Xcel Energy expects the shutoff will impact about 69,000 customers in Boulder, Clear Creek, Gilpin, Jefferson, Larimer and Weld counties.
DENVER — Xcel is planning for another public safety power shutoff Friday morning, as tens of thousands of customers are still without power due to planned and unplanned outages that began Wednesday.
Xcel said they’re planning for a second public safety power shutoff Friday, beginning as early as 5 a.m. They expect the shutoff will impact about 69,000 customers in Boulder, Clear Creek, Gilpin, Jefferson, Larimer and Weld counties.
“Given Friday’s event there will be added days to restoration for some customers, meaning some may experience more than 3 days of being without power,” the utility said in a news release Thursday afternoon. “Customers should know crews will work as quickly as possible to safely restore power.”
> Customers can look up their address on the utility’s outage map to find out if they could be affected by a shutoff.
Xcel is still working to restore power to thousands of people on Thursday after strong winds whipped across the metro area Wednesday, with gusts of over 100 mph in areas north and west of Denver.
As of 11 p.m. Thursday, nearly 6,000 Xcel customers are still without power.
In an update Thursday morning, Robert Kenney, president of Xcel Energy Colorado, said more than 160,000 customers were without power at the peak of Wednesday’s outages.
Some of those outages were the result of public safety power shutoffs, The company began shutting off power about 10 a.m. Wednesday to about 50,000 customers in parts of Boulder, Larimer, Jefferson, Weld and Clear Creek counties. Others lost power due to the intense winds.
Kenney said crews are working to restore power to everyone affected by Wednesday’s outages, even if they have to de-energize those same power lines again Friday.
> Watch Thursday morning’s update from Xcel:
Kenney said power can’t be turned back on immediately after a planned shutoff because crews have to visually inspect the lines before they can be re-energized. He said there’s no expectation that power that was shut off due to a planned outage would be restored faster than an unplanned outage.
“I want to make sure I dispel the confusion,” Kenney said in an update Thursday morning. “The wind events subsided at 6:00. We cannot flip a switch and turn the power back on at 6:00. And the reason that that’s the case is that if there’s a wire that has been damaged and is down on the ground because of the wind, if we were to remotely re-energize that line, you’ve just created the very risk you’re trying to abate. And so we have to physically inspect all of the lines. That’s the PSPS lines that we de-energized proactively, and we also had to inspect the lines that were damaged through the wind event.”
“So the power was never going to come back on at 6:00, and I apologize if there was confusion about that,” Kenney said. “We tried to be very precise that power will not come back on the minute the wind conditions improve because we have to physically inspect.”
Kenney said about 375 crews – more than 1,000 workers – are using helicopters, drones and foot patrols to visually inspect the lines. Still, the utility said, restoration could take “up to several days.”
Crews are still assessing how many lines were damaged in Wednesday’s winds, Kenney said.
Kenney said crews are working as quickly as possible to safety restore power but did not provide an exact timeline of when power will be back on – either for the customers who lost power Wednesday, or after the potential shutoffs and outages Friday.
“We would like customers to make sure that they’re prepared for a potential multi-day outage,” Kenney said.
Other Colorado electric utilities, including Poudre Valley REA and CORE Electric Cooperative, also reported unplanned power outages Wednesday.
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