How To Solve Colorado's Outage Problem

In-person and live streaming
preliminary description:
Power outages are a key reliability metric. Outage frequency and duration for all events in Xcel Energy’s Public Service Company territory have been increasing for the past decade. The best estimate of the economic cost of these outages just reached a staggering peak in 2024 of $1.28 billion. The brunt of this cost is being silently borne on the backs of our small to medium sized commercial and industrial businesses. Colorado’s economic lifeblood. The failures that caused these outages have occurred almost exclusively in the low voltage distribution system, the transformers, poles, and wires in our neighborhoods. The root causes are primarily due to a combination of increasing fossil fuel emissions pollution-induced extreme weather events and an aging centralized grid system. This is a systemic problem that is not unique to Xcel or Colorado. It requires that we continue to reduce emissions pollution and think down to community-levels about how to prioritize and address reliability and resilience, which represents a new paradigm and challenge for power system co-planning and co-investments.

Fortunately, there are already a portfolio of clean energy solutions and technologies available for deployment at the distribution level to address reliability and resilience issues, where they are needed by our small businesses and their employees. This may work, if we can figure out ways to work together in a sustainably smart and collaborative way. This talk is intended to get the public conversation going on what truly is the root of our energy emergency in Colorado, and present some ways we can solve it, together, in a bottom-up meets top-down approach by empowering our communities and encouraging distributed energy prosumerism.
Please plan to stay for a reception with food, drinks, and conversations afterwards. Free but you're welcome to put something in the basket.

Hybrid event, in-person and live streaming (the link will appear here).

Ample free parking right outside. Wheelchair accessible, and we have assisted listening devices.
Our 7pm start time is outside the busy traffic time and getting there is easy. We're about a mile west of the I-70 exit at Youngfield/32nd Ave (Applewood).