Power outages for at least the past two weeks have bedeviled a west Arvada neighborhood, sending residents scrambling to save food in their refrigerators and causing businesses to close early.
The area hit by the outages is the Maple Valley neighborhood, generally bounded by 72nd and 64th avenues and Indiana and Eldridge streets. Amy Hene said her electricity went out about five times in the past two weeks and a total of eight times in the last two months.
“It’s been during the day, on the weekend,” Hene said.
The length of the outages has varied.
Xcel Energy provides electricity to the area. Hene said residents haven’t been notified beforehand, so they’re not the planned shutoffs that the utility will announce when windy, dry weather increases the danger of fires igniting if lines come loose or trees fall on equipment.
Xcel spokeswoman Lisa Andersen said the problem was overly sensitive safety settings on power lines near 64th Avenue and Indiana Street. The technology is used to cut wildfire risk by halting the flow of electricity more quickly if an object touches the line.
“Upon investigation, our team found that a feeder was set with overly sensitive settings, which were triggered by increased demand during the summer months,” Andersen said in an email.
Crews fixed the settings, she said Thursday.
“We understand outages are disruptive, and we appreciate our customers’ patience as we balance reliability and protecting our communities from wildfire risk,” Andersen said.
Hene said she understands Xcel’s caution after the devastation in Colorado and other states from wildfires sparked by electrical equipment and power lines when buffeted by extreme winds and fueled by tinder-dry vegetation.
“It’s just that they’ve got to figure it out. They make billions of dollars, they can figure it out,” Hene said.
Xcel Energy has come under heavy criticism from customers and scrutiny by regulators after a series of planned power shutoffs in late December that left tens of thousands of people in the Denver area and the foothills without electricity for days. People complained that those dependent on power for medical devices were put in danger. Businesses said they lost food, beverages and money.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission is considering new rules for utilities that proactively cut off power during extreme weather.
Mile High Wine Cellars in the Westwoods Shopping Center on West 64th Avenue lost power at least five times in one week, employee Nick DiGiacomo said. The electricity went out on Monday at around 5 p.m. and didn’t come back on until about 7:15. he said.
DiGiacomo and another worker closed the store.
“You can’t do anything. You can’t even do cash transactions because you can’t scan anything,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve lost any product because we just kept everything closed. The cooler stayed cold. But we definitely lost lots of business.”
DiGiacomo estimated the store lost $1,000 to $2,000 a day when outages occurred. Half of the stores in the shopping center get their electricity from a different part of the grid, so their power stayed on.
“It’s ridiculous at this point. Everyone should buy a generator, you know? If you can’t have power, then why even pay an electricity bill?” DiGiacomo asked.
Ken Charles has lived in the neighborhood since 1996. He said he hasn’t had problems with power outages until recently. After losing power for several hours earlier this year, he grabbed food from the freezers and took it down “to our three kids in Littleton, Lakewood and Highlands Ranch.”
The same thing happened in December when Xcel had preventive shutoffs because of the high wildfire risk. Charles said he called Xcel about the recent outages, but never got a response. He questioned what kind of upkeep and improvement to its infrastructure the company does.
Xcel has said in documents filed with regulators and on its website that it has invested $1.9 billion on plans to reduce wildfire dangers and millions of dollars to repair and replace power lines, poles and other equipment.
Charles is skeptical of what the company is doing to prevent more outages.
“I don’t think they care what people think,” he said. “And they don’t care about suggestions. They’re going to do whatap best for their business model.”
