When gale-force winds blow across the Front Range and mix with the region’s low humidity and drought-stricken vegetation, they stoke fears of another raging wildfire.
The 2021 Marshall fire that swept through Boulder County, burning more than 1,000 homes and businesses, killing two people and causing more than $2 billion in damage, changed how residents, policymakers and power providers view the threat of fires and efforts to prevent them.
Electric utilities are increasingly cutting power during extreme weather to reduce the threat of fire from trees falling on lines or wind-whipped lines igniting grasses. But after a recent series of preventive shutoffs by Xcel Energy in Colorado, residents impacted by the outages told legislators and state regulators they want solutions that don’t cause the disruption of days without electricity.
The calls were loudest for burying power lines, improving utility equipment to withstand storms and compensating businesses and individuals for losses due to outages.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission is taking comments and will write new rules for what are called
The planned power outages are just one tool to minimize wildfire risks, Xcel Energy-Colorado President Robert Kenney said in an interview with The Denver Post.
He said the company has buried many miles of power lines and will bury more in high-risk wildfire areas.
“We actually have about 50% of our system already underground, and so we are not opposed to it. We think that it is an appropriate tool for wildfire mitigation where it makes sense,” Kenney said.
A total of 19,000 miles of Xcel’s lines in Colorado are underground with 4,000 miles of those in high-risk wildfire areas. An additional 14,000 miles of power lines are overhead.
As part of that runs through 2027, Xcel energy plans to underground 50 more miles of power lines. Kenney said during a recent PUC hearing that the work would primarily be in Boulder.
Another tactic in the wildfire mitigation plan approved by the PUC is so-called sectionalization, which uses technology to isolate segments of the system to more precisely target trouble spots and avoid cutting power to a larger area. The process was used to reduce the impact in Boulder in March when strong winds and hot, dry weather led Xcel to warn of possible shutoffs.
Other tools are drones to inspect poles and equipment in high wildfire risk areas; covering conductors; replacing smaller-diameter wire with larger-diameter wire; keeping vegetation away from lines; replacing poles; enhancing weather forecasting; and adding more cameras with 360-degree views that use artificial intelligence and satellite feeds to detect fires early.
In 2025, Kenney said Xcel did about 8,000 repairs on equipment and replaced 10,000-plus poles.
One consideration with burying power lines is that it costs roughly $3.9 million a mile compared with about $1 million a mile for overhead lines, Kenney said. That could run as much as $200 million for the 50 miles of underground lines Xcel plans through 2027. At $3.9 million per mile, the price tag for undergrounding Xcel’s remaining 14,000 miles of overhead lines would be $54.6 billion.
While cost isn’t the sole factor, Kenney said Xcel considers the potential impact on ratepayers when deciding where and whether to bury power lines.
On the other side of the scale is the danger of another Marshall fire, which investigators said was caused in part by a blaze that ignited near part of Xcel’s distribution system when a power line became loose and set parched vegetation on fire. Investigators said reignited embers from an earlier fire on the property of the Twelve Tribes, a religious cult, was another starting point.
Xcel, facing hundreds of lawsuits in connection with the fire, agreed to a $640 million settlement in September, but disputes it was to blame for the fire.
Some speakers during a PUC hearing contended that Xcel chooses to cut power during high winds to avoid getting sued. Kenney said people would sue anyway.
“The risk of wildfire continues to evolve, and as the risk evolves, our mitigations continue to evolve,” Kenney said. “And so we’re constantly assessing and reassessing our risk mitigation efforts. It might very well be the case that our next plan will include additional undergrounding.”
‘The wind blows all the time in Colorado’
Crystal Baldwin, the owner of in Golden, would like to see more power lines buried. Her business was among several that lost money when Xcel cut the electricity in part of metro Denver and Boulder Dec. 17 and 19, the last weekend before Christmas.
“If this is what our new normal is going to be, then probably that has to happen,” Baldwin said.
If undergrounding more lines isn’t feasible, then Xcel needs to spend money on infrastructure that can stand up to the winds, she said. “Honestly, the wind blows in Colorado all the time. We can’t shut down all our businesses because the wind blows.”
The nearly 100 businesses that responded to a survey by the Golden Chamber of Commerce reported losing altogether about $1.8 million. Nola Krajewski, the chamber president, said the average loss was $18,000.
“We know that nobody wants another Marshall fire. Nobody wants to see that again and so I recognize that there is a need for proactive safety measures,” Krajewski said. “But with that being said, I don’t think the business community should bear the burden of responsibility for all of that.”
Businesses owners said they didn’t have enough notice to fully prepare for the December shutoffs, Krajewski said. Restaurants lost food. Small retailers missed out on crucial shopping days before the holiday. Business owners faced making payroll with no income coming in.
Aggravating the situation was confusion about where and when power would be turned off and when it would be restored. Krajewski said the communication felt disorganized. People got notice the power would be off, so they didn’t open for business. Then the power stayed on in some places.
Baldwin, whose store is in downtown Golden, said her business was closed for three days. The first day, she didn’t realize the power was still on until she looked at the in-store camera. She drove from her home in the foothills above Golden to open the store.
“We really didn’t do much business because the local people thought we were closed. They were getting the same messages,” Baldwin said.
Her losses, an estimated $18,000, came after a significant investment in remodeling and rebranding her store. She said community members with medical issues were left vulnerable and residents lost food when their refrigerators quit working.
Xcel said it is expanding a program that offers rebates on batteries for income-qualified customers on medical devices.
The electricity went out at in east Golden for about 36 hours, was on for a few hours and blinked out again for hours. The business lost 60 barrels of beer worth about $10,000 in the first outage said, Josh Robbins, founder, president and brewmaster of New Terrain.
“When you’re brewing beer, it needs to be temperature-controlled, especially in the first few days right after you brew it,” Robbins said. “We did lose one large batch of beer because it heated up too much.”
New Terrain kept its tap room open because it had compressed air “to push the beer,” Robbins said. A refrigerated truck kept beer cold. But people assumed everything was closed, so traffic was slow on what would typically be a busy weekend. Robbins figures the overall losses were about $30,000.
“The main part around it was just the lack of clarity,” Robbins said.
The notice about the planned outage was vague, he said. Another notice said power would be restored around 4 p.m., but returned hours ahead of that.
“It was really hard to plan,” Robbins said.
New Terrain is now set up to switch from its chiller to city water to cool beer if the power goes out. If preemptive power outages are expected to continue, Robbins said he might install a back-up generator. However, he estimates the work and equipment would cost roughly $100,000. He would like to know how Xcel plans to handle extreme weather going forward so he can decide if the outlay would be worth it.
“As far as Xcel goes, hopefully, they’re coming up with a plan that is more robust that can handle times like these,” Robbins said.
Burying power lines a no-brainer?
Xcel Energy will file another wildfire-mitigation plan with the PUC in 2027. Kenney told a legislative committee after the December outages that the company is expanding the use of devices that cut electricity to certain lines if something touches the line when the threat of wildfires is high.
Technology will also allow Xcel to shut off power to specific points to reduce the time and scope of cutoffs, Kenney said. Placing crews in strategic locations before power shutoffs, using drones and helicopters and exploring ways to automate line inspections can help speed up restoration of electricity after wind storms are over.
Xcel has to be sure the lines are OK and free of branches and other objects before turning the electricity back on, Kenney said. That can take hours to days.
Xcel said approximately 348,000 customers were affected by planned outages and outages because of wind damage in December. About 30,000 customers lost power in January and 11,996 in March because of planned and unplanned outages.
For the public, undergrounding power lines might seem like “a no-brainer solution” to extreme weather, said Scott Aaronson, senior vice president of energy security and industry operations at the Edison Electric Institute. The association represents U.S. investor-owned electric utilities such as Xcel Energy.
“But there are significant challenges with undergrounding. First of all, it’s very expensive,” Aaronson said.
The costs depend on the terrain, the geology and whether the lines are being laid in an established neighborhood or a new development.
“One other challenge I don’t think people think about quite as much is when something goes wrong underground, it is significantly more difficult to fix it,” Aaronson said
And expensive.
“There are concerns around adding significant cost to customers at a time when affordability is a high priority,” Aaronson said.
Burying power lines won’t prevent all wildfires, he added. He said more than 90% of fires are started by something other than electric infrastructure.
However, the risk of catastrophic wildfires is growing, and not just in the West. As a result, Aaronson said utilities’ cost-benefit analysis of burying lines is changing.
“Where it makes sense, targeted undergrounding is increasingly being chosen as a viable tool to reduce fire risk,” Aaronson said.
When technology advanced in the 1980s and 1990s, that made it easier to bury lines and it often made sense to do, especially for new developments, said Michael Lamb, Xcel Energy executive vice president whose areas include electric distribution and wildfire risk management.
Despite the ongoing advances, there are some places where it’s difficult or impossible to run lines underground because of the geology, Lamb said.
For , undergrounding power lines is “our strongest layer of protection against catastrophic wildfires,” spokeswoman Andria Borba said in an email. She said the practice has reduced the risk by 98%.
The utility has . Borba said PG&E has undergrounded more than 1,220 miles of line and is on track to complete a total of nearly 1,900 miles in high-risk fire areas by the end of 2027. The utility has installed more than 1,450 miles of strengthened poles and covered power lines
Burying power lines costs PG&E roughly $3 million per mile, Borba said. Approximately $3 of the average monthly customer bill goes towards undergrounding lines and $19 per month toward managing vegetation.
Like Xcel Energy, PG&E cuts the electricity when conditions are ripe for wildfires. Also like Xcel, PG&E uses devices to target trouble spots to narrow the scope of the outage.
PG&E uses microgrids, or distributed energy sources such as solar that are independent of the main electric grid, to minimize the impact on customers. Power shutoffs affected more than 2 million customers in 2019. In 2025, the number was about 18,000, Borba said.
The California utility has faced heavy fallout from destructive wildfires. Lawsuits over fires drove PG&E to file for bankruptcy protection in 2019. Investigators said started when a hook holding a PG&E transmission line broke and set dry vegetation ablaze.
The and emerged from bankruptcy in 2020.
A lot of work left to do
The Boulder area is a focus of Xcel’s plans for more underground lines. The city of Boulder has about 60% of its power lines underground.
“Utilities really didn’t start undergrounding until kind of the 1980s as a normal course of business,” Carolyn Elam, sustainability senior manager for the city of Boulder, said.
As Boulder grew, the city required burying power lines when areas were redeveloped or built out. Much of the underground work Xcel looks to do is in Boulder County, outside the city limits, Elam said.
But parts of the city will benefit from the work because the lines feed areas within Boulder. One such project will bury lines along 75th Street near the city’s wastewater treatment plant. In April 2024, the first time Xcel used preemptive power outages to reduce wildfire risks, city employees had to scramble to ensure raw sewage didn’t flow into Boulder Creek when power was cut to the plantap two electric substations.
Elam said the line serves about 2,000 customers in the area. While putting lines underground reduces wildfire risk, she said it doesn’t ensure reliability of the system.
“We’ve seen some pretty substantial outages recently that are associated with the underground cables starting to fail, reaching the end of life,” Elam said.
Many outages have nothing to do with trees or overhead wires, she said. “They’re just the natural aging of Xcel’s infrastructure in our area.”
Xcel has been aggressively replacing old poles and wires, particularly in the wildland areas, Elam said. “There’s a lot of that work going on. But there’s a lot that has to be done and it takes quite a bit of time.”
