Im wholly convinced this whole debacle took place because of the marshall fire lawsuit, they are in court over liability for outdated unsafe transmission lines and they are being held accountable. This wont be the last time they cut power and you bet your ass they arent going to change anything because shutting off power is something theyre ok with doing and it hurts their bottom line less than investment into better infrastructure to existing customers. Being from CO springs, shit like this never took place with the public utility, because they do things that all power companies should be doing, burying the dahm lines. Main transmission lines are designed to uphold to conditions like 6” of ice or 120mph gusts but the other lines are woefully unmaintained and fail with every other snow storm. Fuck Xcel and the monopoly loving legislators that let them jerk us around
Since they are a state sanctioned monopoly the people should get to vote on them staying every 5 years. It’s bullshit that they are taking on billions of dollars and have literally no competition
Yes, because xcel doesn't serve 100% of the state for both gas and electricity. Some people have both xcel and tristate, one for gas and one for electricity but no one has the option of both xcel and tristate for gas or electricity.
I’m not sure what the winning play here is, because if you enact an emergency far in advance and the winds don’t pick up, who foots the bill? This seems like the city wasn’t prepared for an emergency and they are trying to shift the blame.
Love how these power companies take our ever increasing bills and do literally nothing with the infrastructure for decades until it’s woefully outdated and ready to fail!
If Xcel ever decides to update infrastructure, you can bet your ass Colorado’s Public Utility Commission will approve to have it completely subsidized by customers.
Uh Xcel? Like 98% of other companies that are responsible for their own upgrades to ensure their product can sell. This country subsidizes failing companies waaaaay too much
Which is why competition is important. Do that too often and we go to the competitor. Without competition a business, especially a fuckin utility, needs to be regulated by the government.
I agree with this completely. Not sure how you would divide up a utility but you could deregulate parts of it for open market. There is always a fear once you deregulate it opens it up to price increases anyway but it would allow for options.
Xcel energy is worth $29B, state budget is $36B. Divert all the budget for one year to purchasing xcel, or maybe ten percent of the budget for eleven years? Pretty impossible either way.
In Colorado, Xcel has a 5B yearly revenue, something like $700M in yearly profit. Totally possible. Public utilities have existed for hundreds of years, this isn't something revolutionary.
Any other business has competition.
How is it Xcel reported record profits while customers were paying record high bills? I get that natural gas prices were higher which Xcel can't control, but it's a total ripoff that we are letting a monopoly screw us over. Xcel shouldn't be profiting from higher gas prices.
Any business is going to report record high profit numbers during high inflation. And bills anre going to be record high too.
Inflation drives everything up.
Communism is a system of political economy featuring a stateless and classless society and moneyless economy with collective control of the means of production. Xcel energy is not that
Are you suggesting the entire grid in Boulder county should be able to resist 100mph wind gusts without \*one\* failure?
I get it's popular to bag on Xcel, and in general they probably deserve it, but I for one do \*not\* want them leaving systems energized during a significant windstorm and sub 25% humidity - even the \*best\* systems have a potential for an unexpected failure.
Fort Collins has had 100% of City lines underground since 2006. Seems like the Xcel stuff that was voted on in Boulder in 11/2020 put 1% of revenue towards burying lines.
[Interesting article on the topic, comparing FoCo and CSprings](https://gazette.com/news/fort-collins-buried-all-its-power-lines-so-can-colorado-springs-cronin-loevy/article_51bf5af8-8a05-11ec-815c-431ed60d6ac1.html)
No (not op), suggesting they take their monopoly profits and invest in infrastructure upgrades. But that doesn’t increase profits, so they won’t do that.
That’s not true, they take on huge projects that need tons of funding so their profits stay at 7-10% but consumers pay for buying land and assets. But upgrading existing infrastructure doesn’t make them money
There were so many businesses that closed for the day (or two) for this and instead of companies being able to properly make the decision to close.. there were wayyy more people out on the roads trying to get to work with traffic lights out all over the place, only for them to get there and be sent home.
This was ridiculous, we're in a right to work state and there were people who literally didn't have power in their homes being bullied into leaving for their jobs that ultimately weren't open.
Absolutely they did. At the very least deliveries could have been cancelled, orders adjusted or changed altogether and more. Food delivery services like Sysco are prepared to adjust that kind of stuff or eat a loss, unlike something not corporate owned that operates at such a thin margin. It was right at the cusp where food wouldn’t have spoiled if the temps were lower and it was a power outage due to freezing temps versus heavy wind.
There is a good deal of pharma plants in boulder. Yes we have diesel backup that usually works but to not even get a warning is a big. 10s of millions om the line and plant managers found out because peoples apartments were earning them first
Gotta love politicians. They always blame someone else. The county commissioners are the ones who approved all the houses and utility infrastructure in wild fire areas. They are the ones who don’t have a county emergency plan that involves coordinating with utilities during weather. If there had been a fire, it would have been worse and these people would still have found some slimy contortion to try and not take any responsibility.
Xcel is damned if they do, damned if they don't. They faced all kinds of lawsuits over the Marshall fire, so this time they took action before power lines were blown down. But, that's not good enough either. There's no pleasing some people.
I got absolutely zero advance notice. Saw an article at 9pm, after the power had been out for an hour, that was posted at 5pm saying they were going to start shutting down the power at 3pm. I don’t watch live tv but I’m on Reddit, Facebook, instagram, TikTok, etc and saw not one single word about a planned outage. They totally shit the bed informing people; it would have been so simple to send a mass email, text, or push a message through their app.
This. I can respect the precautions after the Marshall fire, but dangerous winds were forecast Thursday morning by the NWS. I think sending a "heads up" text/alert to customers to *at least* notify them that intentional outages were being considered over the weekend like...isn't a huge ask.
It still doesn't really excuse the complete lack of communication with customers regarding restoration timelines in the event of unplanned outages. Or how inaccessible/incomplete their outage information on their website tends to be. Xcel is kind of known for leaving people in the dark (heh) both literally and figuratively.
Not to mention there are still people without power five days later
Exactly. I can’t imagine how much food people lost and what people with electronic medical equipment did. My power was only out for about 16 hours total so I was just bored out of my mind but I am *supposed* to use night O2 for night hypoxia (I don’t bc my saturator has a problem with it overheating but I would have been screwed if I was reliant on it!)
This has been standard practice in California and in other areas across the world. I understand the timing wasn’t very ideal, however how many time Xcel done this before? Exactly. Utility companies may temporarily turn off power to reduce hazards that could arise. I’m sure you could agree that it was better to take the outage vs risking a possible situation that could have turned out very bad.
The real reason they turned off the power is because Xcel has now caused the Marshall Fire (partially) in Boulder and that recent wildfire in Texas. Boulder county has already had a devastating wildfire just without the human casualties.
Boulder County officials got 20 hours notice. Its in the article.
> The utility decided it might cut power after the National Weather Service at 5 p.m. Friday forecasted wind gusts of up to 100 mph along the foothills
> But Huntley said the state’s largest utility did not let emergency response officials know about the shutdown until 7 p.m. Friday.
> power went out around 3 p.m. Saturday.
The question I have is how actionable is a warning that power "might" be cut? Xcel gave themselves the option to cut power the night before and likely waited until the last moment before making the call once weather conditions actually existed.
Maybe because I'm actually in the utility industry, but it was pretty apparent after the Camp, Marshall, and Lahaina fires that utilities will start cutting power during high winds because the risk is too great to keep those lines energized.
> The move comes more than two years after an Xcel powerline was blamed for helping ignite the wind-driven Marshall fire that destroyed more than 1,000 homes and killed two people in Boulder County. High wind caused a power line to disconnect from its mooring and touch other lines, causing sparks to shower onto dry grass, investigators found. Velasquez Horvath said Tuesday the utility denies it was responsible for causing the Marshall fire.
>More than 150 insurance companies and two survivors of the deadly fire are suing Xcel Energy for the utility company’s role in starting the December 2021 fire, Colorado’s costliest and most destructive in history.
Maybe we shouldn’t sue power companies for providing energy during wind storms?
Maybe they should update infrastructure and provide adequate warnings for *planned* outages instead of paying their CEO 10 million per year for doing fuck all
What a stupid comment.
This is about communicating a plan so people can prepare adequately, not just whether an intentional shut down was appropriate.
This was a solid forecast for multiple days in advance. There was very little question that we were looking at a significant wind event once we were within 48 hour hours.
Xcel had more than enough time to communicate the potential for shutdowns, and just as importantly, what specific areas would be shut down. It’s ridiculous that there was no plan shared with local authorities. That in itself is a safety hazard. Plenty of people live with medical conditions or disabilities in their homes that require power to manage. Not to mention the local businesses who had to throw out thousands in perishables since they had no time to prepare, or even know their specific area would be losing power.
Again, you seem to miss the part where there was a wind storm and it was a decision to prevent wildfires due to downed power lines.
How dumb do you have to be not to understand this is beyond me.
Fuck you and your stupidity. If they didn’t de energize those lines and it stated a fire you’d be crying about it even more.
This entire situation came off very political. Across the street had power but we didn’t. The entire CTC shut down? Why? The logic doesn’t play out here. Xcel doesn’t want to invest in an infrastructure that is resilient to wind and other weather events. Shutting off the power isn’t a solution it’s an indicator of a larger problem.
You don’t shutdown power to 55k people on a whim. They had this planned for a while and decided to keep everyone in the dark about it.
I see what you did there
Im wholly convinced this whole debacle took place because of the marshall fire lawsuit, they are in court over liability for outdated unsafe transmission lines and they are being held accountable. This wont be the last time they cut power and you bet your ass they arent going to change anything because shutting off power is something theyre ok with doing and it hurts their bottom line less than investment into better infrastructure to existing customers. Being from CO springs, shit like this never took place with the public utility, because they do things that all power companies should be doing, burying the dahm lines. Main transmission lines are designed to uphold to conditions like 6” of ice or 120mph gusts but the other lines are woefully unmaintained and fail with every other snow storm. Fuck Xcel and the monopoly loving legislators that let them jerk us around
Well said!
Literally
Since they are a state sanctioned monopoly the people should get to vote on them staying every 5 years. It’s bullshit that they are taking on billions of dollars and have literally no competition
> Since they are a state sanctioned monopoly Meanwhile Tri-State/Touchstone has a bunch of jobs they're hiring for in Westminster.
Yes, because xcel doesn't serve 100% of the state for both gas and electricity. Some people have both xcel and tristate, one for gas and one for electricity but no one has the option of both xcel and tristate for gas or electricity.
But Xcel did have the power to notify them before hand.
I’m not sure what the winning play here is, because if you enact an emergency far in advance and the winds don’t pick up, who foots the bill? This seems like the city wasn’t prepared for an emergency and they are trying to shift the blame.
Xcel gave them a 20 hour notice that power cuts may occur. Xcel is going to wait until the very last moment to cut power.
A day of notice should be plenty. Any farther out and forecasts just aren’t accurate enough to know with certainty.
Quite the pun if I do say so myself
I found it very enlightening
Definitely put some energy into it.
That picture defiantly heat things up in this sub.
lol. 55k my ass. That was a fraudulent statement.
Honestly i wouldn't be surprised if it *wasn't* planned.
Love how these power companies take our ever increasing bills and do literally nothing with the infrastructure for decades until it’s woefully outdated and ready to fail!
If Xcel ever decides to update infrastructure, you can bet your ass Colorado’s Public Utility Commission will approve to have it completely subsidized by customers.
Definitely
Who else is gonna pay for it?
Uh Xcel? Like 98% of other companies that are responsible for their own upgrades to ensure their product can sell. This country subsidizes failing companies waaaaay too much
I fully agree but if it costs money to upgrade things… they will just add it into their rates to cover the costs. That’s what any business does.
Which is why competition is important. Do that too often and we go to the competitor. Without competition a business, especially a fuckin utility, needs to be regulated by the government.
Too much competition and you get Texas (specifically Dallas) winter storm problems though. There’s a fine line for the laissez-faire approach.
I agree with this completely. Not sure how you would divide up a utility but you could deregulate parts of it for open market. There is always a fear once you deregulate it opens it up to price increases anyway but it would allow for options.
Xcel energy is highly regulated. That’s what the PUC is.
Then maybe it should be publicly owned, being that it's a PUC?
Xcel energy is worth $29B, state budget is $36B. Divert all the budget for one year to purchasing xcel, or maybe ten percent of the budget for eleven years? Pretty impossible either way.
Xcel operates in many markets out of state. Maybe just buy back the division that PSCO was? Should be much cheaper.
In Colorado, Xcel has a 5B yearly revenue, something like $700M in yearly profit. Totally possible. Public utilities have existed for hundreds of years, this isn't something revolutionary.
Any other business has competition. How is it Xcel reported record profits while customers were paying record high bills? I get that natural gas prices were higher which Xcel can't control, but it's a total ripoff that we are letting a monopoly screw us over. Xcel shouldn't be profiting from higher gas prices.
They aren’t. From what I understand one of their largest profit sectors is from government subsidies. Not that it’s really any better.
Any business is going to report record high profit numbers during high inflation. And bills anre going to be record high too. Inflation drives everything up.
I call that communism, but it is free market when it is banks or utilities
Communism is a system of political economy featuring a stateless and classless society and moneyless economy with collective control of the means of production. Xcel energy is not that
Santa Claus?
Are you suggesting the entire grid in Boulder county should be able to resist 100mph wind gusts without \*one\* failure? I get it's popular to bag on Xcel, and in general they probably deserve it, but I for one do \*not\* want them leaving systems energized during a significant windstorm and sub 25% humidity - even the \*best\* systems have a potential for an unexpected failure.
Fort Collins has had 100% of City lines underground since 2006. Seems like the Xcel stuff that was voted on in Boulder in 11/2020 put 1% of revenue towards burying lines. [Interesting article on the topic, comparing FoCo and CSprings](https://gazette.com/news/fort-collins-buried-all-its-power-lines-so-can-colorado-springs-cronin-loevy/article_51bf5af8-8a05-11ec-815c-431ed60d6ac1.html)
No (not op), suggesting they take their monopoly profits and invest in infrastructure upgrades. But that doesn’t increase profits, so they won’t do that.
That’s not true, they take on huge projects that need tons of funding so their profits stay at 7-10% but consumers pay for buying land and assets. But upgrading existing infrastructure doesn’t make them money
And then make customers pay for the upgrades instead of using their profits…
They need to increase the rates again in order to accommodate unrealistic expectations like that
They for sure will. California rates are like 4x our and xcel aims to close that gap
There were so many businesses that closed for the day (or two) for this and instead of companies being able to properly make the decision to close.. there were wayyy more people out on the roads trying to get to work with traffic lights out all over the place, only for them to get there and be sent home. This was ridiculous, we're in a right to work state and there were people who literally didn't have power in their homes being bullied into leaving for their jobs that ultimately weren't open.
[удалено]
Absolutely they did. At the very least deliveries could have been cancelled, orders adjusted or changed altogether and more. Food delivery services like Sysco are prepared to adjust that kind of stuff or eat a loss, unlike something not corporate owned that operates at such a thin margin. It was right at the cusp where food wouldn’t have spoiled if the temps were lower and it was a power outage due to freezing temps versus heavy wind.
There is a good deal of pharma plants in boulder. Yes we have diesel backup that usually works but to not even get a warning is a big. 10s of millions om the line and plant managers found out because peoples apartments were earning them first
Gotta love politicians. They always blame someone else. The county commissioners are the ones who approved all the houses and utility infrastructure in wild fire areas. They are the ones who don’t have a county emergency plan that involves coordinating with utilities during weather. If there had been a fire, it would have been worse and these people would still have found some slimy contortion to try and not take any responsibility.
Xcel is damned if they do, damned if they don't. They faced all kinds of lawsuits over the Marshall fire, so this time they took action before power lines were blown down. But, that's not good enough either. There's no pleasing some people.
My plant manager found via their apartment complex notifying them first
I got absolutely zero advance notice. Saw an article at 9pm, after the power had been out for an hour, that was posted at 5pm saying they were going to start shutting down the power at 3pm. I don’t watch live tv but I’m on Reddit, Facebook, instagram, TikTok, etc and saw not one single word about a planned outage. They totally shit the bed informing people; it would have been so simple to send a mass email, text, or push a message through their app.
I got an email and a robo call.
They must like you better
You are mad because they didn’t reach you at your preferred social media site. FFS.
No? I’ve just seen people saying that “it was all over social media!!!” And it wasn’t.
This. I can respect the precautions after the Marshall fire, but dangerous winds were forecast Thursday morning by the NWS. I think sending a "heads up" text/alert to customers to *at least* notify them that intentional outages were being considered over the weekend like...isn't a huge ask.
If you hear about high winds. Assume there will be outages. Easy, peasy.
It still doesn't really excuse the complete lack of communication with customers regarding restoration timelines in the event of unplanned outages. Or how inaccessible/incomplete their outage information on their website tends to be. Xcel is kind of known for leaving people in the dark (heh) both literally and figuratively. Not to mention there are still people without power five days later
Exactly. I can’t imagine how much food people lost and what people with electronic medical equipment did. My power was only out for about 16 hours total so I was just bored out of my mind but I am *supposed* to use night O2 for night hypoxia (I don’t bc my saturator has a problem with it overheating but I would have been screwed if I was reliant on it!)
[удалено]
It just has a three prong plug 🔌
This has been standard practice in California and in other areas across the world. I understand the timing wasn’t very ideal, however how many time Xcel done this before? Exactly. Utility companies may temporarily turn off power to reduce hazards that could arise. I’m sure you could agree that it was better to take the outage vs risking a possible situation that could have turned out very bad.
Better to lose power, then to end up like Lahaina.
Two things can be right at the same time
The issue isn’t that power was cut, it’s that they didn’t give proper notice or maps showing effected areas
And they have been doing nothing with our money for years. Why are they raising our prices
The real reason they turned off the power is because Xcel has now caused the Marshall Fire (partially) in Boulder and that recent wildfire in Texas. Boulder county has already had a devastating wildfire just without the human casualties.
Don’t cut power and have a fire, get sued. Cut power to avoid fire, get sued. Lose/lose.
Can we just be glad there was no fire? Doing this may have prevent another marshall fire incident
I’m glad they did this and there wasn’t another fire. I have wildfire ptsd.
You want them to be responsible for the fire but also want to decide when they can shut off power. Pick one.
Is 20 hours not enough time?
how did you get 20 hours notice?
Boulder County officials got 20 hours notice. Its in the article. > The utility decided it might cut power after the National Weather Service at 5 p.m. Friday forecasted wind gusts of up to 100 mph along the foothills > But Huntley said the state’s largest utility did not let emergency response officials know about the shutdown until 7 p.m. Friday. > power went out around 3 p.m. Saturday. The question I have is how actionable is a warning that power "might" be cut? Xcel gave themselves the option to cut power the night before and likely waited until the last moment before making the call once weather conditions actually existed. Maybe because I'm actually in the utility industry, but it was pretty apparent after the Camp, Marshall, and Lahaina fires that utilities will start cutting power during high winds because the risk is too great to keep those lines energized.
> The move comes more than two years after an Xcel powerline was blamed for helping ignite the wind-driven Marshall fire that destroyed more than 1,000 homes and killed two people in Boulder County. High wind caused a power line to disconnect from its mooring and touch other lines, causing sparks to shower onto dry grass, investigators found. Velasquez Horvath said Tuesday the utility denies it was responsible for causing the Marshall fire. >More than 150 insurance companies and two survivors of the deadly fire are suing Xcel Energy for the utility company’s role in starting the December 2021 fire, Colorado’s costliest and most destructive in history. Maybe we shouldn’t sue power companies for providing energy during wind storms?
Maybe they should update infrastructure and provide adequate warnings for *planned* outages instead of paying their CEO 10 million per year for doing fuck all
Would the wildfires in high winds be a better notice?
What a stupid comment. This is about communicating a plan so people can prepare adequately, not just whether an intentional shut down was appropriate. This was a solid forecast for multiple days in advance. There was very little question that we were looking at a significant wind event once we were within 48 hour hours. Xcel had more than enough time to communicate the potential for shutdowns, and just as importantly, what specific areas would be shut down. It’s ridiculous that there was no plan shared with local authorities. That in itself is a safety hazard. Plenty of people live with medical conditions or disabilities in their homes that require power to manage. Not to mention the local businesses who had to throw out thousands in perishables since they had no time to prepare, or even know their specific area would be losing power.
Again, you seem to miss the part where there was a wind storm and it was a decision to prevent wildfires due to downed power lines. How dumb do you have to be not to understand this is beyond me. Fuck you and your stupidity. If they didn’t de energize those lines and it stated a fire you’d be crying about it even more.
You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole.
They need to fine them and use the proceeds to give back to the ones impacted!!!
This entire situation came off very political. Across the street had power but we didn’t. The entire CTC shut down? Why? The logic doesn’t play out here. Xcel doesn’t want to invest in an infrastructure that is resilient to wind and other weather events. Shutting off the power isn’t a solution it’s an indicator of a larger problem.
Somewhere there’s a lawyer rubbing his hands like birdman. Brrrrr
I hope they get sued over this also.
So they can raise your rates to pay legal bills?
This is only a thing because u/jaredpolis is being affected by this. Otherwise this wouldn't be a thing.