Xcel Energy likely could have prevented a major Feb. 18 power outage if the company had responded more quickly and effectively to developing problems that day, the Public Utilities Commission said in a report released today.
The outage, which occurred when temperatures plunged to a frigid minus-13 degrees, left 371,370 Colorado customers without electricity and most of them without heat. While most lost power for 30 minutes, about 20,500 customers were left without electricity for periods ranging from one to six hours.
“This is plainly unacceptable,” said PUC Chairman Greg Sopkin. “On a day in which the temperature dropped to minus-13 degrees, it is a basic necessity for people to be able to run their forced air furnaces or hot water pumps. Without electricity, there was no heat for a substantial percentage of Xcel’s customers as well as various rural electric association customers that ultimately rely on Xcel.”
The outage occurred from a combination of mechanical problems from cold weather, inadequate supplies of natural gas, generating stations that were down for maintenance, and company procedures that failed to respond quickly to the developing problems, the PUC said.
The 129-page report issued by the PUC staff was critical of Xcel for not only failing to take steps to prevent the outage, but for ineffectively communicating with customers about the magnitude of the problem. Some 240,000 phone calls to Xcel on Feb. 18 were greeted with busy signals, and the few callers that got through were given inaccurate or incomplete information about the outage.
The report recounted the series of events that led to the rolling outages, and concluded with a series of recommendations that Xcel should implement to prevent a repeat of the outage.
Among the recommendations, the PUC said that Xcel must:
–Improve customer communications.
–Develop better mechanisms to purchase natural gas when demand is expected to be high.
–Identify who in the company has executive-level accountability to implement improvements.
–Develop a corporate response team to deal with emergencies.
Xcel officials said some of the recommendations already have been implemented. Patricia Vincent, president and CEO of Xcel subsidiary Public Service Co. of Colorado, said she had not yet had a chance to review the report to see if additional PUC recommendations are valid and warranted.
