Brandon Bortles was gearing up for a big week, with plans to pack his two Golden restaurants with families celebrating the upcoming holidays.
Instead, Xcel Energy shut off power to his eateries — Abejas Bistro and Nosu Ramen — and other restaurants along Washington Street on Dec. 17. Then again on Dec. 19 — a potentially lucrative Friday night.
Bortles, 51, was idled for nearly 60 hours.
The reason: a “particularly dangerous situation,” a rarely issued red flag warning from the National Weather Service for high winds. When combined with the warm and dry winter conditions that exist in Colorado, the ingredients are in place for an urban wildfire, like the devastating Marshall fire that ripped through Boulder County four years ago.
The end result of Xcel’s Public Safety Power Shutoff, or PSPS, was the closure of both of Bortles’ restaurants for four nights. He estimates $60,000 in lost business and another $10,000 in spoiled food that had to be tossed. He wonders if Xcel could have spared Golden’s downtown commercial district.
While there were high winds out on Colorado 93 and in the foothills above Boulder — with some gusts higher than 100 mph that snapped power poles and downed trees — Bortles said things were mostly still in Golden. The decorative Japanese lanterns he hangs at his ramen restaurant, often torn to ribbons during typical wind storms, went unscathed this time.
“I did not have to replace any of them. Downtown Golden wasn’t windy and they closed down my business during my busiest week,” Bortles said. “There was no nimbleness on the part of Xcel.”
Twenty miles north, Cheryl Liguori had to cancel a Dec. 19 show by a Grateful Dead-themed bluegrass band, scheduled for the Fox Theater in Boulder. Xcel had cut power to the theater and an expected crowd of 200 would have to be turned away, she said.
Liguori, the CEO of Z2 Entertainment, said the sudden cancellation was “brutal” for staff gearing up for the night. While she understands the need to avoid another Marshall fire, she said this can’t be the new normal.
“We appreciate being cautious,” she said. “But we want Xcel to focus on improving the infrastructure because we don’t want these disruptions to continue. We’re going to continue having wind storms regularly and there’s gotta be a better way to keep our communities safe and open.”
The stories from Golden and Boulder were echoed by the thousands in the areas affected by Xcel’s preemptive shutoff, which included portions of Boulder, Jefferson, Clear Creek, Weld and Larimer counties. In all, Xcel said it shut off power to about 117,000 customers.
Spoiled food, unrefrigerated medicine and medical equipment that couldn’t be turned on, as well as communication lapses with Xcel, topped the list of complaints. The Public Utilities Commission said as of Dec. 30, more than 3,500 people had provided input on the shutoffs at a online.
The frustration with the situation reached the highest levels of Colorado government, with Gov. Jared Polis chastising Xcel to “provide clear and up-to-date information to consumers on planned and unplanned energy outages.”
“No Coloradan should be wondering if they will or will not have power, and when it may be turned on again, or worse, receive no communication or confusing communication,” Polis said in a Dec. 19 news release.
Attorney General Phil Weiser also took the utility to task in last month. He said the shutoff, “often with little notice and for days, is unprecedented and unacceptable.”
Tamara Lineberger, a longtime resident of Arvada’s Maple Valley neighborhood, had to get a hotel room during the power outages. Five years after her heart surgery, she relies on a CPAP machine for night breathing.
“As someone who relies on electricity to keep my insulin good, I just never had to think about going without,” she said. “The anxiety for me was the hard part.”
Lineberger, 66, spent around $400 for two nights at the hotel even though her husband told her there was barely a gust in their neighborhood. She was also confused that while her street was dark and cold, neighborhoods not even a mile away were fully powered up and illuminated cheerfully for Christmas.
“It didn’t seem like it made sense,” Lineberger said. “I didn’t think they did a good job with communication.”
Marshall fire changed everything
The Dec. 30, 2021, Marshall fire, driven by hurricane-force winds, burned down more than 1,000 homes in Superior, Louisville and unincorporated Boulder County. In an investigation that concluded in June 2023, investigators determined that Xcel’s power lines ignited a fire near the Marshall Mesa Trailhead, though they concluded it was not the only source of the blaze.
That spurred hundreds of lawsuits against Xcel. In September, Xcel settled with plaintiffs for $640 million while insisting its equipment did not cause the fire.
While Xcel Energy’s Colorado President Robert Kenney last month denied that Xcel’s recent implementation of proactive power outages is tied to the Marshall fire, Bortles isn’t convinced. The Golden restaurateur said he and others feel “like a pawn in this game of liability.”
Xcel imposed its first PSPS in Boulder in April 2024, which also drew negative reactions from local officials. While they recognized the risk Xcel was trying to manage, they criticized the utility’s communications with customers. Arvada Councilman Bob Fifer, who represents a section of the city that was most impacted by the December shutoffs, said he received about 10 complaints from constituents.
Fifer sympathizes with those frustrated that they lost power despite a lack of wind in Arvada but said closer to the foothills “we did experience winds strong enough to topple trees, damage roofs, and move unsecured equipment across Highway 93.”
“PSPS decisions are based on regional conditions and forecasted risk, not solely on block-by-block observations,” he said. “At the same time, it is difficult to assess whether potential damage or loss of life was prevented through the shutoff. Balancing the risks of wildfire against the impacts of power loss is complex and consequential.”
On Dec. 30, the PUC voted to look into Xcel’s actions during the December wind storms, as the agency prepares to craft rules for preemptive shutdowns.
“Our focus in the coming weeks and months will be to gather all the facts and input from Xcel customers so we can fully understand the particulars of the December shutoffs and determine what we can and should address in permanent rules,” Katie O’Donnell, a spokeswoman for the PUC, said.
Xcel spokeswoman Lisa M. Andersen said the utility did its best to deal with an incredibly complex situation.
“Proactively shutting off power is not a step we take lightly,” she said. “We consider weather, wind speeds, relative humidity, fuel moisture and temperature as well as critical customers and infrastructure before deciding to implement a PSPS. We have a dedicated team of experts who constantly survey conditions and during extreme or critical wildfire risk conditions, a PSPS may be necessary.”
For customers frustrated by shutoffs even though they felt no wind blowing, Andersen said it’s important to understand that “power lines serving a given area may travel through areas exposed to more extreme weather conditions and higher levels of wildfire risk than customers experienced at their location.”
And the patchwork nature of the shutoffs, Andersen said, were not “arbitrary.”
“Though some circuits were proactively shut off, most other circuits were set to enhanced powerline safety settings that would trip the circuit off and remain out in the event of an issue on the line,” she said.
‘Why hasn’t that been addressed?’
Clare Tone said the winds were whipping at her Broken Arrow Ranch near Ward — enough, ironically, to knock down the ranch’s solar array, rendering it worthless.
“So I was not disappointed when Xcel said they would turn power off,” Tone said. “While we were inconvenienced, we understand the challenges and risks.”
But what did frustrate Tone was the repeatedly extended time for power restoration the utility kept giving her. In the end, her ranch went without electric power for nearly a full week.
“The timeline kept getting pushed back without any notice — and that went on for 48 hours,” she said.
Given that the pump for her well was out of juice, Tone ended up hauling water in 5-gallon jugs to water her four horses at the ranch. Xcel, she said, needs to focus on hardening its systems and burying more lines so they aren’t vulnerable to wind storms.
Xcel told The Denver Post it has invested millions of dollars in . The utility has plans to invest nearly another $2 billion through 2027 to protect against wildfire, Andersen said.
That’s a number that vexes Bortles, the Golden restaurant owner. Xcel for 2024.
Bortles wonders why vulnerable power poles, which snapped out on Colorado 93 during last month’s wind storms, haven’t been replaced with underground conduits.
“With $2 billion in profits, why hasn’t that been addressed?” he said.
The shutoffs also come less than a month after Xcel asked state regulators for an increase of $355.5 million to its rate base, which would boost the average residential electric bill by nearly 10% per month. If approved, the increase would take effect in September 2026 with the additional funds to be spent on distribution, transmission and generation.
Brett Vernon, a Leyden Rock resident in Arvada, lost power during both storms. He was puzzled by the decisions Xcel made as to who needed to be turned off — and for how long. The utility, he said, needs to be more precise with who it targets for turn-offs and that those decisions more accurately reflect the risk.
“I hope the patchwork nature of this is addressed so that areas that aren’t at high risk aren’t penalized for Xcel’s $600 million settlement,” he said. “Maybe this is the new normal, but we have to fine-tune our response.”
