On Feb. 18, Coloradans were reminded that heat and electricity don’t just magically appear in their homes but instead depend on complex systems where sometimes things can go badly wrong.
On that unusually frigid morning, Xcel Energy shut off electricity and heat to 325,000 homes, with blackouts lasting as long as four hours in 20,000 locations. While it was the first time widespread outages hit in the winter (they usually strike in summer), Colorado should avoid a repeat. The state Public Utilities Commission is investigating, but a review of what’s already known highlights two areas that deserve scrutiny.
The outages happened partly because Xcel couldn’t find enough natural gas to keep its power plants running full-speed. The logical response would be to store more natural gas in the future, but that’s easier said than done.
Everyone wants reliable natural gas supplies but no one wants a gas storage facility near their house. In 2001, Xcel closed its Leyden unit between Boulder and Golden. For decades gas had been injected into an old coal mine for storage, but eventually gas seeped through underground fissures and migrated hundreds of feet horizontally (although it never oozed to the surface). Meanwhile, residential development was coming closer to what had been a remote site, so Xcel eventually bowed to local pressure and shut down the site. Now Xcel relies on just one storage facility, which wasn’t enough to cope with the series of problems that arose Feb. 18.
Opening a new storage site along the Front Range would be tough – Xcel runs into NIMBYism even with small gas facilities like compressors or pipelines. Yet putting storage units a long ways from the urban area doesn’t make sense because gas moseys through pipelines at a turtle-like 10 miles per hour, too slow to react if a quick supply boost is needed.
Xcel says it’s not planning more storage because these days most storage is handled by pipeline companies. The PUC should ask: So who is responsible for ensuring that Colorado has adequate gas storage?
The PUC also should look at why Xcel didn’t quickly interrupt gas supplies to some industrial customers, which by long-established contract agree to be cut off in an emergency in return for a price break. Xcel should have cut off these customers late Feb. 17 but instead waited until Saturday. Xcel has acknowledged that the system didn’t work as intended.
The PUC needs to carefully scrutinize the February blackouts to make sure that Colorado’s basic public services aren’t vulnerable to future disruptions.
