After months of Littleton outages, Xcel says it found the problem

By Nicole Fierro | Fox 31

LITTLETON, Colo. (KDVR) — Power outage problems have been plaguing thousands in Littleton this summer, but the cause is finally known.

Last week, FOX31 shared the stories of neighbors and business owners who reached out to the Problem Solvers for help after dealing with seven power outages since June. 

Now, Xcel Energy is sharing what exactly went wrong and how the company is working to prevent the issue in the future.

“When we had three (outages) in August, we knew that something was wrong,” Xcel Regional Vice President Gilbert Salazar said. “All the vegetation management had been done. We replaced an underground cable completely. The line had been patrolled numerous times. That’s when we identified all the work that we’ve done isn’t getting to whatever the root is.”

Salazar told FOX31 the initial outages that Littleton residents experienced in June were related to trees. However, the last four were from another issue.

“What we finally came to is we said, let’s look at the technology. Is there something that we that’s amiss there? Is it malfunctioning?” Salazar said. “And what we found was that the safety settings that we put in place in January were set up for January loads. And the tolerance is to withstand the fluctuations that we have for seasonality. But they weren’t set enough.”

People using their air conditioning in 90-plus degree temperatures this summer were tripping the technology put in place to try to prevent wildfires.

“The issue there was the tolerance just wasn’t set enough for the amount of load that we’re now seeing in July and August,” Salazar said. “So, that was an oversight on the company’s part. Proactively, any of the new technology that we’ve been stalled over the past couple of years, we’re going to go out there and verify that that tolerance has been set right to make sure that we don’t have a similar situation as we had in Littleton.”

READ THE COMPLETE STORY AT FOX31