With more than 40 power outages in 2024, Colorado residents demand answers
Time after time, the people of Sterling Ranch, south of Chatfield Reservoir, have had to deal with their power out.
Friday it was out for about five hours.
"I was in the dentist's office in the middle of getting my implant cleaned and the power went off right halfway between in. I can imagine how the other people there felt too," said Patti Kleewein.
Linda Amato and her partner Randy Lee have been in the community for about five years.
"We expected with a new community the infrastructure would be able to handle it, but apparently not.
For the first four years, three and a half four years, we didn't have any power outages at all. So it's been the last year or year and a half that we've seen a significant increase," said Amato.
Monday night, Xcel Energy brass showed up at a community meeting and got a bit of a jolt from people upset over the continued outages. Xcel said it was looking at the frequency and causes of the outages. It counted 46 outages from the beginning of the year.
"Tonight we hope to get some resolution on what these issues are. What the plan is so we can mitigate those power outages and have our people enjoy their lives," said Gary Debus, general manager for the Community Authority Board, which oversees the community like an HOA.
"Any one of those things by itself would likely not cause the frequency of outages that you've been seeing. What we've seen is the confluence of multiple events and things and events happening," said Xcel Energy Colorado President Robert Kenney. "Some of it is related to the enhanced power line safety settings."
The higher settings have come into play this year as Xcel tries to prevent the ignition of wildfires.
Add to that load, growth, said Kenney.
"So it's not just a single issue that we're seeing," he said. "Coupled with that we're also seeing extremely high temperatures which also places a strain on the system so it was a confluence of multiple different causes all at one time."
Kenney said Xcel is also looking at the settings on the lines that cause lines to de-energize. Such settings exist to prevent potential fires, but in the area, the higher sensitivity of the settings may be one thing that can be reviewed.
The Sterling Ranch community is already one of close to 2,500 homes, but it is still only about 20 percent built out. There will be significant power demand increases in the years ahead.
Kenney said Xcel had found about 300 defects in the two feeder lines coming into the area, caused by issues such as old equipment or interference from vegetation. Xcel said it hoped to have those issues squared away by October. On a similar timeline, it says the completion of the Waterton substation will be a third feeder line bringing power into the area.
