Power outages, reliability and Xcel rates

we added a couple of strategies overall. The first was a heavy emphasis on the regulatory framework and the second was municipalization.

the PSPS event um we pre-staged generators um and and kept a lot of those major intersections going.

we committed in our last our electric and our gas rate case to make a $10 million contribution for energy assistance

power when it was necessary to avoid any damage in the community

on average we're 39% below the national average even with this next rate increase coming up

We need to end these destructive power outages.

continuing to push Excel as hard as we possibly can to end these incredibly damaging uh power outages

They're working to reduce the number of outages by breaking the system up into more pieces.

Focusing on affordability and reliability in the rate case that's ongoing, we filed testimony last week.

from an advocacy perspective, particularly after the 2024, public safety power shutoff.

I know that heat pumps were already there but I was curious if that was something that had been discussed andor given the increase in PSPS

People were asking questions of, like, why did the power go out here and not over here?

the scope that we have for this project for this year is to really understand the causes and impacts of the outages

that was their suggestion about sort of prepping kids for the idea that we might have extended power outages

how this community can respond to power outages and other things that can occur during emergencies

Power outages, the voluntary power outages, so that, again, you have these hubs that can be

That's hardening the grid, so looking at impacts from the PSPS, how do we want to think about, developing some objectives

thinking about the council agenda uh priorities and the power outage one

Next is power resiliency, including timing and barriers

I'd like to talk about the power outages and looking forward.

And so we played a pretty important role during the PSPS.

when that feeder goes down, it affects all of North Boulder, as an example.

given we were just coming out of, a pretty dramatic period with the, the public safety power shutoffs, and so power resiliency

or solar if we have no more energy after Excel puts us on a permanent PSPS

Certainly, we are continuing to have discussions around what happens with power outages and how our businesses respond

I think we want to make sure they're informed about

I think we can certainly see de-scoping of PSPS and EPSS in the future in those outages

it would also include, like, if there's a power outage, if there's this

Later this month, the city plans to host a virtual community town hall to focus on this recent PSPS.

PSPS would have been a much more dire situation had we not had generators at our water treatment plants.

We just went through the PSPS. I didn't see places to go in Boulder.

I don't know what caused the power outage. It's not that windy or anything, there's no snow around.

there is a little bit of power outage in, I think, somewhere

Or energy infrastructure, more power outages? What if the parks wants to incorporate

There is, power supply to the Water Resources Recovery Facility. We're in that process of working with Excel as a partner

Not sure if you guys can hear us online, but we have a power outage

I know in the power outage I had friends who used their cars to power their refrigerator

I understand you had a lengthy power outage

Looking at their 75 to 100 year old infrastructure. Looking at where those risks exist, starting to talk about where we might want to invest

Not just Marshall, but the ancillary impact or the secondary impact of power. Public safety power shutoffs.

whether it's undergrounding, whether it's free closers, whether it's Psps which is public safety power shutoffs

Yeah. Um, Excel, uh, we've done several projects with them. Um, uh, you know, being co-utilities

we just had our conversation with Excel um about the partnership and one of the components was undergrounding.

excel's infrastructure Investments including undergrounding power lines and modernizing the grid are critical to our City's ability

people might be experiencing more frequent outages because we've set our system to be more sensitive

19th Street shiaka is on the list right now that's in design design um and that includes the power that goes up

are we doing undergrounding of utility wires outside of shiaka or is it limited to the shiaka area

if you start to think about reliability, risk of knockdown other, you know, ongoing vegetation management

We certainly have goals around reliability and resilience, and some exploration of how we can streamline the process for undergrounding.

the extent to which undergrounding or or reliability more broadly is addressed.

I think I'll start with the state of our system that requires proactive shut off, that extends for days

ensuring utility investments that reduce wildfire risks and prioritize service, reliability

we more frequent power outages again that resilience

Unfortunately, there are continued power outages. There were 2 in the month of August

how and why that portion of the electric system was prioritized for undergrounding

There's an item that says Chautauqua undergrounding. That is listed as fund-wide slash citywide

I am looking forward to understanding more about the equity prioritization of the undergrounding at Chautauqua

They're looking at ways to really help support aggressive undergrounding program looking at, we just partnered with them on an application for virtual power plants.

yeah, it was like all of the campus power outages. You're just sitting around.

as you all may remember, April 6th had that crazy windstorm and power outages and ever all the craziness.

the local grid that Excel owns and manages has been shown to be increasingly dangerous and unreliable

I know there were questions about the Excel power outage um the three-day outage in April

We tried to get some information about what the economic impact of those Psps were

to respond to April's power outage, which had a significant impact on downtown businesses

the PSPs is a tool it's not the sole tool and it's the last tool

we have a whole host of mitigations that we intend to apply system hardening and strengthening

want to thank people for their uh stories about the power outage and how that affected them

excel proactively de-energized their electrical system in in our area and the surrounding area for fire prevention purposes.

which is our update on the power outage of April 6th and April 7th

to add an item 1B, a debrief on the power outage on April 6th and 7th.

for your work last weekend with power outage

I also believe that accelerated undergrounding of utility lines to the extent that resources are available

reliability was something that we've heard from the community that we really wanted to focus on

in addition to looking at how do we address reliability and ath north and south region of Boulder

would you be prepared to accelerate the undergrounding effort uh in some fashion

We have some capital funds directed toward undergrounding power lines within the downtown district.

we noticed actually through some power outages in particular the Brenton building performed better

remove barriers to undergrounding of overhead utility lines in in areas of high risk and vulnerability

We had a June 2022 power outage at our boulder reservoir water treatment plant

all of that means we're a whole lot better able to maintain grid reliability and stability

which is makes intermittent sources of energy work a whole lot better for providing grid reliability

for a policy that's significant to this city and which we're going to work with Excel to do undergrounding

eliminate the limitation on undergrounding to high risk areas a limitation a limitation on financial assistance for low-income utility customers

open space burned and severe wind caused power outages and damages in boulder and in neighboring mountain communities

some critics of the settlement had talked about that money won't actually be available to Boulder because the Pu will prevent that

we've been analyzing some of the outage data um some of the um types of errors or system uh interruptions

that large segment we know that this has been a priority area for the community both in terms of improving our reliability

while we're looking at a half a billion dollars in undergrounding

the cost of undergrounding as a citywide project is going to be half a billion dollars is that correct

attachment b we've laid out a lot of the criteria for how we're going to inform a five-year undergrounding plan

the Electric System in Boulder will be operated um what work will be done on it and what um really grid modernization

the undergrounding was some kind of a gift we paid for the undergrounding we never got the service

this is important in terms of providing um better reliability for our system by being able to un underground significant portions of the distribution system

one of the questions that came up earlier was how would we work through planning the undergrounding

another important function is undergrounding uh as you probably are aware under the the franchise that expired in 20110

distribution system planning to help Implement those goals undergrounding uh information sharing

the distribution system planning uh we the issue there is how how certain we can be of the system planning that will have um undergrounding

we've lost undergrounding for many years now we've clearly been wanting to get out of Excel

Boulder loves to list all the wonderful things immunity can accomplish to add reliability and resiliency including powerline undergrounding

we've completing our separation design engineering and are currently participating in excels rate case

so the other part would be to support legislation that asks the puc to allow municipalities to have input into the growth of their distribution system

Fort Collins has undergrounding so they have eight times better reliability than we do

PG&E territory due to their poor investment as evidenced by their current bankruptcy and current intentional power outages

THAT LOSS SHOULD INCLUDE OVER TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS OF POWER LINES UNDERGROUND AND THUS PUTTING BOULDER HAD A SELF IMPOSED HIGHER RISK OF POWER OUTAGES

one of the key things about having local controlled electric utility would be the community can tell us how much resilience they want in their electric system

if the community decides undergrounding of the distribution system is their highest priority the city has the freedom to make those choices

they're looking at creating in their rate case a process by which cities will be able to go more renewable

trying to claim that shared polls don't decrease safety and reliability

that lost undergrounding reduces the reliability resilience and safety of the Boulder Electric Supply

we're being completely ripped off on our undergrounding fee

we're not getting what we should be getting with the rates that we're paying

ignoring lost undergrounding would be deceptive true costs to the end of 2019 would be 36 million