During last weekend’s sweltering temperatures several power outages, some long lasting, occurred in the Denver metro area. The newspapers’ headlines reporting the situation may have reminded some people of President’s Day weekend last February when upslope cold front moved in, dropping temperatures far below what Xcel predicted for its power load requirements. At 08:47 on Saturday morning, February 18, 2006 Xcel Energy “initiated rolling blackouts due to a power supply shortfall of nearly 400 megawatts on its electric power system. More than 371,000 Colorado electric service customers lost power for an average of more than 41 minutes on one of the coldest days in several years.” The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) asked Xcel Energy for a report on the cause of the outages, the length of time of the outages, and the poor communications the company provided to the people who called to report outages.
Xcel’s reports and the PUC’s staff response reports are found on the on the PUC web page.
Maybe these reports will be joined by reports explaining the July outages.
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