on. We have 500 people that are out here working so that we can turn on as many people as quickly as possible. It's not based upon the loudest voices or the loudest complaints, I think that might have been your question. We want to make sure what we're doing is restoring people as quickly as possible and as efficiently as possible. So, that might be restoring a circuit that has a higher number of people on it than another circuit. But we also want to make sure that we're restoring critical infrastructure as well, and so much of this work is happening in parallel and simultaneously so that we can get as many people turned back on as quickly as possible.
Zelinger: Our meteorologists were warning of this storm at the beginning of last week. I think I could look back at emails and responses from viewers that say they didn't really hear directly from Xcel until maybe Thursday or Friday. Why wasn't Xcel, also at the beginning of the week, preparing customers for what ultimately the decision was to turn people off ahead of time?
Kenney: We acknowledge where there's opportunities to communicate sooner. And we'll work to do that going forward. We've heard that same feedback that you're conveying. We communicated with our customers the evening before, to let them know that this was a possibility. Then, when we actually rendered the decision that day of, we communicated with our customers again, and tried to continually communicate with customers throughout the day.
Weather is dynamic. And so, the weather forecast at the beginning of the week may not necessarily be what it ultimately, actually is the end of the week. This is a tool of last resort. And so, we weren't making a definitive decision. We were seeing the same weather, but we know that that weather is likely to change. And we don't want to necessarily cause unnecessary concern and panic if we're not definitive about taking that step of last resort, to turn off power.
We communicated with our customers the night before. We do recognize that there's opportunity to be more -- to communicate earlier. And that's something we will strive to improve.
Zelinger: People will notice that you have lights on where you are right now. Did you ever lose power at your home?
Kenney: I did not lose power at my home. And maybe, your next question, is that because I work for the company? It has nothing to do with it. It's where I live.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) regulates Xcel. Rebecca White is the director of the PUC.
Zelinger: Is the PUC comfortable with the outreach that Xcel provided ahead of this?
White: I want to hear more from customers. So, we stood up outreach on our website. Very open to hearing from customers. What I've heard anecdotally, so far, is a lot of folks felt like they didn't know soon enough and weren't receiving updates in real time.
Zelinger: If preemptively shutting down power is the solution, does that mean the infrastructure is not safe and reliable?
White: I do believe that infrastructure is safe and reliable, but there's always going to be extreme weather events. Can we design every pole in every part of Colorado for every possible weather event in a changing climate? I don't know.
Zelinger: Is there a timeline if power is not turned back on, whether it was purposeful or damage, where the PUC would start issuing punishment fines, having a hearing, something like that?
White: There's nothing in our rules that say X number of hours power needs to be turned on. We certainly hold the company, sort of, overall accountable for getting power back on as soon as they can. I believe they are doing that. And in terms of this incident over the weekend, we can also hold them accountable and look at ways we can ensure critical care institutions are the first ones to have power returned. Again, I think we've seen the company here prioritize those resources.
Zelinger: What kind of communication do you want to see from a utility like Xcel?
White: I want to ask the public, would you rather receive a notice of a possible outage, even if that doesn't occur? Or not know until it's very likely or going to occur? I think that would be really helpful for us to understand, by the people impacted by this. What do they want to hear? How often do they want to hear it and by what means?
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