What Xcel promised regulators and what customers were told before Dec. 17 shutoff warnings

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

Coloradans are being asked to prepare for the chance of a planned outage on Dec. 17. The company’s public alerts tell people to watch the map. The filings tell a fuller story about thresholds, timelines and who is supposed to be in the loop when a shutoff is on the table.

That framework was not created overnight. It was built through years of filings with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and formally approved in 2025. As of Dec. 16, the documents already on record allow for a clearer picture of what Xcel committed to regulators and what customers were actually told as the wind event approached.

Dec. 17 was not an improvisation

Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) are not ad hoc emergency decisions. They are a state-approved operational program.

The settlement followed heightened scrutiny of how wildfire risk was being managed after Xcel carried out its first proactive shutoffs during a major Front Range wind event in April 2024. The April wind event didn’t end when the power came back on. It triggered a Commission review, public feedback and a broader push to spell out how future shutoffs should be handled—work that ultimately led to a settlement approved in June 2025, which included a Wildfire Mitigation Plan for Xcel Energy.

That settlement explicitly included a PSPS component, requiring Xcel to integrate an incident command structure, identify and prioritize critical customers and file a formal “PSPS Playbook” outlining how shutoffs would be executed.

The Commission’s public materials describe PSPS as one tool within a broader wildfire mitigation strategy, not an extraordinary last-minute measure. By the time customers began seeing warnings ahead of Dec. 17, the authority to carry out planned shutoffs had already been approved and embedded into Xcel’s operating framework.

Regulatory approval from PUC that reshaped how shutoffs are handled as shown in this June 2024 press release.

What Xcel told regulators about when power can be shut off

Xcel’s most detailed PSPS framework appears in a plan filed with regulators on June 27, 2024, following the company’s first proactive shutoff earlier that spring.

In that filing, Xcel outlined specific minimum criteria for considering a power shutoff. According to the plan, a PSPS may be evaluated when all three of the following conditions are present: extreme winds at or above the 99th percentile for a given location, relative humidity at or below 20 percent and low fuel moisture.

The plan also describes a staged decision process that begins with a PSPS “watch period,” followed by confirmation of conditions, geographic scoping down to the circuit level and eventual restoration once conditions improve.

Those criteria and stages are not suggestions. They are the standards Xcel presented to regulators as the basis for exercising shutoff authority.

Xcel’s filed PSPS plan lays out the minimum weather and fuel conditions that must be met before a shutoff is considered.

What Xcel promised about notice and communication

The same PSPS plan lays out how and when customers and officials are supposed to be notified.

Xcel told regulators it would begin communicating with emergency managers, local officials, the Commission and critical and qualifying medical customers up to 48 to 72 hours in advance when a PSPS is possible. 

If a shutoff is expected, the plan says customers should receive notice 24 to 48 hours in advance. If conditions worsen, it allows for much shorter notice, as little as one to four hours, with updates continuing through the outage and restoration process.

The plan also commits the company to maintaining decision logs and completing after-action reviews when the PSPS Decision Team is activated.

These timelines form the benchmark against which customer experiences can be measured.

The timeline included in Xcel’s PSPS plan shows a staged notification process that begins days before a potential shutoff when conditions allow. Source: Xcel Energy’s Public Safety Power Shutoff plan, filed with state regulators in June 2024.

Why April still matters

The regulatory scrutiny now surrounding PSPS did not begin this winter.

Xcel’s 2023 Wildfire Mitigation Plan Annual Report indicates the company did not deploy PSPS during that year. The first proactive shutoff followed on April 6, 2024, leading the PUC to open a proceeding to collect public input and examine how the outage was handled.

The Commission’s response materials show regulators were concerned enough about the April 2024 event to demand answers and improvements, particularly around communication and preparedness.

In its annual report, Xcel said it has kept adjusting how it uses PSPS since that first shutoff. Other filings make clear PSPS now sits inside a wider effort to manage wildfire risk, including liability and insurance questions that go well beyond a single wind forecast. 

With that in mind, the Dec. 17 warnings did not come out of nowhere. They are unfolding under a framework already shaped by regulatory review of a prior shutoff.

The Commission opened a formal review after Xcel’s first proactive shutoffs in April 2024, citing the need for oversight and improvement.

What customers were told heading into Dec. 17

Public-facing messaging in recent days has emphasized the possibility of shutoffs, preparation steps and outage maps. Xcel’s wildfire safety pages describe PSPS in general terms and encourage customers to update contact information and monitor conditions.

What those pages do not show are the specific thresholds, decision logs or circuit-level evaluations described in filings to regulators. 

Customers are largely left to infer how close conditions may be to triggering a shutoff and whether formal decision processes have been activated.

A 9NEWS story published last year noted how difficult it is for the public to navigate and understand the underlying filings, even when they are technically available through the PUC’s docket system.

In a June 5 public comment hearing before the PUC, commissioners underscored that decisions about grid reliability and future power supply are made through formal filings and evidentiary records, not real-time alerts or public messaging. 

The hearing, which focused on Xcel Energy’s just transition solicitation plan, drew comments from residents across the state about rising costs, transparency—and the growing strain extreme weather places on the system. Commission leadership stressed that public input informs the record, but the standards governing utility actions are set through approved plans and regulatory proceedings. 

As Colorado heads into another high-wind event, those standards already exist on paper, even if they are not always visible to customers as events unfold.

Xcel’s public-facing PSPS page focuses on preparedness and monitoring rather than decision criteria or regulatory benchmarks.

What’s still unclear

As of Dec. 16, some basic questions still hadn’t been answered. It is not publicly clear whether forecast conditions met all of Xcel’s minimum PSPS criteria, whether the PSPS Decision Team formally convened or how notice timelines were applied in practice.

RMV has requested clarification from both Xcel Energy and the PUC regarding decision thresholds, notification practices and oversight for the Dec. 17 wind event. 

Dec. 17 may pass without widespread shutoffs. But the documents already on record make one thing clear: Colorado has crossed into an era where planned outages are no longer theoretical. 

Whether that system now operates transparently and accountably will matter well beyond this week’s forecast.