With arctic weather chilling Colorado, Xcel Energy said Friday it had taken steps to prevent power outages like those that afflicted its customers last year during a bout of subzero temperatures.
Xcel said it had contracted for additional natural gas deliveries over the weekend for power generation, ensured that power plant mechanical equipment was working and not prone to freeze-ups, and created better communication channels for utility staffers to respond to potential problems.
On Feb. 18, rolling blackouts left 371,370 Colorado customers of Xcel without electricity and almost all of them without heat, after temperatures plunged to minus 13 degrees.
A subsequent investigation by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission criticized Xcel for failing to take steps to prevent the outages and for ineffectively communicating with customers about the magnitude of the problem.
The current arctic cold front arrived Thursday with forecasts of several nights of subzero temperatures. Daily lows are not expected to rise above zero until Tuesday.
“We’ve had a lot of people in a lot of different departments making sure we’ve learned from the experiences of Feb. 18,” said Tom Imbler, Xcel Energy’s vice president of commercial operations.
Among steps Xcel has taken to prevent cold-weather outages:
Named Imbler as Xcel’s Colorado reliability coordinator with responsibility to manage all operations when outages or other problems develop.
Previously, Xcel had no single person in charge of coordinating the utility’s response to outages.
Contracted to purchase 15 percent more natural gas during this cold snap compared to the same period last January.
In the event of a power-plant breakdown, the 80,000 dekatherms of additional gas could be delivered to other natural gas-fired power plants to generate enough electricity to supply 200,000 customers with power for one hour.
Enacted five separate emergency simulations since February to rehearse response to ruptured gas pipelines, downed transmission lines and loss of power generation.
Revised Xcel’s internal forecasting for weather and gas consumption to more quickly respond to changing conditions.
“We believe our planning and execution will be much better than it was last year,” Imbler said.
Xcel is expected Tuesday to file a year-end report to the PUC on its progress in implementing 95 recommendations developed by the PUC staff to prevent future wide-scale outages.
Imbler said at least 74 of the recommendations have been adopted and that almost all of the 95 will have been addressed by the end of January.
PUC spokeswoman Barbara Fernandez said staffers from the regulatory agency have regularly conferred with Xcel officials since the cold front was first forecast.
“We have been in frequent communication with Xcel,” she said. “Staff members are always concerned about reliability and we continue to monitor the situation.”
Staff writer Steve Raabe can be reached at 303-954-1948 or at sraabe@denverpost.com.
