Are microgrids the key to combating Xcel Energy’s wildfire-driven power outages in Boulder?

Xcel Energy, which shut down power for the first time on April 6 in Colorado to prevent wildfires, may do so again amid increasing fire risk. The sudden outage affected 35,000 people in the City of Boulder, leading to losses from spoiled food, disrupted businesses and public safety threats. 

Discussions are now focusing on ways to maintain electricity when wildfire risk is high and power is cut, or floods cause outages. Enter microgrids as one possible solution.

“It’s obviously a very hot topic of conversation right now,” Matt Lehrmnan, a senior policy adviser for the City of Boulder, told Boulder Reporting Lab.

A microgrid is a single building or network of buildings that can function as a small-scale power grid. It can disconnect from the utility grid, operating as an island in emergencies. Microgrids have typically been constructed by academic institutions, healthcare facilities and government agencies, where power interruptions can have dangerous consequences. These are often powered by fossil fuel generators.

But as climate change brings increasing weather extremes and power outages, municipalities are exploring microgrids to add energy and climate resilience to their communities in ways that emit less carbon. The first neighborhood microgrid in the United States came online in 2023 in Bronzeville, Chicago. Power in Bronzeville is generated by an array of solar panels and stored in batteries, backed up by gas generators. The project cost $25 million.

In Colorado, a 2022 bill established a grant process for communities to explore microgrids. Boulder’s Rep. Judy Amabile and Senate President Stephen Fenberg sponsored the bill. Yet Boulder was not a grantee in the first rounds of funding. The bill targeted rural communities that lack Boulder’s resources, as well as towns that own their own utilities, which Boulder does not.

Still, according to Lehrman, city staff have started considering microgrids in Boulder, although there are financial and logistical barriers.

“It is a good tool that we should have access to,” Lehrman said. “I think it’s just really hard.”

The primary barrier is Xcel, according to officials. Even enthusiastic homeowners can’t invest in these multi-building systems on their own, as the utility owns the infrastructure — the poles and wires — needed to distribute power from house to house. “In my understanding, Xcel just hasn’t been interested in that at this point,” Lehrman said.

Michelle Aguayo, a spokesperson for Xcel Energy, told Boulder Reporting Lab that the company is not opposed to microgrids and has projects underway not only in Wisconsin and Minnesota but also in Colorado. These include six projects at various stages of development: the Alamosa Recreation Center, the Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities, Denver International Airport, the Denver Rescue Mission, the National Western Center and the Nederland Community Center.

“The microgrids integrate existing solar arrays with new lithium phosphate batteries at each site,” Aguayo said, providing “emergency services to the community in the rare event of a long power outage.”

Lehrman also noted the challenge of neighborhood differences: There’s no off-the-shelf microgrid solution that fits all. Each neighborhood would require a tailored system. For instance, homeowners in a cul-de-sac might struggle to balance their solar and battery resources with their power needs while deciding how long the microgrid should sustain power during outages.

“This can be done, it’s just kind of a bespoke system,” Lehrman said. “Every neighborhood is going to be a little different.”

Rather than going neighborhood by neighborhood, city staff are starting by thinking about at-risk residents or businesses first. They are considering microgrid solutions like installing solar panels and batteries downtown to support restaurants during outages, or bolstering power reliability at a senior living facility with a solar garden to protect residents who rely on oxygen.

While there are no residential microgrids in Boulder, there is a multi-building microgrid that is neither clean-burning nor wholly residential.

CU Boulder’s microgrid keeps lights on 

That microgrid, located in the middle of the city at the University of Colorado, kept most university buildings’ lights on throughout the April 6 weekend, despite widespread outages in the city. 

“We have certain amounts of research that really can’t be disrupted,” said Brian Lindoerfer, the associate vice chancellor for facilities management at CU Boulder. “If it is disrupted, there is potentially life’s work to be lost.”

The university’s microgrid is a power plant, originally built in 1909, that can run on either diesel fuel or natural gas. Although the plant’s turbines were updated in the 1990s, Lindoerfer explained that because the plant’s technology is 30 years old and damaging to the climate, it is no longer used daily. “But when we know we have weather events coming up, we may bring up a turbine to get a portion of our power supported as a resiliency measure,” he said.

Despite receiving the same short notice from Xcel Energy as everyone else, campus staff activated one of the plant’s turbines. “We were carrying a portion of our campus load with that turbine,” he said. The university can do this because it owns the transmission lines that distribute power across campus. Yet this comes as the university works toward its climate goals, including achieving zero emissions by 2050.

“We’re looking at, How do we preserve that resiliency measure into the future as we look forward to wean off of fossil fuels?” Lindoerfer said.

Solutions that ‘don’t leave anyone behind’

If neighborhood microgrids are more challenging economically and logistically, individual Boulder residents have alternatives to noisy, emissions-heavy generators if they’re willing to pay for resilience. Lehrman mentioned rooftop solar paired with batteries as one option. 

“That’s a microgrid and something someone could do on their own. They don’t really need Xcel involved. They don’t really need the city involved,” Lehrman said. He added that bidirectional EV chargers can also add additional backup batteries for homes. If it’s a sunny day, your car could store excess energy for your refrigerator to run through the night.

Yet most solar battery backups cost more than $10,000, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and that is after installing solar panels averaging some $20,000.

“There are things that people can do now,” Lehrman said, “if they have the means to do it.”

This underscores the potential for climate-fueled inequity. Lehrman said if asked, his recommendation for the city wouldn’t be to incentivize widespread home solar and batteries, but to instead explore measures that prevent outages across socioeconomic levels, like undergrounding power lines.

“There might be distribution investments we could make that don’t leave anyone behind,” Lehrman said. 

Yet Lehrman also noted in Xcel Energy’s new Wildfire Mitigation Plan, set to be released later this year, there could be additional funding for microgrids and burying lines to reduce wildfire risk. Microgrids were briefly discussed in its 2022 version of the plan. “There are a lot of different causes of outages, so there’s going to be a lot of different solutions, and I would really hope microgrids are a part of that,” Lerhman said.