Opinion: Can we ever get reliable power from Xcel?
Last week’s windstorms showed how inadequate Xcel’s work on fixing our electric grid has been. Unless things change drastically, Boulder’s inevitable windstorms will continue to create recurring mini-disasters. Although the direction Xcel got in June from the Public Utilities Commission covered some transmission line work, overall it appears to be inadequate to fix what’s broken.
Interestingly, the PUC’s latest communication, which can be found at tinyurl.com/55h2jccn, states, “The PUC received extensive public input following the 2024 event, much of it focusing on lack of notice, inadequate communication during the event, poor mapping of impacted areas and insufficient planning to identify and protect critical infrastructure and facilities.”
From my and many others’ observations, last week’s power shutoff maps Xcel supplied online were inaccurate and lacked timeliness. And the notifications we got came multiple times, but did not contain timely updates.
It appears that the PUC’s focus on regularizing “public safety power shutoffs” (PSPS) has diverted attention from actually fixing what’s broken: the unreliability of Xcel’s transmission/distribution system itself. Given the vast area covered by the latest PSPSs, apparently Xcel still has no idea which of its lines can handle the wind and which cannot. And, clearly, Xcel did not fix them in spite of the obvious need made glaringly clear by the April 2024 windstorms and the resulting loss of power.
The PUC’s direction to Xcel since 2024 did not seem to include taking advantage of the extensive inspections done after that windstorm (to ensure power could safely be restored to an area) to identify all remaining local problems and then fix them. So, it looks like PSPSs will become standard procedure, and not just emergency measures to carry us over the gap from our current poorly maintained infrastructure to something fully reliable.
That is an unacceptable future to look forward to. With the ever-increasing severity of our weather due to climate change. I fully expect that major windstorms will become annual events or worse. That will force us to stay prepared to regularly shut down our households and rely on friends or coffee shops to do even the minimum of charging our cell phones and communicating, assuming there are any relatively close that haven’t also lost power. And we’ll all be buying freezer packs to use to try to keep our food from spoiling. Lighting, heating and hot water? Forget about it!
Businesses will be forced to regularly close their doors, costing them essential revenue needed to pay rent (which will still be due) and pay employees (who rely on their paychecks). But we will still get billed to pay Xcel’s fixed costs, even though they’re not delivering any power. This includes Xcel’s guaranteed return on investment in its power plants, transmission lines, etc., which we will still cover even when they’re not functioning or are in need of repair or replacement.
According to reports, a group is forming called “Grid Justice Colorado” to push the PUC to implement binding requirements for undergrounding power lines in threatened areas. A city that took that course is Fort Collins. Note that Fort Collins has a non-profit municipal utility, not a for-profit private company like Xcel.
According to an article in the Coloradoan, Fort Collins first experimented with underground lines in 1948. They started their serious push in 1968 by requiring all new developments to have underground lines; they reached 100% underground in 2006. Because of some recent annexations that had above-ground lines they are now at 99.7%, but expect to be back to 100% soon as those lines are undergrounded. Longmont also has a high percentage undergrounded.
Other approaches include “resilience centers,” which our local group, Empower Our Future, is working on, so people have nearby places to go that have light, power, etc., during shutdowns. Local microgrids, which EOF is also working on and the City is considering, would allow power to be delivered to all areas other than those microgrids with actual damaged wires. They would also allow people to share self-generated power, both from photovoltaics with batteries and/or from generators on their homes and businesses. But for this to work effectively, Xcel would have to repair, update, and rationalize its currently somewhat chaotic grid-level wiring.
All of this would require both the PUC and the Legislature to think past the stopgap PSPS approach and actually solve this problem, which is not going away as our weather gets more extreme. And we could pay for some of it if we stopped paying Xcel for Comanche 3, which is yet again out of commission for many months, and which should be permanently closed.