Xcel Energy outages spark complaints, may prompt investigation

Dirk McCuistion plans to build a 164-unit apartment building with retail on the ground floor just off South Broadway in the West Washington Park neighborhood. That is if the power in the area doesn’t keep going out.

McCuistion is among several business owners and residents who say the number of power outages that have lasted hours or days has grown more frequent in a multi-block stretch bordered by South Broadway and Lincoln Street. So far this year, they said the electricity provided by Xcel Energy has been out 13 times, up from seven times in 2023.

Xcel puts the number of outages at 10. Those in the neighborhood said the number of days with power interruptions total 13.

Restaurants have had to throw out food when outages drag on. Employees lose out on pay if the power goes off and the business shuts down. McCuistion said he is $12,000 over budget for repairs on the heating and cooling system in a building he manages on Broadway. He sees the outages as the primary culprit.

The ongoing problems have McCuistion wondering about the $85 million project he has proposed for the corner of First Avenue and Lincoln. “Power outages are my No. 1 concern with the project right now, besides finance.”

A recent spate of similar complaints from people across metro Denver has prompted the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to consider opening an investigation. The PUC is scheduled to hear from its staff in a public meeting Wednesday.

“The PUC is committed to protecting utility consumers to receive safe and reliable power. To understand this situation, we have recommended the Commission open an investigation into the disruption of service to better understand the size, scope and duration, as well as any causes and recommendations,” PUC spokeswoman Megan Castle said in an email.

In statements and public meetings, Xcel has attributed the outages to various factors: a fault in a cable; blown fuses; a line damaged by construction; bad weather; problems with conductors; repair and replacement of equipment; and troublesome squirrels.

Xcel Energy-Colorado President Robert Kenney told KCNC-TV at a community meeting in August at the Sterling Ranch subdivision in Jefferson County that Xcel and other utilities nationwide are seeing historic load growth. Xcel’s $1.7 billion Colorado Power Pathway project will build up to 650 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines to expand capacity on the electric grid. The company also plans transmission upgrades in the Denver area.

The country’s aging electric grid is struggling to meet growth, expansion of renewable energy resources and the increasing electrification of transportation and buildings, the U.S. Department of Energy has said. Much of the U.S. electric grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s, according to DOE.

Residents and business owners struggling with outages along the Broadway-Lincoln corridor wonder whether Xcel is adequately balancing the demands on the system in their neighborhood. Blake Davis, president of a homeowners association in a building in the zone experiencing outages, said Xcel has blamed four of the incidents on squirrels.

Other problems cited were equipment failure and the weather.

“It’s not that our squirrels are any more crazy than the squirrels one block north or south of this region,” Davis said. “It’s not like there’s that much of a different environment, other than the infrastructure just needs to be updated.”

Davis said the same 178 business and home addresses are listed on Xcel’s website when outages occur, affecting 400-plus people that live and work in the area. It has been difficult to get answers from Xcel, Davis said, so he wrote a letter to the company and the PUC that has been signed by homeowners and members of area neighborhood and business groups.

“The utility has all the information,” said John Gavan, a PUC member from 2019 to 2023. “They hold all the cards, so it’s hard to get a true view.”

Gavan thinks Xcel is more interested in building new facilities because the company is authorized for a certain return on its investments. “There’s the day-to-day of running the business where I think they’re falling down on the job.”

Grid capacity sparks concerns

In August, a Denver City Council committee postponed voting on tax incentives for a new data center in the Globeville-Elyria-Swansea neighborhood to get more information on how much water and electricity the center would use. Data centers, which house computers that keep the internet running, use 10 to 50  times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building, according to the DOE.

“I am concerned about the impact of water usage and the impact on the grid because I have power outages happening throughout my district,” said Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez. Her district includes the Lincoln-South Broadway area.

Other areas recently hit with power problems include Denver’s University neighborhood. For three days around the Aug. 17-18 weekend, Kevin Roth worried about damage to his appliances and equipment as the electricity surged off and on every five to 10 minutes.

Roth unplugged appliances to protect them, but couldn’t unplug his refrigerator. At one point, he believed the fridge was ruined, so he requested a reimbursement form from Xcel Energy.

“With companies like Xcel, which are basically monopolies, how do you get them to respond when you have a major problem and they don’t care? Their representatives knew nothing because the dispatch teams didn’t bother to tell them,” Roth said.

Xcel, which apologized for the inconvenience, estimates about 2,000 customers experienced “multiple momentary outages” in the neighborhood because of a cable fault. A cable fault occurs when a power cable deteriorates to the point that it can’t contain its voltage, causing a short.

There have been 46 outages affecting more than 10 customers with durations between two minutes and six hours at Sterling Ranch, Xcel spokesman Tyler Brant said in an email. The causes included a line damaged by construction; cable failure; issues with conductors; de-energization for maintenance; and an overloaded transformer.

“We are aware some of our customers are experiencing more frequent outages and are taking both short-term and longer-term action to improve the situation and enhance reliability on the system while ensuring we are mitigating wildfire risk or ignition,” Bryant said.

Mountain communities haven’t been immune to the problems. Silverthorne has experienced intermittent outages this summer, affecting thousands of customers and resulting in town officials calling Xcel Energy representatives to the carpet at an Aug. 14 meeting.

“Your communication, it’s not been great, I’m just going to tell you that right now,” Mayor Anne-Marie Sandquist told utility representatives, according to a story in the Summit Daily.

Xcel blamed the Silverthorne outages on its Enhanced Power Line Safety Settings, which kick in when high temperatures, dry conditions and high winds raise the risk of a wildfire.

The settings are intended to keep power lines from triggering a fire. But overly sensitive settings were causing outages. Although Xcel said the program was implemented around March, Silverthorne officials said during the meeting that its existence was a surprise to them.

Tossed food, lost wages

Utility customers along the northern Front Range experienced extended outages in April when high winds knocked out power and Xcel cut power in spots to reduce the risk of electrical equipment starting wildfires. The PUC investigated widespread complaints about Xcel’s communication with the public and the implementation of the preemptive shutdowns.

High winds, not preemptive shutdowns, caused outages down South Broadway and Lincoln during the storm that produced gales of nearly 100 mph in spots.