As the dust settles after last week’s windstorm and widespread shutoffs, local officials and business leaders largely agree that Xcel Energy’s response was an improvement over its first planned outage in April 2024, with clearer warnings, better maps and fewer surprises.
But in mountain communities, where some residents went days without power, water or reliable communication, the takeaway was different: The same vulnerabilities remain, restoration can still stretch without a clear timeline, and the promises of a hardened grid still feel more aspirational than scheduled.
Boulder County Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann said the improved communication mattered, but more work is needed.
“It certainly went better,” Stolzmann told Boulder Reporting Lab. “Making sure people are signed up for alerts, making sure people have access to the information they need, there’s still lots of opportunity to improve in those areas.”
John Tayer, president and CEO of the Boulder Chamber, said the outages landed hard on businesses at a critical holiday moment and said the chamber is working with “regional partners” to push Xcel to harden the grid, though details of those efforts remain unclear.
“We recognize that safety has to be the top priority,” Tayer said. “However, going forward, what this emphasizes is the absolute need for us to invest in hardening our system, given that we’re in an area where high winds are standard, and the changing climate is leading to drier conditions.”
The outages followed an extreme wind event that elevated wildfire risk across the region, prompting Xcel to proactively shut off power to prevent downed lines from sparking fires. About 380,000 Xcel Energy customers lost power throughout the week, according to the utility. Xcel intentionally cut power to about 49,900 customers during the Dec. 17 windstorm and 67,000 customers during the Dec. 19 windstorm.
Additional outages occurred after high winds damaged utility infrastructure. In those cases, crews must inspect and repair lines before re-energizing them to prevent a spark from igniting a fire, a process that can take days in mountainous communities.
That combination of planned shutoffs and wind damage did not affect all parts of the county equally. Some downtown businesses regained power within hours, while outages stretched into a third and fourth day for many residents in mountain communities west of Boulder. Parts of North Boulder also experienced extended outages.
On the Pearl Street Mall, holiday lights were illuminated the same day as the windstorm. The mall retained power after Xcel reconfigured a feeder to keep electricity on, even though it technically remained within the public safety shutoff zone, according to the Downtown Boulder Partnership.
Even so, the outages took a significant toll on local businesses during one of the busiest periods of the year. Tayer said larger industrial businesses were forced to pause operations at high cost, while restaurants and smaller businesses lost “significant revenue at a critical period” during the holidays.
The Boulder Restaurant Alliance, led by Peter Waters, plans to collect restaurant impacts and restoration concerns at its Jan. 6 meeting and share those requests directly with Xcel.
The outages also disrupted services for vulnerable residents. All Roads, the city’s largest homeless shelter, lost power Wednesday and Friday nights, relying on generators and staff wearing headlamps to manage a facility with capacity to sleep 180 people. Boulder Housing Partners, which manages affordable housing units in the city, lost power to about 75% of its properties, including Golden West, an assisted-living community, according to the housing authority. The Emergency Family Assistance Association lost power to its North Boulder food bank on Friday and closed.
On Tuesday, nearly a week after the start of last week’s windstorms, hundreds of customers in mountain areas around Boulder still lacked electricity, according to Xcel’s outage map. Many residents in those communities rely on electricity to pump water, heat homes and connect to Wi-Fi to make calls because of limited cell service.
Clare Tone, who helps run the Broken Arrow Ranch near Gold Hill, said she was without power from Dec. 17 through at least Dec. 22. She said she was hauling water to fill stock tanks for her horses.
“Horses here are in grave danger, unable to fill stock tanks for six days,” Tone said Sunday in a text message.
Compared with Xcel Energy’s first-ever planned public safety shutoff in April 2024, last week’s outages came with more advance notice, higher-resolution outage maps and improved coordination with operators of critical facilities. That April outage sparked immediate condemnation from city leaders, public demands for accountability and a formal investigation by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.
This time, criticism surfaced largely on social media rather than through official channels, a response shaped in part by the timing of the outage during the holiday period. Many elected officials and city staff were traveling or unavailable to weigh in publicly, and the city is not scheduled to formally meet with Xcel until after the holiday break, on Jan. 6.
At the height of last week’s wind event, about 60 of the city’s “most critical” traffic signals were down, according to City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde. The city deployed backup generators to some intersections and assigned traffic enforcement to others.
“While we will continue to have conversations with Xcel about the need for undergrounding lines, improving community notifications and developing more precise and targeted shutoffs, today is not about what could have gone better,” Rivera-Vandermyde said in a letter to residents on Monday. “Team members were activated away from their regular duties, and for some, brought back from vacations during this holiday season to work.”
Following the April 2024 shutoff, several members of the Boulder City Council called on Xcel to restore power more quickly after shutoffs. Robert Kenney, president of Xcel’s Colorado operating company, told councilmembers the utility would hire more contractors and preposition crews to speed restoration. He also said Xcel would expand the use of drones to inspect lines and equipment more quickly.
After that outage, about 580 workers, including Xcel employees and contractors, helped inspect and repair lines, according to Xcel’s communications with the Public Utilities Commission. Xcel did not respond to questions about how many workers were deployed to restore power during last week’s wind event.
“Xcel Energy crews took extraordinary measures to patrol lines and make repairs to restore power as quickly and safely as possible, including hiking miles of lines in difficult terrain and using helicopters to replace downed poles in remote areas,” Xcel spokesperson Michelle Aguayo told Boulder Reporting Lab.
Aguayo said it is difficult to determine whether the shutoffs prevented a wildfire. “We know that our actions significantly reduced the risk of wildfires during this period,” she said.
A few small fires sparked during the wind event and were quickly contained. The most serious occurred in the 3100 block of Euclid Avenue, where a wooden fence caught fire. A resident called 911 before the flames spread, and Boulder Fire-Rescue crews extinguished the fire before it could reach nearby homes.
On Monday, a wildfire in Fourmile Canyon prompted evacuation orders and warnings before crews contained the blaze. The fire occurred after Xcel’s shutoff in an area that was experiencing a power outage. Officials have not said what caused it.
The extreme winds and outages highlighted a growing vulnerability in Boulder. Powerful windstorms are increasingly arriving in a hotter, drier climate and interacting with an electric grid that relies heavily on aboveground equipment, with microgrids still rare or limited largely to private, individual systems.
City staff plan to debrief the planned shutoff internally and with Xcel in January, according to Jennifer Ciplet, a spokesperson for the City of Boulder.