Xcel Energy said all of its customers who lost power over the weekend because of equipment failure caused by the extreme heat had been returned to service by about noon Tuesday.
“The (heat-related) outages from Monday and the weekend are back in service,” Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz said.
But as of 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, more than 600 customers in the Highland neighborhood in northwest Denver had lost power. An Xcel representative told a caller that the outage was caused by a blown fuse and would be fixed within four hours.
Xcel spokesman Tom Henley said Tuesday evening that some “normal everyday outages” still could be occurring because of equipment failure or other reasons.
Record high temperatures that hit 103 degrees over the weekend caused equipment failures that knocked power out to as many as 12,000 Xcel customers Sunday night – mostly in the metro area.
Overloaded transformers failed when customers looking for relief from the heat ran air conditioners full blast, Xcel has said.
Temperatures somewhat abated Tuesday, peaking at 98 degrees in the early afternoon in Denver.
During the recent heat-wave peak, demand among Xcel’s 1.3 million Colorado electric customers hit 6,430 megawatts Friday, which was below the record 6,785 megawatts set last July. One megawatt is enough power to serve 800 to 1,000 households.
On Tuesday, record-setting heat continued across much of the nation. The heat placed unprecedented demand on power grids. PJM Interconnection, which operates the electric grid in 13 mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states and the District of Columbia, asked customers to conserve electricity as a precaution.
Electricity-grid operators in New York and California also said demand Tuesday could match or top records set Monday.
Xcel’s Stutz said the record electricity demand in the East would not affect Colorado, but California is on the same Western power grid as Colorado, so major problems there could spell trouble here.
“Potentially, if some type of catastrophic event happened there and there is not a quick response to it, it can have an echo effect on other parts of the Western grid,” Stutz said.
Denver Post staff writer Steve Raabe and Post wire services contributed to this report.
Staff writer Steve McMillan can be reached at 303-820-1695 or smcmillan@denverpost.com.
Power update
The situation: Power has been restored to customers hit by blackouts during the weekend, Xcel says.
What to do: Xcel customers may phone 800-895-4999 to report additional outages.
