In December, Rainbow Schultz was preparing for Xcel Energy’s announced shutdown of power lines to cope with high winds since her restaurant — the Jamestown Mercantile — had lost $8,000 in the utility’s safety shut-off eight months earlier.
Schultz was already reducing her supplies when she was told by Xcel Energy her town of 230 in western Boulder County would not be in the shut-off area and so she stocked up as usual.
Still when the 112-mile-per-hour gust of wind came Dec. 18, Schultz found herself in the dark with a $12,000 loss.
“Five days of loss of business with no communication from Xcel as to when it would be restored,” Schultz told a Colorado Public Utilities Commission hearing Wednesday evening. “I know this might seem like a small number, but it’s definitely enough to potentially close my business and lose employment for my employees.”
The commission heard from about two dozen residents, business representatives and public officials and it received 4,000 written comments about the impacts of the December shutdown that left more than 100,000 homes and businesses without electricity.
The testimony is part of the commission’s information gathering to write new rules for so-called public safety power shut-offs, called PSPS. “These are really challenging issues, and these comments are enormously helpful and critical,” Eric Blank, the PUC chairman, said.
Three major themes emerged from the testimony: a lack of adequate communication from Xcel Energy, an unreasonable financial burden on a handful of communities and, despite an effort by the utility to identify and help households with medical needs for electricity, some needing oxygen still struggled.
“Our primary responsibility is to protect public safety, and we believe our actions were necessary to mitigate the risk of wildfire and safeguard lives and property,” Xcel Energy said in a statement. “While we stand by our decision to prioritize safety, we acknowledge there are areas for improvement.”
Before and during the safety shut-off, Xcel Energy said it communicated with customers with calls, emails, text messages, social media updates, updates on its website and news releases. The company also has a shut-off website.
Still, the testimony offered to the PUC made clear that wasn’t enough.
It turned out that Schultz and Jamestown were not in the blackout area, according to Xcel Energy, and went dark due to weather damage, but Schultz did not know that — or when repairs would be made.
Chris Meschuk, Boulder’s deputy city manager, said the utility’s communications “were confusing, conflicting, inaccurate and incomplete.”
Xcel Energy told the city that as many as 500,000 customers could be impacted, but it was less than 24 hours before the shut-off that the city learned just four feeder lines would be affected.
“I believe that they knew they were never going to shut off power to a half a million customers, but they left us scrambling until the last minute and until at our request, we had a meeting where they said, ‘Oh no, there’ll only be four feeders,’” Meschuk said.
“We know being without power is disruptive and can be frustrating, so we take the decision to implement a PSPS very seriously,” Xcel Energy said.
Was it a shut-off or did a tree fall in the forest?
In the tiny western Boulder County community of Ward, population 127, people were getting conflicting information about why they didn’t have power, according to town resident Clyde Plasencia.
“We spoke to Xcel throughout the day, we didn’t have power, they told us multiple conflicting stories,” Plasencia said. “We had multiple Xcel managers tell us that we were part of the PSPS, that we weren’t part of the PSPS, or that a tree had fallen down the lines.”
“So it’s pretty clear to us from that experience that there isn’t even an interorganization sharing of information,” Plascencia said. “None of them seem to know what is going on in our area at any given time.”
Schultz’s was far from the only business that suffered losses.
A survey of 100 businesses in Golden by the Golden Chamber of Commerce tallied nearly $2 million in losses. “We know that that only accounts for a small portion of the business community,” Nola Krajewski, the chamber’s president and CEO, told the PUC.
The shut-off was for safety reasons so those losses aren’t reimbursed by Xcel Energy and since it was not caused by weather or property damage businesses can’t file an insurance claim.
“I feel like a pawn in the game of liability between a billion-dollar energy giant and insurance companies that also report billions of dollars of profit,” said Brandon Bortles, who owns two Golden restaurants Nosu Ramen and Abejas Bistro.
“I think a lot of people that suffered through this are looking for some recourse so we can come up with some designation that a PSPS is an emergency weather event that is worked through with the Division of Insurance,” Bortles said.
The Boulder Chamber surveyed 300 local employers, with 86% reporting a business interruption with an average financial loss of $25,000 and a total of 20,000 workers affected. Nine businesses had losses of more than $100,000.
“What we all recognize, whether planned or unplanned power outages of this nature, have devastating impacts on our businesses, with long-term impacts on our economy,” Jonathan Singer, the chamber’s director of policy programs, testified.
Fierce winds overnight uprooted large trees in neighborhoods near Nederland on Dec. 19. (Tracy Ross, The Colorado Sun)Weighing risk of catastrophic fire against repeated business losses
Xcel Energy had a planned outage in April and another in December, both centered on Boulder, Jefferson and the surrounding counties. In January, 9,000 homes in Larimer and Weld counties were hit with a safety shut-off.
“We can’t keep letting the exact same people and businesses pay the price for these outages, and so I think ensuring that there are financial resources available to help those that are impacted repeatedly by these extended outage events,” Meschuk, the Boulder deputy city manager, said.
Brent Anderson, the CEO of Golden-based Resight Holdings, an environmental risk management firm, said Xcel is weighing the relatively low risk of catastrophic wildfire against the much higher probability of the repeated losses from business and homeowner damage.
“The PSPS approach right now essentially externalizes the cost of wildfire risk, and, even worse, concentrates it on specific populations within the Xcel service area. So the question, I think, becomes, how do we balance that?” Anderson said.
“I think we need to look at the fact that addressing this risk is something that needs to be borne similarly by all people, not just the select few,” he said.
After the April shut-off, when some people dependent on home oxygen systems were forced to go to emergency rooms, Xcel Energy and the PUC set out to identify vulnerable households.
Nevertheless, in December the problem flared again with 10 residents at Golden West, an affordable housing complex for older adults in Boulder, at risk of losing their oxygen.
Carolyn Mill, who lives in the Boulder Meadows Trailer Park and did not have internet service, had a friend read a statement to the commission: “I am an 82-year-old who is on oxygen, and I am dealing with the effects of chemotherapy. If you turn off the power again with no notice, I will probably be dead in less than 24 hours. I have about six hours of oxygen on my battery powered oxygen pump.”
At the end of the hearing Commissioner Tom Plant said “hearing directly from the public is the only way we can figure out how to put systems in place to try to make this not as harmful next time.”
Hence then, the article about state regulators get an earful on xcel power shutdowns from colorado communities left without power for days was published today ( ) and is available on Colorado Sun ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( State regulators get an earful on Xcel power shutdowns from Colorado communities left without power for days )
Also on site :